ATU663 – Morgan’s Wonderland with Gordon Hartman

Hello, this is Gordon Hartman with Morgan’s Wonderland in San Antonio, Texas, and this is Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 663 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on February 9th, 2024.

On today’s show, we’re very excited to welcome Gordon Hartman from Morgan’s Wonderland on. He’s going to tell us all about this ultra accessible amusement park, as well as all the other great things that they do down there in San Antonio. Don’t forget, listeners, if you ever do want to reach us, you can always send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124, or visit our website at www.eastersealstech.com and drop us a line on there. As always, we thank you for listening. Now, let’s go ahead and get on with the show.

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Listeners, as we’re in the cold grasp of winter here in Indiana, I long for the joys of summer, warm days outside, enjoyment, and amusement parks. Our guest today is Gordon Hartman, and he’s here to tell us all about a very special and accessible amusement park called Morgan’s Wonderland, and we’re very excited to learn more about it. Gordon, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Josh. Appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah, I’ve wanted to learn more about this for quite a long time, so I’m very excited to have you on. But before we get into talking about Morgan’s Wonderland, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Well, I’ve been very blessed in my many years here on Earth in respect to the opportunities that I’ve had. I had wonderful parents and grew up in San Antonio, lived in San Antonio all my life, went to a local seminary. After I was done with that, I got involved in a landscape company, which grew very quickly, and then I took all those funds and started a home building company at the age of 19. I then went on to start a development company, a mortgage company, a title company, an insurance company, and after 22 years of being in those different businesses, I sold them at the age of 41 and made a decision that I wanted to spend the second half of my life towards assisting our friends with special needs.

I’m blessed with a daughter, Morgan, who is an incredible young lady, who just turned 30, and she is someone who has been inspirational to, not just myself and my daughter and our family, but literally now the whole world in the way in which she deals with physical and cognitive issues in a very positive fashion. So we formed a foundation of the sale of all the companies, and for the past 19 years, I have been, some people call it philanthropic work, I call it social worker in many ways, I believe, and trying to do as much as we can to give back to the community, not just in a monetary way, but really getting involved and developing things that just simply don’t exist today in an effort to try to bring about more inclusion in the world.

And that is awesome, and I think that just leads me right into my next question and the main reason we have you on today. Can you tell us, what is Morgan’s Wonderland?

Well, Morgan’s Wonderland came about, I’ll give you a little history of that real quick, which I think will develop a sense of why we built Morgan’s Wonderland. And in 2006, Maggie, Morgan’s mom, and myself and Morgan were on a vacation. Morgan’s our only daughter, our only child. And we were on a vacation and we were having a lot of fun, and Morgan wanted to go swimming for the second time. And so I said, “Hey, I’ll go down with Morgan later in the evening and just go swimming with her.” And I went down and Morgan and I jumped in the water and there were three other kids at the other end of the pool playing, two of them throwing a ball back and forth. I got out of the pool because I’d been in for a while, and Morgan wanted to stay in, and so she just was splashing around, and she noticed those children at the other end of the pool, and she slowly moved her way down to work towards trying to interact with them. She wanted to be included in what they were doing.

And I watched it, and these very nice children who were throwing the ball back and forth, Morgan, who is quite tall, and instead of saying, “Hey, can I play?” Her only way of being able to convey that, because she couldn’t verbally do it, was to hit the ball. And so when she hit the ball and saying, “Hey, I want to play,” that was her way of expressing it, these very nice children got out of the water and ran. I watched that and as Morgan turned back to me, I jumped in the water and I remember just hanging on and just saying, “Hey, let’s have some fun.” I could tell that really bothered her.

And so I remember telling my wife after that happened, I said, “There’s got to be more places we can take Morgan and do things where there will be an acceptance,” even though she may not be able to convey what we would refer to as a typical individual. And so that was the idea. Well, what about in a theme park? You can go to different ones, but the lights are bright, are they flashing? Are there loud noises? And we just found we couldn’t take her to places like that. So we made a decision that why can’t we build a place that takes into account issues so that those with and without special needs, not a special needs park, by any means, but a fully inclusive, ultra accessible park? Where those with and without special needs could come together and play in a theme park setting, that would look like any other theme park would make sure it would fully accommodate everybody. And that’s the creation of Morgan’s Wonderland.

Now that was 2006. So 2007, I started on this. This was not anywhere in the plan when I retired. And so built, and ’07, went around and started talking to people went, people went, “Hey, that’s a kind of neat idea.” ’08, we started designing it, ’09, built it, and opened it in April 10th, 2010. So we’re getting ready to start our 15th season, actually. So it’s been an incredible success, I’m sure we’ll be talking about it more, but that’s the background and why we developed Morgan’s Wonderland, and it’s been well beyond our expectations as to what it’s led to. Absolutely incredible.

That’s awesome. And I love the way that you specified it’s not a special needs park, it is just inclusive, and really accessible to all. I think that’s where some people, oh, just miss the mark, because if you make it accessible for one person and their needs, well, you’re still making it inaccessible for all those other folks. So I love that you took that into account and really made it to where Morgan could enjoy it, but also enjoy it with others. I think that’s really great. So you touched on this a little bit, Gordon, but can you tell me what really sets it apart from other amusement parks?

Well, what we did is we said, okay, what do we have to do to ensure that we can bring everyone together and make it an ultra accessible, fully inclusive. Ultra accessible meaning, not just a place that complies with ADA, but goes beyond that. That’s why we call it ultra accessible. And that means that no matter how acute your special need may be, you’re in a wheelchair, you’re vision impaired, hearing impaired, or whatever the issue may be, whether it be cognitive or physical or whatever, our rides, our activities always can accommodate you in a very respectful way.

We make rides and we’re going through, matter of fact, an expansion right now, and an update of Morgan’s after many 14 years that we’ve been open, and all the rides accept everyone in a wheelchair. So no one ever looks at something and goes, “I wish I could do that,” or thinks about doing that, and says, “I can’t.” We don’t believe in that. So that’s what sets us apart. And then the lighting and the way in which our sounds are, I could go into great, great detail, I won’t do that here. But the bottom line is everything is taken into account to ensure that if a family wants to come and there’s no one in that family, who has special needs, they can enjoy the part just like a family who may have three or four children who possibly could have special needs, but they all join together.

And what it does is two things. One, it brings down the barriers of those who might be fearful of interacting with someone who may be not able to verbalize or may have an issue that may cause them to be in a wheelchair or maybe walk a little differently or whatever. But it also, what it does for the individual with special needs, is it brings about an incredible amount of self-esteem for them, because now everybody’s wanting to join in with them and play. They’re getting on the carousel together, they’re getting on the rides together, they’re doing all these different things together, versus being outside, they’re now being included, and that’s what we’re all about.

Yeah, that’s great. And you’re right, we could spend all day long here, you’re sitting, talking about all the different rides and all the different amazing things that you’ve done to make them accessible for all individuals, but I suppose we’re only so long of a show, so probably can’t get too deep into all of those and I want to make sure we get everything in. So you don’t just have Morgan’s Wonderland, there’s also Morgan’s Inspiration Island. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, we’re in San Antonio, and it gets hot every once in a while here. So after we had been open after a few years, some people start talking about, “Hey, this is great, but we’ve got to do something to cool people off.” Especially also, sometimes individuals with special needs, certain conditions of theirs do require them to not get overheated, if you will. They can get overheated pretty quickly and that can cause issues. So we said, well, let’s build a waterpark. And basically, what is that? Well, that’s the same concept that I just explained, but add water. And that may seem real simple on the surface, but there’s actually quite a bit of detail to it. Number one, we had to build some areas that had water that was a little warmer than normal, because some people can’t handle normal faucet water, their muscles will tighten. We developed a pneumatic wheelchair that works off compressed air, so it could actually handle going underwater. This is the first time ever that’s been done.

We developed wheelchairs and fabrics and ways of building wheelchairs, and we’ve built a wheelchair valet so that when someone came to us in their wheelchair, in the privacy of a room, they would move from their wheelchair into our wheelchair. And all those wheelchairs were color coded with our colors so that we knew what sizes they were, what ages it was in. We knew everything as people were out in the park. So a lot of times you go onto Inspiration Island and you may see 30 or 40 wheelchairs that you wouldn’t see in a waterpark. You just wouldn’t see that. And so it’s different. It’s something. And so we’re very proud of the fact that the year after we opened, Time Magazine came out with a list of the top 100 most unique places in the world, and we made that list. And I think it’s because we offer something that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else, a waterpark that’s for everybody. No one goes into Morgan’s Inspiration Island and goes, “I can’t do that.” No, you can do everything. Everything is possible.

No, that’s great. Because I know some places may have maybe something that’s accessible, but it’s usually off to the side, just segregated from everything else, and that just really doesn’t help inclusion in any way, shape, or form. So I love that you actually thought of, well, if someone does have a wheelchair that can’t get wet, how can we still accommodate and make sure that they get to enjoy and really have fun? Which is really what amusement parks are for, it’s there in the name. So I love that you did that. Then you guys also have Club Morgan and Morgan’s Inclusion Initiative. Could you tell us some about those programs?

Well, Club Morgan is an opportunity for those with and without special needs to join together and being able to enjoy a lot of the activities we have, and they just don’t have to enjoy… But it’s kind of like a opportunity of a buddy system, if you will. And so many individuals want to interact with and be with individuals who have special needs and one of the unfortunate things about the situation many times in the community of those with special needs is that they’re lonely, they’re looking for more friends, and that sort of thing, and so we try to buddy people together.

Nice.

That’s what that’s about. Now, Morgan’s Inclusion Institute is something that we’re actually in the process of putting together right now, which will be hopefully up and running by the end of 2024. And what that is is that here at Morgan’s Wonderland, and Morgan’s Inspiration Island, and Morgan’s Sports, and Morgan’s Camp, and the Multi-Assistance Center, and Morgan’s Wonder Care, and many other things that we have here, we are doing things to where we are expressing how every element of life can be dealt with in a more inclusive way. And so by doing that, what we’re doing is developing an institute so that we can then begin to work directly with cities, with foundations, with companies, to try to bring about more inclusion, and just have them think about that process more and let them know what that means. It doesn’t mean just checking off the box for ADA.

Let me give you an example. We’re working on right now, Josh, to build the first hotel that has amenities that can accommodate anyone with visual impairment, hearing impairment, in a wheelchair, et cetera, like no other hotel that’s ever been built in the world.

Nice.

And why that is important is it’s a way to, number one, express that it can be done, it can be economically viable, and also because it’s just never been done so we’re going to do it. So the Institute, people will come to it, we’re not just going to talk about doing things, but we’re going to talk about how we can help you actually make it happen. And that’s what we’re looking forward to doing. So I often tell people, Josh, we’re just getting started in what we’re doing. Yeah, I’ve been doing this since I was 41, but we really got our feet on the ground now in a very aggressive way. Yes, we’ve done a lot in the last 10 years, 15 years, but hang on, the next five, 10 years, now is where we are. We want to move this to a whole new level, and that’s part of what the Institute will help us do.

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, we can’t wait to see what all you can do. Gordon, I figured we could probably spend the rest of the day with this next question, but maybe we’ll limit to a couple. But can you maybe tell me a story or two about some folks experiences at Morgan’s Wonderland?

Yeah. I got literally thousands, I won’t say hundreds.

I figured.

I literally have thousands of emails, letters, phone calls that come to us all the time about, “I want to tell you about a story of what happened at Morgan’s Wonderland, or Morgan’s Inspiration Island, or somewhere else, that my daughter or my son or my grandson or the person who I’m the caretaker for was able to do that I never thought was possible.” There’s so many of those.

Just two that pop into mind as you ask me that question, is I remember I was talking to a gentleman from New York, and he came all the way from New York to come to Morgan’s Wonderland. And as I was talking to him, he was over at the carousel area, this is a couple of years ago, and I said, because I’ll go up to people and say, “Hey, where are you from?” And we’ve had people from all 50 states, 123 different countries from around the world. And so I asked him, I said, “What brought you? Why are you here?” And he goes, “Gordon, this is the only opportunity I’ll ever have a chance to put my son onto a carousel that will allow him to go up and down in his wheelchair just like everybody else,” and he started crying as he told me the story because he said, “I read what you guys are about, so I thought it was worth the trip.” And I said, “Well, has it been worth the trip?” And he looked at me and said, “Definitely.”

There’s so many other stories. I remember a young lady who sent me an email who said that after she left, her daughter is not overly verbal, but she was in a back seat after they left, and she would say certain words every once in a while, and she kept repeating ‘heaven’ after they left. And the point being of what the conversation went, as she explained it was, her daughter thought that maybe she had heard what heaven was and heard what the word was and kept thinking that Morgan’s Wonderland was heaven. So I can tell you so many stories, and some are a little bit right to the point, some were more emotional than others, but here’s what the bottom line is, Morgan’s Wonderland, Morgan’s Inspiration Island, all, the sports facility we have where people interact with sports, and the same concept of ultra accessibility, fully inclusive, all the stuff that we do at camp, we have a camp facility like none other where we do things that just don’t exist anywhere else, and all the other things that we’re doing, it’s just to bring about more inclusion and opportunity for 15% of the population that, just right now, to a certain extent, doesn’t have a seat at the table.

There’s been so many opportunities for different organizations to get a seat at the table to get attention for their needs. Unfortunately, the special needs community hasn’t been given that to the level that I think needs to be. When you think about the fact that there’s 64 million people in the United States that have some form of special need, and about 15 million of those people can’t make it through their day because of their special need, unless they have a caregiver with them. So we need more focus on this. We need more inclusion for folks like this. Because I often hear from people, and I don’t see people out who have special needs and all that, that’s because there’s not opportunities for them, and we can change that. And I think the tide is changing. We’re doing it through the theme park business. We’re doing it through the camping business. We’re doing it through the sports business. We’re doing it through all these different opportunities that we have. But we hope that will all bring attention to the idea and bring about more stories like I just mentioned to you, Josh.

Yeah. And I love how you said that you’re not just talking to people about it, but you’re showing that proof of concept. You’re showing folks that this can be done and that it’s economical and that it’s just, not just the the right thing to do, but it’s something that’s not, oh, impossible. I think for some businesses they see it as, oh heck, I don’t know, I’m sure I’ve heard every excuse in the book at some point so no use in rehashing all of them. But I love that you’re actually building, like you said, not just the amusement park, the waterpark, the sports park, but also a hotel that’s fully accessible, and being able to actually show businesses that this can be done and this is how it can be done. And just, if nothing else, getting that front of mind for them can make a huge difference for folks in all kinds of different places that maybe were inaccessible to them before.

But Josh, you’re right, and in respect to that, it’s always easy to say, “I can’t do something.”

Yeah.

Yeah. That’s the easy way. Sure. I always tell people when we’re working on stuff and they go, “God, we got to figure this out.” I’m like, “Guys, if it was easy, everybody would do it.” So there’s a reason why we do what we do, is we have to take things and stop and go, “Okay, we’ve got to figure this one out. How are we going to do this? It hasn’t been done before, but we’ve got to make sure that that person, for whatever situation we’re dealing with, or those folks who are going to want to do this, that everybody can do it.” And if they can’t, then we stop and say, “Okay, we’re not going there.”

We’re getting ready to put a zip line in which will open up on March 2nd when we open up Morgan’s, that will go 13 stories high, and if someone is in a wheelchair, on a breathing apparatus, on a feeding tube, they can ride that 13 story zip line just like you can, like I can, because of the way we have built it. That doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. But as that starts to be seen by more and more, people can go, “Yeah,” so that’s what we’re about. That’s it in a nutshell. You can do things. Yeah, we take the easy route. I think sometimes we do that because that’s just easy, and I don’t like that. In the business I was in before, before I retired at 41, I took on the hard projects, the tough land deals, the difficult things here and there, because I always like to find ways to get outside the box to make things happen. That’s basically what we do with Morgan’s.

That is great. That is awesome. Well, Gordon, thank you so much for coming on and telling us about just all the great things you do, and I know we just barely scratched the surface. So if our listeners want to find out more about Morgan’s Wonderland, about all the other great things that you guys are doing, what are some ways for them to do that?

Well, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to that because how people find out about us is through things like this, because we don’t spend a lot of money on media. What we do is we talk about what we do and what we do, and people say, “Hey, that’s something that definitely interests me.” So how to find out more on where we are right now. There’s a lot more coming now, I will tell you this, we just opened up a new salon to make sure people with and without special needs can get haircuts. We’re getting ready to open up an ambulatory surgical center in April so that individuals with special needs can be addressed on issues faster.

And something I want to mention real quick, Josh, if you go to [inaudible 00:23:04], or Morgan’s Inspiration Island, and you have a special need, we don’t charge you. Okay? Because we don’t want economics to be a barrier for anybody as well. Because it’s not just the barriers I talked about earlier, but economics can also be a barrier, so we don’t want that to happen. But here’s how people can contact us, or get to know more information, or contact us, however they wish, because we’d love to hear stories and thoughts about all the things that we’ve talked about today, is if you just go to morgans.org, M-O-R-G-A-N-S.O-R-G, and that will tell you about everything we’re doing. We’d love to hear from people, we’d love for people to come and see us as we open up the new renovated and upgraded Morgan’s with four new rides that have never existed anywhere else in the world, they’ll be at Morgan’s. And we’ll just add to what we already have and add to the whole concept of continuing what we are all about, and that is bringing about more inclusion in this world.

And right now, Josh, I think that’s more important than ever, because there’s so much talk about exclusion and not coming together. We’re the total opposite of that. And I want to mention one other thing, if you’ll give me a chance here.

Yeah, definitely.

We were talking about hopefully the tide changing. 15 years ago, when I went around and talked to manufacturers of rides and said, “I want to make this ride different,” they looked at me like, “What are you talking about? Why would you want to do that?” Well, recently I was at a trade show for all the theme parks from around the world, and all the folks who made rides wanted to talk to us. They said, “We want to know how to make our rides more accessible, more ultra accessible.” So the tide is changing. There’s no question. We were cool. We talked about inclusion before inclusion was cool. And that’s where I think we are, where we’re going. And so if people will go to morgans.org, they can learn all about us, and we’d love to hear from them.

Awesome. We will put that down in the show notes because, as I said, listeners, we barely scratched the surface today, but unfortunately we only have so much time to get everything in there. But Gordon, hopefully sometime here in the future, we can have you back, talk even more about some of those initiatives, some of the new things, some of the great things. But really and truly just from myself, from the listeners, thank you for everything you’re doing, not just in the things that you’re creating, but like you said, raising the awareness, getting that front of mind, and changing that perspective where… And some people just don’t know any different, they don’t know, “I can make these things inclusive,” they don’t know that, “I’m excluding folks just by the way I make things.” So just getting that front of mind and getting that in their head so that they can think about it and really see what can be done is a really great thing. So Gordon, thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you so much for what you do.

Thank you for the opportunity. Remember, I know you thanked me, but remember, there’s hundreds of people behind me supporting everything we do. It’s not me. I rub sticks together, come up with little sparks or ones, but there are a lot of people putting fuel on the spark to make the fires happen and make things happen here. So I appreciate all their assistance so much.

Awesome. Thank you again, and thank them for us as well.

You bet. Thanks, Josh.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124, send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation, or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com.

Special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project Easterseals Crossroads or supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, and I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.