Its been 9 months since my last trip to disney. But I feel like for the most part they do a great job with food allergies. I have had a bad incident at 1 restaurant and though it really is unacceptable I just won't go there again. I have anaphylactic food allergies and oral allergy syndrome. I always carry my epipen with me and chewable children's benadryl. My list of no no foods is long and contains everything from tree nuts, legumes, soy, birch and most fruits and non leafy green vegetables. Considering what I can't eat, I look forward to going to disney and being able to sit down in a restaurant and have a meal. I don't expect them to cater to my allergies at any of the counter service restaurants and do hit the local market to pick up snacks that I can eat and carry them into the parks with me. In truth I have a limited selection of local restaurants I can eat at so going to disney and being able to eat out is a treat. I'm sorry so many people seem so disappointed with things like bread etc but for me there are no safe breads except for Udi's flat bagels thats it unless I make it myself. So eating a burger wrapped in lettuce isn't going to make or break a disney trip for me.
There still needs to be a lot of education about the difference between life threatening allergies and oral allergy syndrome. I get that you don't want to eat something that can cause discomfort but thats different from your life being put in peril if you do eat it. I feel like people wanting to eat paleo or having birch cross sensitivity can avoid what they don't like and even ask for a substitution they don't' need to go through the whole food allergy system. Because you can push those things off your plate they aren't going to kill you. Until the system is truly used for medical reasons its always going to be flawed.
I hope I'm misunderstanding this but are you saying that people with OAS should not be using the allergy system? If so, that doesn't make any sense. oral allergy syndrome can be life threatening for some people. It is rare but it can cause anaphylaxis depending on the individual's severity. So personally, I do think that people with OAS and cross reactions with pollens should not feel bad about utilizing the allergy system at Disney (or anywhere else) for something like OAS.
My entire mouth swelled up after eating banana a few weeks ago. We had no idea that it was one of my OAS foods because I hadn't eaten it in so long but after the first bite, I started to swell up. My allergist warned me that any of my OAS foods (raw nectarines, peaches, plums, apples, bananas, melons, cherries, carrots, cucumber, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, etc) could cause anaphylaxis. But I am a high risk allergy patient with an IgE of 2200 and severe asthma so this might not be applicable to everyone but it's possible. But my allergist tells me to treat it just like all my other allergies. That brings me to a list of around 25 foods that are off limits.
My one pet peeve about the allergy system is people who are using it for life style choices. And you see it mentioned on the vegetarian/vegan thread. You should NOT be be using the allergy system for a lifestyle choice like vegetarian or vegan. Not okay in my book. It harms people like me who can't go anywhere to eat without a system like this in place.
Now if I completely misunderstood about the OAS, ignore the part of my post that talks about OAS.