Katie Price has called on theme parks to invent rides that disabled people in wheelchairs can clip into.
The 40-year-old former glamour model’s 16-year-old son Harvey suffers from Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), which is a rare genetic condition, and other disabilities, and she admits when he was in wheelchair when he was younger and now he’s older to struggles to find any appropriate roller coasters or exciting rides to take him on.
Katie feels as though major UK attractions such as Thorpe Park and Alton Towers should get their engineers to come up rides that allows those less-able to still be able to have the same "thrill" as everyone else.
The former ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ star – who also has Jett, four, and Bunny, three, with estranged husband Kieran Hayler and Junior, 11, and Princess, 11, with her former spouse Peter Andre – told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’: "Now this is a good happy subject. We all go to the theme park because we want to have fun. We all want a thrill, we are all thrill-seekers and summer holidays, Easter holidays, weekends and you’ve got a family, you wanna go out and you want to enjoy yourself. You can go to zoos this and that. But for thrill we want to go on rides. Whether it is sensory or even us able people who can see and walk, we like to look at things, bright lights, you know. So I myself obviously have a child with disabilities who was in a wheelchair up until a few years ago. I’ve got five children so taking them all to a theme park, they are different ages, they all want to do different things.
"You have to go on the teacups or whatever for the young ones and the other ones you have to be a certain height to go on the others. But when you’ve got a child with a wheelchair or they don’t walk very well, they want to go on a ride as well. Now, for wheelchairs some people might say, you can lift him out of a wheelchair to put him on a ride, but then what if you got someone with oxygen tanks and all the medical stuff around them, you can’t just lift them out there.
"It might just be my brain, but I seem to think why can’t you just clip a wheelchair into a ride, I’m not saying it has to do loop-the-loop, but some kind of sensory or thrill ride."
The businesswoman appreciates that the big parks offer a fast track pass to people with disabilities, but thinks more should be done to ensure everyone, no matter whether they can walk or see, can have just as much fun as everyone else.
She added: "I know that Harvey loves it. I know you have fast track for disabilities and stuff, but not even a child or an adult, even schools of kids with disabilities or adults, they all want a thrill. But there is absolutely nothing, I’ve looked at every theme park that has this kind of ride or rides and I think they need to create one."
Katie Price wants theme parks to invent coasters for wheelchair users
