Accessible/Adaptive Halloween Costumes 2024

Spooky season 2024 is in full swing and trying to find the perfect costume can be hard. It's even harder if you need an adaptive one for special needs/disability/mobility issues. I've been doing an adaptive costume post for a few years now, and this year I feel like there was a little bit of a stall. I say this because I didn't see hardly any new styles. It looked like mostly the hold overs from previous years.

Disney

https://www.disneystore.com/halloween-shop/costumes/adaptive-costumes/

It looked like Disney cut their offerings in half this year if not more. I hate to say it, but this does fall in line with how Disney also changed their ADA access rules at their parks to be more restrictive. Gone are the days where Disney supported children and their families let alone adults with disabilities that enjoy dressing up as their characters.

Target

This was the first year I noticed places (Target) using visuals of adaptive costumes on social media (this was a screen shot from TikTok). This specific post was a slide show of different costumes, but this picture was of the first slide. Target has been the best at visually showing and giving voices to disability. Last year I noticed in store signage that showed adaptive marketing. I have also found products at Target that shows holiday goods with characters using adaptive medical equipment. For example there is the vampire in a wheel chair that you can see in some of my videos from this Halloween season and last Christmas I found a Santa in a wheelchair. Target has been the leader in showing these types of images and just making it a part of what they do.

At the same time this year access to these costumes were more limited (just for internet shopping). Last year I was able to find some wheelchair covers and wagon covers (that could be adapted to wheelchairs), but this year even the big Targets didn't have these products on shelves. Their online supply also seemed smaller with no new styles that stood out to me. Everything seemed to be last year's holdovers.

Rolling Buddies

This was a new site I found this year (https://www.rollingbuddies.com/). This company sells different accessible products, but has a section for Halloween costumes. Some of the costumes looked really questionable in their quality, but the at least had a spread of options. They focused on wheelchair accessible costumes.

Example 1:

Lots of different emotions on this one. First, why would you make this costume? It does fall into cultural appropriation and the only possible thing I can think of why you would have this is if you were doing a costume of the Monkey King or Mulan. At the same time it dose show people from different cultural backgrounds within the picture while supporting accessibility. This is just an example of how complicated things can get when looking at things from a DEI lens. This is also one of the ones where I was questioning the quality of the product. Picture from: https://www.rollingbuddies.com/collections/halloween-costumes/products/asian-palace-wheelchair-costume-childs 

Everything on this site looks just cutouts for wheelchairs that have been printed on some type of poster board like thing. Nothing is licensed goods and the prices seem high when compared to licensed products or other products from other stores. I wouldn't recommend this place directly for the above reasons, but they do have some variety if you just want something different. 

halloweenexpress.com

https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

This is one of the few sites where there seemed to be any new styles this year.

Picture From: https://www.halloweenexpress.com/costumes/adaptive-a1-560518+3435-1.fltr

Their selection also felt smaller when compared to past years.

Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/browse/adaptive-and-diy-halloween-costumes/c2hlbGZfaWQ6MjMwMzMzOQieie

They had many of the same costumes as the places listed above.

This was one of the more interesting costumes they had this year that I didn't see on the other sites. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Disguise-Boys-Minecraft-Pig-Wheelchair-Cover-Adaptive-Costume-One-Size-Fits-Most/3882141793?classType=VARIANT&selectedSellerId=737

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/stores/DisguiseCostumes/AdaptiveCostumes_Themes/page/5421B702-BA97-484B-8708-4C39F3B82895

Even with a big company like Amazon that has the most random and diverse products, they had a super small selection of adaptive costumes. They actually had even less then some of the other stores when I expected them to have more.

Party City

https://www.partycity.ca/en/cat/halloween-costumes-decor/halloween-costumes-accessories/adaptive-costumes-DC1000367.html

For a place considered a party headquarters their selection this year was also super small, only having 8 options.

Spirit Halloween

Spirit was the most disappointing. On their website when I searched for adaptive costumes only 1 costume popped up.

Additional Places to Look:

https://www.etsy.com/market/adaptive_halloween_costumes

Overall, this year was mostly disappointing in what adaptive costumes that were out there. Since I started to do these posts each year there had been slow increases in what could be found and some stores were actually starting to get competitive with each other on who could offer the most. This year there was a decrease in what could be found and many of the stores just had the same products. Shopping around may not bring you variety like it has in the past, but you may find the same costume for cheaper. I'm hoping that this is just a slump and that next year store will start offering more again. We'll just have to wait and see.