Hello! I just visited Disneyland last week (4/24~4/28, 2016) and have some observations about going in a wheelchair. I don't regularly use a chair and, although I've visited Disneyland over 30 times, I'd never done it in a chair. The electric chairs looked large and difficult to manage. I will say, though, that I had family assistance pushing me in my non-electric chair: trying to wheel myself with those arm rests digging into my arms sucked! Renting was quick and easy. However, they didn't hand out the "Guide for Guests with Disabilities" pamphlet when/where we rented which I strongly think they should have. The Guides (one per park) can be found online. However, what isn't indicated online is which attractions require a ticket/pass scan to receive a return time and which attractions you can just roll up to and ride. They're pretty good at indicating where you need to go to enter the attraction and whether a transfer vehicle is available. The attractions that offer return scans (I don't know what else to call them) are:
Indiana Jones Adventure,
Pirates of the Caribbean,
the Haunted Mansion,
Splash Mountain,
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad,
Peter Pan,
Alice in Wonderland,
It's a Small World &
HyperSpace Mountain.
When the Jungle Cruise re-opens later this year, it will also have this feature. For whatever reason, we were obligated to get a FastPass for Star Wars and then go through another attraction entrance with an elevator. Haunted Mansion has FastPasses, too, for example, but we didn't need to get one to get our return time on our ticket/annual pass scan.
This information is NOT indicated on the paper or online Guide. We only found this out because the Cast Member who boarded us on Pinocchio's Daring Journey happened to have a family member she brings in a chair, so she knew all of the places we'd need to get scans to be able to ride. She literally circled their numbers on the map she gave us. Like I said, the Disabilities Guide was not offered to us when we rented our chair and, having never been in a chair, I didn't think to ask for one. We're very lucky she had them on her and circled the numbers of the attractions for us. I kick myself for not getting her name so I could praise her at City Hall.
California Adventure: Since my injury made me leery of rides like Tower of Terror & California Screamin', we shied away from those. We did, however, ride Toy Story Mania. This required our annual passes to be scanned. However, we were sent to an information kiosk by the ice cream vendor in front of Screamin' to get the passes scanned. This broke with the pattern in Disneyland where the Cast Member scanner stood by the entrance or exit of the ride. We got a FastPass for Soarin' and used that: I don't think they had a special scan for me based on my use of a chair. We also had a reserved "premium standing" area to watch World of Color. However, there are a few stairs to get down to it, so we asked a Cast Member what we should do. She wasn't 100% sure, but another one told us to keep rolling down to the end of the white rope and then turn left down a path to get to the area with designated wheel chair space. My advice is, get one of the Cast Members to guide you there. We followed their directions ~ through crowds ~ and got to an area that was below where we were supposed to park. I had to get out of the chair, walk up 3 steps while my Mom lifted the chair up the steps. This didn't kill either of us, but I wasn't bound to the chair, either. Would've been a whole other story if I couldn't have walked at all.
This may already be explained in one of the 600 other articles here, but the ticket/annual pass scan works a lot like a FastPass, but you don't (usually) get a paper ticket telling you when to return. For us, the Cast Member would scan our annual passes and TELL us to come back in 10 or 20 minutes (it varied), at the earliest. From that point on, we had a 1 hour window of return. I set an alarm in my phone to remind me of the return times. We only got a paper ticket at It's a Small World because the Cast Member couldn't get the scanner to work.
That's another thing: because Disney's WiFi is so... insufficient (?), we often encountered difficulty getting our annual passes scanned. I would say about half of our scans suffered from this phenomena. Excluding Splash Mtn. & HyperSpace Mtn., we rode most of those rides twice.
So, if I have to visit again in a chair (fingers crossed I don't!), I would 1) request a "Guide for Guests w/ Disabilities" either when renting the chair or passing through the gate. 2) I would further ask a Cast Member to circle the attractions that require a ticket/annual pass scan return time. 3) I'd ask for a Cast Member to guide us to our viewing location for World of Color.
Good luck & I hope this helps!