Inspiration Island has five splash pad playgrounds, one of them with warm water. (For safety, the park has no deep water.) Children can get soaked by a giant tipping bucket, conduct spray-gun fights, or splash with geysers or squirting sea horses — all with handles to control the intensity of water flow. People with ventilators can get special bags to keep them dry. Radio tracker bracelets protect children who might be prone to wander.

One afternoon in August, Sammi was laughing and smiling as she soaked her brother, John, with a water sprayer. “When I watch my children play together, it makes me happy that they are able to have experiences that they can remember when they’re older,” said Haney. “And that they’ll always have that, no matter how long Sammi is with us.”

Morgan’s Wonderland and Inspiration Island are not parks for people with disabilities, Hartman emphasized; only one in four guests has a special need. (Some are adults with disabilities who want to play with their able-bodied children.) They are parks of inclusion, where everyone can participate together. Visitors have come from 67 countries and every state. Children with special needs get free admission. The top price for everyone else is $17, with many discounts. The parks were expensive to build: Morgan’s Wonderland cost $36 million and loses $1 million per year, said Bob McCullough, a spokesman. Inspiration Island cost $17 million. It’s too new to track losses.

Bella Edwards, 9, lives an 70-minute drive from Morgan’s. Sue Chevalier Idskou, her grandmother, has taken Bella and her own daughter, Bella’s aunt Skye, who is 10 and able-bodied, to Morgan’s Wonderland at least twice a week for the last three years. The three also visited Inspiration Island more than 20 times over the past summer. Right now, Bella is rehearsing in Morgan’s Wonderland’s Christmas play. She has told Idskou she would like to live in the parks.

Bella was born with spina bifida. She uses a wheelchair, but has recently begun walking using forearm crutches and leg braces.

At other parks, she said: “I feel alone because nobody wants to play with me. They think I’m weird. When I come here, everybody wants to play with me. Like I made this friend with a little girl — her name is Amelia. I thought she was cute and I just really walked up to her and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bella,’ and I took her hand and was like, ‘Come on, let’s go play.’ And then all of a sudden we were playing together.”