Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costumes builds dream attire for cosplayers with disabilities

Walkin’ and Rollin’ Costumes. // Photo by Chris Ortiz

Planet Comicon 2023 hosted a full spectrum of guests and vendors, including Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costumes. Founded by Lon Davis, along with his son Reece, the company focuses on creating costumes for folks with disabilities. Lon built their first costume from a Dell computer box to portray Wall-E when Reece was 3 years old.

“He always told me that the wheelchair is a part of him, so I can’t just get a Halloween costume for him. I have to get one for his wheelchair as well,” says Lon.

Early costumes were shared on social media and began to gain notice. People started sending in requests to have costumes built for their children. It was a large and daunting task that Lon didn’t think could be done. That is until Reece turned 10.

“As he got older and we started building more elaborate costumes, we got requests from people we didn’t know,” Lon says. “At first, we didn’t think that we could do anything like this, and when my son turned 10, he said, ‘I want to start building them for other kids.’”

The organization has been around since 2015 and has built 138 individual costumes for children. The most recent costume was a Cinderella Carriage piece and was given away at Planet Comicon this year to a little girl named Haylee. The company plans to have over 150 costumes completed by Halloween 2023. Davis spends all of his free time during the nights and weekends on these projects. Each costume takes about three months to complete

Anyone can apply on the organization’s website for a custom-built costume for their child, but there is a waiting list. Davis says that they have far exceeded the number of requests they are able to handle at one time. There are volunteers all over the country who help out. 

“We’re doing a workshop May 6-7 where anyone can come to Hammerspace Community Workshop and help build costumes. We are going to build five costumes that weekend. We’ll have some volunteers, some expert builders who have made multiple costumes for us in the past to kind of help lead the teams. We’ll have duplicates of the child’s wheelchairs there, and all the supplies, sketches, and measurements,” Lon says.

For more info on events and volunteering with Walkin’ & Rollin,’ visit their website.