Good & Bad by ship

On a given ship, what have you found that was good or bad?

Good public restrooms for wheelchair users are located:

Deck 6 between Schooner bar & Spotlight Kounge.

Deck 9 in front of Windjammer Cafe

The Westerdam has tenders that work for people with scooters and wheelchairs.

DCL has alot of H/C cabins that allow 3 or more people. And you don't have to bump up to a junior suite.

Carnival Spirit has no HC accessible public restrooms. A pain to constantly have to go back to the cabin to use the restroom. NCL Jewel and Dawn had wonderful HC public restrooms.

On a given ship, what have you found that was good or bad?

Just off the Carnival Spirit. I found several areas of non-friendliness for ADA cruisers.

Transitions from inside to outside decks are very high and my scooter couldn't navigate them...kept getting high centered. No automatic door openers on the rooms so very difficult to go in and out if you're alone.

We had an accessible balcony cabin. The door (not sliding doors like RCCL) was in the corner of the room with wall of cabinets on one side and the bathroom wall on the back. Very little room to negotiate the ramp to the balcony; which, by the way, sloped about 5 inches high in 1 1/2 feet of space. I had trouble just walking up it to get out there; it would be very difficult for someone in a wheelchair.

Also, on my 3 prior cruises we were able to take scooters on tenders. When we got to Cabo San Lucas I could see why we weren't allowed to on Carnival. They used water taxis (not "life boats" like RCCL) so there literally was no room for them. There was very little room for the fold up wheelchairs.

I've loved my 3 RCCL ships; they're all very accessible (including the public rest rooms). In my opinion, I think Carnival could make a better effort. This is not to say it was a bad experience but it could have been more comfortable in some areas.

The year my I cruised with my mother (who has mobility issues), Princess staff were very helpful to her and to me.

Some of the doors were a bit dicey to get through, though.:)

• Access to outside decks - Hal Oosterdam has automatic door and ramps. Most other cruiselines have very heavy doors and can not be managed by yourself.
  
• Biggest/widest Promenade Decks for wheelchairs and walkers - Princess-Sapphire/Diamond/Golden.
  
• Best Handicapped Cabins - Princess - Sapphire/Diamond/Golden HAL & Carnival have nice one's too but you have to be careful with them-some cabins they call HC are actually too small.
  
• Public restrooms are "iffy" on most ships when it comes to HC. The restroom on deck 7 near the Princess Theatre has a nice one.
  
• Princess ships are very condusive for dining in wheelchair in all of their restaurants and the staff is very helpful.
  
• Princess theatre's are the worst for HC seating for wheelchairs. They have the least space and the fewest chairs unless you can walk a few steps.
  
• HAL/Celebrity and Carnival are the best for seating in the theatres for wheelchairs/walkers.
  
• The best cruiseline for Service Dogs is Princess and Carnival each for different reasons.
  

• Also, the best for embarkation and disembarkation is Princess/Celebrity and HAL.
  

Mind you, I've only talked about the mass-market lines. There are some more expensive cruiseslines that also have accommodations for wheelchairs, etc.

Oceania's new Marina has terribly inaccessible gangways (see my review from May 2011). Unless they have improved matters since then wheelchairs have to be manually carried up and down numerous steps by crew members. So sad as it was otherwise a perfect ship.

The public restrooms on the S Class ships that have push buttons to open the main door, a push button to open and lock the stall door. The stalls themselves are huge.

Access to open decks on S Class ships are via automatic doors with smooth door jams.

7 of us were UNABLE TO DISEMBARK AT ANY OF the 4 ports booked on a Carnival Legend cruise last summer since the ramps were too narrow for my wide wheelchair and their larger scooters or jazzy chairs!

7 of us were UNABLE TO DISEMBARK AT ANY OF the 4 ports booked on a Carnival Legend cruise last summer since the ramps were too narrow for my wide wheelchair and their larger scooters or jazzy chairs!

Was the problem ship related or port related?

If port, what ports?

We just got off NCL Gem and had a HC inside cabin. It was very large and had everything you could possibly need. They had many HC restrooms on the ship.

I love, love the Radiance Class ship from Royal Carribean. I love the auto doors into the rooms when you insert your room key. Many accessible restrooms throughout the ship with auto doors. Pool lifts into the swimming pools and one spa. I have never had a problem on any RCCL ship.

Vision of the Seas JS Portside by elevators..loud cabin due to noise from above. Sounded like bowling balls being dropped. Found it to be the bathroom doors on deck above slamming from the wind from the automatic doors opening and closing..but great cabin location. Huge room and full glass doors, glass walls -the entire width of the cabin. Huge balcony. Horrible sleeper sofa, very uncomfortable. BUT would book again due to location and balcony.

Staff in the Wj would see us coming and start finding a table before we hit the door.

Gem and Pearl, small wheelchair fit thru the doors of the Courtyard VIlla. Bedroom bed was not accessible from the sides.( we did not need that). Gem had an extra door after the 14th floor elevator that needed to be opened with the key card, staff must have a bell or something that alerts them to the arrival on the floor, they were always there to let us in.. Staff very helpful. Only one elevator to main dining room for wheelchairs to enter and you have to enter from a side entrance..we always were on the wrong one..oops. Loved the complete promenade. In the wind they shut off the auto doors, so the heavy doors to get back in could be a problem.

Celebrity, SUMMIT INFINITY- ALL GOOD. We never encountered one problem. They had the MDR table assignment where we could get in and out easy and still had very nice tables in good locations. 2B balcony, small but very well designed for our needs. C1 aft- Huge balcony. Did have to dodge the dreded utility carts in the hallways, but staff always watched for us and we never had to ask for one to be moved to let us by. It's like they have radar. Favorite cabin 7139, then the afts 8176,7212.

My wheelchair was wide and I could not get off at any of the

4 ports on our Carnival Legend cruise. I was basically stuck on the

ship. The guest relations told me that was just too bad.

Husband uses a power chair when we cruise. RCL Enchantment is great. Lots of accessible rest rooms. I wish they would have some accessible seating in the Windjammer, designated for people in chairs or scooters.

Carnival Triumph was great with my husband. we had no issues on that cruise. They even helped him get off ship on gangways in his chair due to tide.

NCL Gem was great. He got around well & in the back dining room we would go in on lower level & seated pretty much right away. The HC room was spacious with a very large balcony that he could enjoy.

Have really not had alot of issuses with him when we have cruised., Small things. BTW, he is a big guy & his chair is large, weighs bout 280 lbs.

Hi Umbarger, thanks for the good marks RE: Dawn. We are booked on the NCL Dawn for a New England Canada Cruise, any other info you can share about your experiences? We want to take my wife's Go Go scooter, naver sailed NCL before!

Have sailed all Disney ships in fleet but have never stayed in an accessable cabin. Beds in cabins on Fantasy and Dream high enough that you can store folding wheelchair underneath bed in certain cabins. This is very useful if you use a scooter on ship but cannot take your scooter ashore because of tender or other issues. :D Very hard to find shore excursions offered by Disney that allow scooters or wheelchairs.:( Disney has reputation for really taking care of special needs guests both on land and sea. :D Some doors going outside on Wonder and Magic have ramps a little too steep for scooters with small wheels but you can find at least one wheelchair-friendly door/ramp that will get you outside to each deck. Special note for Dream and Fantasy: Deck 13 forward appears at first glance to be inaccessable, but there is one elevator in every elevator bank that will get you to deck 13

Good public restrooms for wheelchair users are located:

Deck 6 between Schooner bar & Spotlight Kounge.

Deck 9 in front of Windjammer Cafe

Regarding the Public Wheelchair washroom on deck 6 between the Schooner Bar & the Spotlight Lounge.

This past April when I was on the Enchantment this washroom had no grab bars. There was a towel bar to the left of the toilet which was in no way a grab bar. I contacted Guest Services and advised them of this inconsistency with this washroom. Before disembarking , I was contacted by the Chief Maintainance Engineer who advised that the Miami office had been contacted and that the proper grab bars were being ordered for installment.

Lack of grab bars in this washroom was a real safety hazard as there was 36 hours that the ship experience significant rocking due to 18-22 foot waves. Hope this has been corrected.

Other than this issue, as a mobility scooter users I found the Enchantment of Seas very accessible

We have had some issues with the early Princess Grand class ships, particularly the Grand, Golden and Star that have only 2 elevators that go to the MDR and have some sudden deck elevation changes that come up and surprise you. The rest of Princess ships have been very good. Our h/c cabin on the Oosterdam was a disgrace, I see that HAL is sending the ship to Australia.

We have Noordam & Maasdam booked for the first time.

Any info would be great.

Thanks

A few months ago we sailed on Jewel of the Seas, and we found some problems trying to navigate around the ship with my husband in a manual wheelchair. For one thing, the stateroom attendant's cart in the hallways was a major obstacle. Sometimes the attendant was nearby and he'd move the cart, but sometimes he wasn't anywhere to be found. On those occasions, either I moved his cart myself, or a nearby helpful passenger did it for me. It wasn't really the cart itself that was the problem; it was the rack that holds clean drinking glasses that was on a shelf of the cart -- that rack was too wide for my husband's wheelchair to be able to pass by.

We also found it impossible for my husband's chair to pass through the casino -- the stools in front of the slot machines stick out into the aisle too far -- and the aisle in the shopping area is also too narrow when there are more than a few shoppers looking at the display cases. Problem is, going through either the casino or the shopping area was the only way to go from one end of the ship to the other on those decks, without going outside. So we ended up going outside every time we wanted to go from the dining room to the theater. Not that much fun when it's raining, or windy.

We'd been on Freedom of the Seas twice before we went on Jewel, and we didn't have these problems on Freedom -- so we're sailing on Freedom again in October!

My wheelchair was wide and I could not get off at any of the

4 ports on our Carnival Legend cruise. I was basically stuck on the

ship. The guest relations told me that was just too bad.

Inquiring minds want to know How wide is your chair? what were the 4 ports?