Blind Cruising Experience

What kind of experience can a blind cruiser experience. I have a couple from my church who want to go on a cruise. The wife is totally blind and the husband is partially blind. The women has a seeing eye dog. What can they expect.

I would contact Princess. On our Diamond Princess Mexican Riviera cruise last New Years there was a blind couple onboard. Both of them had seeing eye dogs. It was wonderful watching how the cruiseline helped them by providing guides for them on all of the tours; they blocked off seats for them in the theatre and had waiters guide them to the seats. The cruiseline also provides an area onboard for the dogs to do their thing and a crewmember takes care of that, too. I was very impressed listening to them tell how Princess helps them and they cruise as often as possible. Of course, it was also a very humbling experience being with them - getting to see the world through their "eyes". Even though I have limited mobility due to MS I marveled at them. Good luck to your friends. I hope they go on a cruise and have a wonderful experience.

Royal Caribbean has decent service for blind cruisers. The Voyager class ships have audible indicators on the elevators so you know the direction of the elevator and the floor number when the door opens. You also can arrange for large-print menus and guided orientation tours but it's difficult getting this arranged. RCCL recommends calling in advance to have this set up, however those on the ship may or may not receive the information you provided, even if they say it's on the manifest.

I'm legally blind and have cruised on RCCL several times, so perhaps I can provide some insight. Let me know if you have any questions.

Lee

The Voyager class ships have audible indicators on the elevators so you know the direction of the elevator and the floor number when the door opens.

Carnival's Destiny-class and Spirit-class ships also have this feature, as do RCCL's Radiance-class ships.

My DH is totally blind. We travel without a dog. Our experience has been mostly good, however, there have been a few things to note:

On some ships (for sure the Destiny-class ones), the elevator voice can be turned off by the crew. When we were onboard, we found it off most of the time. Seems the crew members thought that waiting for the talking at each floor slowed the elevator down.

Some cruise lines--notably the now defunct Dolphin--are not really set up for blind travelers and will make it clear that while they won't stop you from booking, they don't really want you on board. You can get a sense of this by calling the cruise line and asking them about their accommodations in general. We found that the older the ship, the more reluctant they were to deal with blind passengers.

We were told that ADA laws do not apply onboard any ship registered to another country (most of them.) They MAY grant your accommodation requests, but are not required to. Public health concerns trump ADA. So, for instance, cruise lines are not required to accommodate a service animal in the cabin with you. The reason we were given is that the next week's passenger in that cabin might be allergic to that type of animal and have serious health complications as a result of them allowing your animal in the room with you. Another reason is that they don't want to violate the animal importation laws in any of the countries visited; just as we can't take fresh fruit off the ship onto most islands (or back onto the ship from the islands!), you can't just expect your dog to be immediately allowed either onto the ship or into a port you are visiting. We've found that there can usually be an agreement that works for everybody, but you have to ask, and you have to be cooperative.

Larger ships (90,000 tons and up) often have aft elevators. This has been helpful, because it breaks up the long stretches of look-alike (feel-alike) hallways. Note that RCCL's Radiance class ships do NOT have aft elevators. However, the mid-ship elevators are on only one side in these ships, which helps identify whether you are port or starboard. All things considered, DH likes the RCCL Radiance class and Carnival Spirit class ships best for staying oriented.

Little things: If you are a Braille reader, many ships have little Braille tags at the bottom of stairwell railings so you can tell what deck you're on. Some ships--can't remember which--have Braille numbers on stateroom doors. Unfortunately, those who do have numbers on the doors don't always place them where you would think to look! Cabin stewards will remove or let you rearrange items that present travel hazards on request. For us, that means moving the wastebasket to some part of the room where it can be easily located, but will not be tripped over. On some ships, the little coffee table in your room can be raised or lowered; we raise it up and move it to a corner so DH will not have bruised shins at the end of the vacation.

Space is extremely limited, especially in your cabin bathroom. You may want to talk to your cabin steward about making sure he knows which towel hook/rack holds YOUR towel so that when they are hung/folded for re-use you get the same one. Another alternative is to simply request new towels every day.

Braille menus are often available. Unfortunately, like most restaurants, they are not always accurate to the day. Sometimes the menu changes unexpectedly or even for a new route; it takes a while before the Braille menus catch up to the ship's assignments. Sometimes the new route is short-term and the line considers it not cost-effective to redo the menus, so they don't.

Cruise lines are very up-front about telling us that they expect disabled passengers to bring their own attendants. While most crew will gladly assist you, it is not part of their job, and they expect disabled passengers to refrain from abusing the privilege. For a blind person, that might mean that a crew member would assist you back to your cabin if you were lost, but that you could not call Guest Services to send up a guide every time you wanted to go somewhere. For this reason, we recommend that blind travelers bring at least a partially sighted companion so that they can fully benefit from their vacation.

Two summers ago, we organized a small group on an Alaskan cruise. We had a group of 8, with 5 totals and 3 sighted guides. The only limitation we had was that we could do a max of 3 activities at once because that's how many guides we had. We found that if a total wanted to do something, there was usually at least one guide who also wanted to do that thing, so there was no problem with activities.

Room service--we don't use it, but it might be an option for you. The little cards you fill out and hang on your door may require assistance. Other similar items that are not accessible on most ships: laundry service request cards, phone lists, the mini-newspaper that tells you what's happening on the ship that day, muster station signage in case of emergency, etc.

In the dining room, we have sometimes been assigned to tables that are very hard to get to because they are so far in and the spacing is so tight between tables. This can be rectified by speaking to the maitre d', but be careful not to get assigned to the "handicapped table" near the door. We once spoke to a quadriplegic who said he never got to meet very many people on his cruises because the cruise line always assigned him to the handicapped table, and his table mates were only ever other handicapped people. This was not necessarily bad because of the other people, but it tended to exacerbate the segregation thing.

We have sometimes also had difficulty with lounge chairs at the pool or seating in the theaters. DH does not always know if someone is taking my seat while I'm off getting drinks, etc. Conversely, it's not like I can go early and get a seat and wave at him when he finally gets to the theater. If I get up to escort him, other passengers sometimes take both our seats by the time I get back. You can't really start a scene in a public place, so we just look for other seats. Because DH doesn't need the best view, but I like a really good view, we've found that it's easier to get seating near the front in the side sections or in the balcony. As a general rule, don't sit front and center unless you want to be IN the show.

Shore excursions. Sign up for anything you think you can handle. The ship will not provide guides, and the excursion operator is not required to, but they won't stop you from going if you buy a ticket. We've climbed Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica, gone river tubing in Jamaica, hiked down a mountainside in Costa Rica, done a jungle hike and snorkel (DH only; I don't swim) in Acapulco, transferred to the Atlantis submarine in the waters off Cozumel, ridden the train at Skagway, done the eagle float trip at Haines, and other activities too numerous to mention. Some of the tour operators look a little worried when they see that DH is blind, but they have always been accommodating; then they inevitably realize it is I who need the help:-)

Even the art auctions were mildly interesting to DH. He didn't care about the art, but listening to the auction was fascinating for him.

Last thing: We no longer bother to mention that DH is blind when we are booking for just the two of us. Many cruise lines say that it is required and our experience is that this leads to the Special Needs department, who will make all kinds of assumptions about what we need and how to give it to us. This is up to you, but we've found that we have been able to deal adequately with each situation on a case-by-case basis. We prefer the feeling of normalcy you get when you are not singled out in every venue as the "blind guy and his wife" who need special accommodations.

Now, we have traveled all 50 states, most of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, so our experience may not be the same as yours. We know what we can handle and are pretty good at making on-the-spot adjustments. If you don't feel comfortable doing that yet, Special Needs may be the way to go. They can do things like arrange reserved seating for you in shows, get you a specific cabin assignment, or set up a special galley tour, so it's not all about bad assumptions. In fact, on our first cruise, they assigned a crew member to our party for the muster and in case of emergency. His job was to personally check our cabin and escort us to our lifeboat if necessary. Imagine the possible headlines: Cruise ship lost at sea, including the blind guy and his wife. Like we were that important--right.

Well, that's a smattering for you. We've been on 11 cruises so far, and are gearing up for 12 & 13. Once you have done one, you'll keep coming back. Cruises are great for blind people, in general because it's ultimately a closed environment. Good luck.