Good & Bad by ship

[meatloafsfan]

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

 

My mother found the bed on the Disney Dream to be too high for her to transfer from her chair to the bed. She ended up using the fold out couch. The problem with that is it left my Dad and I the queen bed which does not separate.

[searoses]

on the ncl dawn last week to bermuda. i can walk for a couple of minutes if necessary, this made it much easier getting on and off the ship. i rented a gogo scooter and was so thrilled at the independence i had. made it

to parts of the ship i haven't been to in years. will try to remember details.

had hc cabin on deck 8. a cluster of hc cabins there. booked a porthole/obstructed view only 2 weeks before sailing. the porthole turned out to be a pic window...at least 40 in sq. great views of the port and fort.room was barely lg enough for scooter. had to back it up to leave. it

sat in front of the vanity so we were not able to use that area.did not have automatic door. i got the hang of it but there is some door contact much of the time. you could tell i wasn't the first and won't be the last! lol! only a few doors from blue lagoon and moderno. would book that cabin again.

got around most places quite easily. tricky in the stores...the ship is not set up for scooters. every venue we went to seemed surprised that we needed to park it and were flustered.eventually i just left it out of the way. the heavy doors to the decks are also w/o hc buttons. other people were very helpful.

elevators.....people either very helpful or totally ignored me and the scooter...especially teen boys an d men. found the same thing in the buffett line. i'm very patient and not shy so made out fine.

getting off the ship was very tricky. crew very good at driving it up and down. i would let them have at it if you can. they are capable of helping anyone...

theatre has row of seats as you enter either side marked with signs for wc users. space to park the scooter.

any other questions feel free to ask...

[cjm66]

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.

 

Could you be more specific about your Oosterdam experience? We have not booked a HC cabin but any tips or advice about the ship and accessability issues would be useful since she is on her way down here.

 

Thanks Colleen

[dgraham]

We have found Celebrity, especially the S class ships to be excellent for wheelchair users

 

I am a paraplegic and my wife and I are regular cruisers with Celebrity. Last year we sailed on the Celebrity Equinox on their Ultimate Caribbean itinerary, in Aqua class.

We have found Celebrity to be very accessible for wheelchairs, with a few problems here and there, but there have been major improvements with the Solstice class. One of these is the gently tapered ends of the ramps to the dock in the ports. It used to be that the ramps always seemed to have a sharp drop off at the ends, the ends were tapered, but very steeply, so that one was always concerned about slipping off the wheelchair seat, I usually wear a wheelchair belt to forestall this possibility.

 

Another major improvement is the ease now of going from the interior unto the promenade and pool decks. The double automatic doors open quickly and the ramps over the doorsills are very gentle and now cause no problems, which is nice for a change. And these double doors are all over the ship now, rather than in just a few selected areas. In fact when we were traveling from one end of the ship to the other, we found it was fastest and easiest to go through the doors and use the outside promenade on deck 5.

 

We also appreciated that Celebrity is using more hard surfaces on their floors in the public areas. In fact another relatively carpetless way to go from one end of the ship to the other is to use deck 4.

 

As to the cabins, Celebrity’s accessible cabins are always well designed, but we especially appreciated the addition of a gentle permanent ramp to the balcony.