Scooter and regular cabin doors

[dcherry]

Can anyone comment on scooters fitting through non-handicap cabin doors? Is this something that has to be carefully looked at when choosing a scooter?

 

[Bloodgem]

Hi, to get the best answer it would help if you can tell us the line and ship.

[dcherry]

Oh, was just asking in general. I cruise all different ships, mostly Carnival and RC

 

[mets123]

It could be doable. Two things to consider. The scooter needs to be stored in the room. You might not have enough room to maneuver in a standard room. And two, can the person walk a few steps. Though the door may be wide enough for the scooter, it may not be wide enough for the person to ride it in. Their butt would be hanging out.

[Essiesmom]

You also have to consider how wide the corridor is.  People have discovered they had to be able to line the scooter up to go straight into the cabin, and the corridor was not wide enough to allow this.  EM

[jlp20]

Go outside of your front door, now open the door 90 degrees. The door itself blocks a small section, same on the ship. Say the door opening is 22", because of the door, the actual clearance is only 20.5" 

[cruise_mojo]

bingo! 

 

the door obscures part of the opening so you really have to have a narrow scooter and only the lightest duty scooters will fit thru the standard 22 inch door

 

vacations to go has an excellent deck plan tool and once you are in their individual ship listing you can click on their handicap access links for the ships, there is usually two links, one will be for ameneties and one will be a listing of specific cabins in a chart and this chart will have both the entryway door width and bathroom door width for each cabin on a specific ship and these charts are usually correct

 

where they err is on some Carnival ships! on some carnival ships, they have ambulatory accessible cabins that currently have wide doors but are listed as narrow and we are being told that these cabins over time are going to have their wide doorways reduced to the narrow width!!!! for what stupid reason we don't know unless its to discourage people with scooters from travelling?

 

by the way IM not endorsing VTG as a travel website as we have never booked with them, but their ship\deckplan tool is the FASTEST thing since sliced cheese!   you can navigate around in there 10X quicker than the stupid carnival webpage if you are trying to get cabin info, deckplan layouts etc

 

When called Carnival says on the Pride class ships these aft accessible cabins lack turn around space but having stayed in them twice I can tell you that you can generally turn around a scooter in them. They also told me last night that over time they are going to do those conversions so I guess we'll have our scooter sitting in the hall charging if they do next march! 

 

Carnival's been ripping handicap people off for years by trying to sell cabins on the cheap and not doing proper conversions to them and after being sued so many times It seems they are just going to go in reverse! 

 

ON Royal EVERY ACCESSIBLE ROOM has wide entry doors and wide bathroom doors with ramps! ON EVERY SHIP! the number of rooms varies but they don't play this stupid game of three different types of accessible room bull crap! where you sell someone a room and they get there and find bunk beds or a kind bed against a wall or a 8 inch lip to the balcony or a step up into the bathroom and someone is wheelchair bound🤬

[searoses]

I went to visit an interior cabin where the hallway was not wide enough to turn into the cabin tho it theoretically should have fit..if you know you can fit the scooter in your cabin and dont need an hc be sure you pick a cabin in the same hallway as an hc so the hallway will be wide enough...

[jlp20]

4 hours ago, searoses said:

I went to visit an interior cabin where the hallway was not wide enough to turn into the cabin tho it theoretically should have fit..if you know you can fit the scooter in your cabin and dont need an hc be sure you pick a cabin in the same hallway as an hc so the hallway will be wide enough...

This is why a true accessible cabin is located at corridor intersections or by elevator areas so scooters can have a straight shot at the door.

[cruise_mojo]

hey if ifs and buts were candy and nuts....

 

we had a HC suite on rhapsody but the fire door opened down the hallway so we had to drive past the door ( rhapsody has narrow hallways too )  and back the thing in but we got a big scooter anyway and it might take a back up and pull up to turn the wheels again, no biggie but it took a bit to get used to it 

 

the steward gave us a door stop to help and it was great that he did, we could prop the door open with it while we got in each time

[Bloodgem]

4 hours ago, cruise_mojo said:

the steward gave us a door stop to help and it was great that he did, we could prop the door open with it while we got in each time

We asked for a door stop when we sailed on Navigator in September 2018, in a HC cabin, and were told 'no' on the grounds of 'health and safety'. It was a supervisor that said no and I'm not sure if this was a one off or if it is a new rule on all RCI ships.

[cruise_mojo]

maybe they thought you british types don't know how to use a door stop!?!😉

 

heck, just another thing to remember to sneak aboard now in the future! pretty sure it will fit into that pouch on the back of the scooter chair!    the old lady had her blinged out accessory package with a carrier pouch on the arm of her scooter and beer coolie that hung off the steering tiller and the front basket too 

 

after  about day two she got tired of the  side pouch catching on everything as she rode around and had me take it off and we did narrow down the width of the arms, I had it widened out a bit 

 

on our B2B cruise on Elation we had a superwide doorway that was supposed to be an automatic door but it wasn't working, the Rhapsody door was a bit narrower and like I said the width of the hallway was not too wide and with the fire door open into the hallway it was even narrower so we could not pull out or the cabin and turn left to go to the elevator lobby, we had to pull out to the right and straighten up and back back about 12 feet and turn into the lobby, we were up front at the 4 elevators we had a junior suite up high near where the suites were all named and near the Royal Suite 

 

rhapsody is neato ship! 

 

our next cruise is on the Harmony and we'll take a scooter with us on that one too

[Bloodgem]

13 hours ago, cruise_mojo said:

maybe they thought you british types don't know how to use a door stop!?!😉

 

on our B2B cruise on Elation we had a superwide doorway that was supposed to be an automatic door but it wasn't working

LoL. 😂  We are still trying to figure out how a door stop can be a trip hazard, that's what we were told, when we are pushing a manual wheelchair through a door. The door is more likely to hit the chair when I get my line wrong and knock the stop out. 

 

We were on the Anthem in 2015 and had a couple of issues with the automatic doors. On the Anthem the cabin steward can override the doors so that they can be left open whilst the cabin is clean. Our cabin steward forgot to reset the door and we had to wait 15 minutes for security to get the master key and reset the door. 

My disable son was lying naked on the floor when a room steward knocked and before I could answer the door he let himself in, he was delivering the chocolate coated strawberries. Not only did he see my son but several other passengers did as they were walking pass the cabin. My son has a mental age of an 18 month old, so has no concept of what happened but the rest of the family still laugh about it.

[cruise_mojo]

hah! not too funny it seems

 

I tried to leave the door propped open for my wife a couple times on this last cruise when I knew she was going to be a few minutes later in coming out. I'd take the walker ( rollater ) and go down to the show lounge or wherever we were going and have the doorstop holding the door open and just leave. 

 

When she'd catch up with me a few minutes later she'd tell me that a couple passengers would have stopped by to see if she needed assistance or maybe the room steward might have stopped likewise or  closed the door thinking we'd accidentally left it open. 

 

we all just travel thru life wondering how the other half lives until we actually have to LIVE IT!    

 

As we have transitioned from canes, to walkers and back and forth as my wife has had knee replacements, surgeries etc and I have have back prolems, injections and the like. We've had to make adjustments. In the last three years I'd ususally get a back injection before a cruise or try and time it out to get one or two cruises on one injection and my wife would have a series of injections in her hips and ankle and this is AFTER her knee replacements! Finally we just gave up and started taking a walker for her all the time and now a scooter and IM taking a walker too now. 

  

I have wandered into and out of threads here for some time and seen some strange comments about the different types of rooms and also a kind of hard stance by some people taken on who should or shouldn't book accessible rooms. Some of this confusion and these stances are caused by the different cruise lines and older ships that don't have all their cabins up to a consistent code as far as the type of cabin and its accessibility. Even though we are big time Carnival cruisers I'd have to say that their older ships are the most sketchy  on accessible cabins and looking today at what they are doing to their ambulatory accessible cabins makes NO SENSE AT ALL! On ships like the Pride and Sunshine  you have Cabins with wide doors and bathroom doors and no threshold that you can get a wheelchair or  scooter in but there is little turnaround space or you can only acess one side of the bed easily for the handicapped person. It may be also that the non accessible person may not be able to easily get into be otherwise  too. So carnivals answer to this is to make this cabin LESS accessible!!! 

 

so these ships will only have two or  three truly fully accessible cabins in the future LITERALLY DRIVING US AWAY IT SEEMS😦

 

this for someone closing in on diamond on carnival, we're platinum on royal and now closing in on emerald

[fair-winds39]

The Carnival website says the following under their "Guests with Disabilities" section, "In order to purchase a standard stateroom, devices must be able to fit in its 22" wide entry doorway, and when stored, must allow for safe exit from the stateroom".

 

We came off of our 6th Carnival Pride cruise in March. I use a Pride GoGo Elite Traveler Plus mobility scooter. I started taking my scooter in 2016. For now, I don't need an accessible cabin; I can get around in the cabin with my cane. We book a standard/extended balcony cabin on the Main deck or Upper deck Aft. I have no problems entering or leaving the cabin, The armrests are removed to make it a little easier to enter and exit. We move the table that sits in front of the sofa closer to the bed and it allows me to either pull in and park the scooter in front of sofa, facing the bed, or pull in, and angle scooter toward foot of bed, turn around with good maneuvering and face outward in front of sofa with no problems. I now have it down to a science. Also, my scooter is a three-wheeled model.

 

We always choose the same cabin, or a cabin with no inside cabins across from us. I have no issue with turning in since I'm not concerned about hitting any doorway across from us. The GoGo scooter fits all the dimensions required. I would advise reviewing the deck layouts prior to booking.

[rucruisn2]

We are cruising on Oceania Riviera.  I called the cruise line and was told a standard balcony cabin door was 35 inches. and the scooter would easily fit in the cabin and around the bed.  Call you cruise line and check.