Martinwpc63

This is how we feel as my wife can walk short distances and in an emergency I am fit enough to help her but we can only book P&O cruises that have an evac chair available. Yet we are going on a Royal Caribbean cruise in 2 weeks with the scooter and they had no mention of evac chairs even though I asked. So just to be sure I requested pier assistance so it is on our booking.

My wife uses a scooter to get about and we take that or a wheel chair on cruises depending on if an accessible cabin is available or not. P&O seem to have interpreted the evac chair situation much more strictly than Royal Caribbean. We are soon to go on Anthem of the seas in a standard balcony room and taking her scooter. Royal did not see a problem with this and when I asked about an evac chair they did not seem to think it was relevant so I booked pier assistance so it was on our booking that she is taking a scooter. When we phoned P&O to book a couple of cruises once I mentioned the scooter or wheelchair the first thing the P&so agent did was a search for evac chairs and there was lots of cruises that there was none left. So that became our criteria for looking. We managed to book Arvia for September and Iona for March2025 with evac chair mentioned on the bookings in accessible cabins. P&O do not allow scooters in standard cabins even though hers is narrower than her wheelchair. P&O will not tell you how many evac chairs they have available for each of their vessels there seems no way of finding this information out. It does not mater if you can do handstands backflips and run a mile if you take a wheelchair or scooter you must have an evac chair assigned to you. This seems to be a back door way in P&Os interpretation of the rules to cut down on the amount of guests they have with walking difficulties as it can not be a maritime law if other cruise lines are not enforcing it to the P&O extent