Questions about tendering process for disabled???

If we have to get to a port destination by tender (is this the correct term???)...is it easy for people in wheel chairs to use???

Easy might not be the right word but there are plenty of staff there to give assistance.

They will make every effort to assist a disabled person on the tenders. My father travels on a motorized scooter and used the tenders once on our recent trip. He is able to get off the scooter so they assisted him to walk onto the tender and then loaded the scooter. I'm sure if someone is confined to the chair, they will load the passenger and the chair together.

One word of warning tho so you won't be disappointed if this happens. We had some VERY rough seas on our trip. So rough in fact that at Belize, all water excursions were cancelled. Loading the tenders was very difficult and they were announcing that handicapped individuals should not attempt to tender due to the high risk of injury. I don't know if they would actually have denied someone who insisted on doing it, but one look at that pitching, bucking, rocking tender that was slamming against the side of the cruise shiip was enough for my dad to say, "no way". He's an easy going guy who wasn't upset to have to stay on board that day, but someone who had their heart set on going ashore would have been very disappointed.

They do the very best they can to accomodate those that need assistance but they cannot control the weather.

What cruise line?

What ship?

What port?

Manual chair or power chair?

Can you stand or walk at all?

It makes all the difference in the world.

Currently Princess will not take you on a tender at all apparently if you can't walk or stand onto the tender, and will not let you ride in your wheelchair in the tender, so if you are on a Princess cruise, forget going ashore at any tendered ports. HAL has a tender lift on most of their ships, but will be very restrictive about when you can use it (after everyone else is off) and it can only accommodate manual chairs of 18" or less seat width. The last I heard, RCCL and Celebrity are still assisting, but again, it depends on the port as for some they don't use the ship's tenders and must use local vendors for tendering. Some will not allow wheelchairs.

Virtually all cruise lines have something in their contract or conditions that states that they can deny anyone use of the tender if the captain (or in reality the safety officer) determines that the conditions are unsafe, and this is mostly applied to wheelchair users or others with mobility impairment. They can deny you getting on/off the tender, although once you are ashore they have a hard time refusing to take you back.

Since she poste on the NCL forum it's safe to say it is an NCL ship and they have been really good abot assisting people with disabilities. I have seen them help and elderly lady confined to a wheel chair onto a tender. They just picked her up wheelcair and all and then secrely seated her on the tender.

What cruise line?

 

What ship?

 

What port?

 

Manual chair or power chair?

 

Can you stand or walk at all?

 

It makes all the difference in the world.

 

Currently Princess will not take you on a tender at all apparently if you can't walk or stand onto the tender, and will not let you ride in your wheelchair in the tender, so if you are on a Princess cruise, forget going ashore at any tendered ports. HAL has a tender lift on most of their ships, but will be very restrictive about when you can use it (after everyone else is off) and it can only accommodate manual chairs of 18" or less seat width. The last I heard, RCCL and Celebrity are still assisting, but again, it depends on the port as for some they don't use the ship's tenders and must use local vendors for tendering. Some will not allow wheelchairs.

 

Virtually all cruise lines have something in their contract or conditions that states that they can deny anyone use of the tender if the captain (or in reality the safety officer) determines that the conditions are unsafe, and this is mostly applied to wheelchair users or others with mobility impairment. They can deny you getting on/off the tender, although once you are ashore they have a hard time refusing to take you back.

Splinter

Do you know when that started??? We were on Grand Princess last year and had not problem with me and my wheelchair being transfered. The only place I have not been able to get off is on Carnival. Of course we have been lucky and not had any bad weather other than when we went to Grand Caymen a few years ago and did not get off.

Sandi

Apparently Princess changed their policy only in February of this year:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=722097

Tender transfer is much improved, but I would recommend taking a manual wheelchair ashore if you can. It makes the transfer a lot less scarier, plus you have a lot more flexibility on shore (assuming you have an AB companion) to tackle curbs and obstacles and get to that bar.

On our March 19th HAL Zaandam Hawaii cruise they stated you had to be able to walk down the stairs with assistance (you had to have your own assistant) and climb on the tender and your chair had to be foldable manual. Luckily my little guy is little so I carried him and they did not hassel me to much and my husband carried the chair after folding it up.

I think it depends on the CREW on each ship and each cruise line not just a cruise lines "official" policy.

Why didn't they let you use the HAL wheelchair tender lift?

We were just recently banned from the tender because of a wheelchair on our last Celebrity cruise. The issue was not getting on the tender but getting off the tender at the dock. Due to tides, it was about 3 foot drop from the dock to the tender. AB were able to get off with steps that fit from the dock to the tender. The person who had the final call to ban tendering was the safety officer.

We also had to tender in three other ports. I must say that the Celebrity tender crew was fantastic on getting my husband off the ship. In most cases it was a carry off by 4 crew members. Also they carried him down the steps to get to the tender. He is very light which probably also made a different.

They did allow people to ride on their wheelchairs on the tender. The problems we had was getting people to move from the open door area since that is where they wanted to load the wheelchairs last for the tender ride.

By the way, I did tip these guys since I felt they went above and beyond to make sure he could enjoy the ports.

I asked the question of someone that is on the Crown Princess right now about wheelchairs and tendering. He said there is nothing in the patters. He also said there are lots of wheelchairs on this cruise and when they get to a tender port he will report back to me.

We have been on the Grand, Royal Caribbean, and Carnival.

Grand Princess did not let my companion and I off with scooters. There was nothing to do at that time on the ship while in port, no games, nothing. The ship seemed empty except for the disabled passengers. No one told us on Travelocity that this could be a problem 3 years ago. It was a disabled person's nightmare, cruise to handicap hell.

Royal Caribbean was great, even told some of a company in Jamaica told would arrange transportation into town and around in an air conditioned van with a lift. Their tenders are very easy to use also.

Carnival is hard to use their tenders, they have stairs to the landing to take the small boat into town.

Hope that helps.

Meirah

Houston

We are not surprised to learn that they would not let scooters be taken on a tender; many cruise lines are doing that now because even though they may be able to take it off the ship, the shore docking facilities sometimes prevent unloading it if the tides are not right. We always take a manual foldup wheelchair for going ashore whether berthed or tendering, because we have found that many places where you may be able to take the scooter off the ship, the streets, sidewalks and lack of sloped sidewalks make scooters ashore next to useless. And a manual wheelchair can always be loaded in the trunk of a cab or the luggage compartment of a bus.:)

My DH is 6'4 and in a wheelchair and cannot do stairs. There's no way crew could carry him nor would I want them to (except in an emergency). We usually look at tender ports as a day when the ship is ours alone :) :)

We use a transport chair for travel off the ship unless an ADA chair lift is provided for a shore excursion vehicle. If there is one wooohooo he uses our rented power chair and I get to fully enjoy the excursion w/o having to push him around. If the port has things to do nearby then he just powers along and I try and keep up lol

IMO his safety and that of the crew is much more important than getting off at one port.

Cross-posted from the NCL forums:

We just returned from a 3 week European vacation that included a 12 day Eastern Mediterranean cruise on the Jade. It was a wonderful trip, but I will say that the Jade specifically and NCL in general did not live up to my expectations. Most of my issues were pretty minor – service was hit-and-miss, they could never figure out how to charge us the proper amounts in the speciality restaurants, the cabin stewards were really only “turn-down” stewards, they never really cleaned anything, etc. But my biggest issue was a safety issue, and they totally dropped the ball on that one.

Two important factors in the story – I use a scooter to get around as I cannot walk or walk stairs, and our Greece port was changed from Athens to Nafplio due to a one day strike. Nafplio is a tender port for NCL.

Docking was to be at 11:00, and everyone not on excursions (like us) picked up numbers to help determine their disembarking order. We docked (actually set anchor) early and people started leaving the boat at 10:00, and our number was called around 10:20, so we made our way down to deck 4. What we found there bordered on pandemonium, in large part due to the incompetence of the Jade crew in charge of the process.

At the time I got there, there were 3 other people requiring assistance to get on the tenders. Those that could walk stairs – the other 3 – and myself that cannot, were quite loudly separated into groups, and the “walkers” taken to the starboard side of the boat where they were escorted down the 15 or so stairs and into the tenders. We waited.

At about 11:00, we asked if we were going to be able to get off the boat anytime soon, and were told that we were now going to have to wait for the excursions and it would be an hour wait. We mentioned we had been there over a half hour already, and before you know it, I was transferred into a wheelchair and CARRIED, by 4 medium sized security personnel, down the 15 stairs on the port side of the ship and into a tender. It was by far the most terrifying experience of my life, and judging by the straining and grunting, no fun for them either. I weigh about 200 lbs, so with the wheelchair they are carrying about 220 lbs awkwardly down a narrow flight of stairs in a rocking ocean.

The great part is that I got to spend the entire day in Nafplio dreading the return to the boat – being carried up the stairs was going to be a treat! Surprise, surprise, when we come back to the boat, I am brought to the starboard side, where I can ride up on the same type of a device that I have installed at my home, a chair lift. Quick transfer on, 30 seconds up, and transfer off, and we are done. Imagine my surprise that the boat had one of those, and moreso, my consternation at not getting to use it on the way down. I was astounded and quite upset.

I did what we are told to do – talk to the front desk. First, we had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks to take the edge off, and then around 10:00 we made our way down there to talk to someone. We told the story, with most of the emphasis on the fact that I felt that I had been put in danger by bad decisions when it was totally unnecessary, and the front desk staff dutifully took notes. At the end there was the awkward silence until I finally said that I would appreciate someone contacting me to talk to me about it – that was not offered until I asked.

The next day we had a great day in Turkey – docked thank goodness – and when we returned to the ship there was a bottle of sparkling wine and some chocolate strawberries in the room, with a note that said “Compliments of the Front Desk”.

Next day is a sea day and then two days in Egypt. Upon returning from Alexandria, I decided to find out if anyone was actually going to talk to me, so I approached the front desk. Going over the story again, I was finally asked if I wanted to speak to a supervisor, which I kind of thought was the original point, and after 20 minutes or so, the Front Desk manager approached me. We went to her office and she had me retell the story again, and then asked if we had received the wine and strawberries. I have to tell you, it was extremely difficult to keep my cool!

I asked them why they had put me in that danger when they had a perfectly good and safe stair lift and I was told the priority at that point was the pre-booked tour passengers and they were trying to get me off however they could. Ignoring the fact that we had already waited more than a half hour, I wondered aloud at their priorities, and was told that was the decision and they would stand by it. I suggested next time they provide the passenger with the choice, as I certainly would have waited, not happily, but safely, for the offloading of the other passengers so I could use the chair lift.

Needless to say, it was an exceedingly unsatisfying resolution and clouds my impression of the Jade, their staff, Captain Fafalios, and NCL. Too bad, because I love the Freestyle concept, but we will not sail NCL again and I would suggest the same to others.

I do think whether or not you can get off a ship is really the call of the crew that is available, and how familiar they are with any accessible features the ship might have. I have encountered both very helpful staff, and very unhelpful staff -- sometimes on the same ship, but at different ports. As noted in this thread, some cruise lines are refusing to tender anyone who cannot walk a few steps and who uses a scooter. And some cruise lines are real reluctant to assist anyone down the gangplank when the ship is docked near shore! It's a hit or miss proposition a lot of the time. I don't plan any paid excursions off the ship when I cruise. If I can get off, I might hire someone privately, or my husband and I will just explore on our own. Otherwise I stay aboard and he heads off.

Since she poste on the NCL forum it's safe to say it is an NCL ship and they have been really good abot assisting people with disabilities. I have seen them help and elderly lady confined to a wheel chair onto a tender. They just picked her up wheelcair and all and then secrely seated her on the tender.

There is a contentious thread right now on NCL board [which I have posted in] that mentions what they did to someone on NCL and I mention my harrowing experience on Princess.

Yes they want to be helpful but they can be downright dangerous in doing so. Manual wheelchairs and power chairs as well are not designed to be lifted with a person in them. it is highly dangerous.