RCI Grandeur of the Seas 18 May2007 - Full Report

[halfcrippledcruiser]

Here it is folks, the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain funny. Someone asked me for a full report of our trip on RCI Grandeur of the Seas to San Juan, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, Samana, Dominican Republic and Labadee, Haiti. It's a long report but I did it in detail in the hopes that it will help others with their plans.

Boarding the Ship: Grandeur of the Seas out of Baltimore, May 18, 2007: My husband was dropping off my mother and I for our cruise. The wait wasn’t too bad to get to the parking lot and terminal entry, but each Royal Caribbean employee we encountered gave us different instructions about where to go for my husband to drop off a disabled passenger with wheelchairs. Some of them had no idea of where we should go and directed us to someone else. Ultimately, we ended up at the right place. My husband put our luggage into the luggage bins and left. Mom and I proceeded to check-in without difficulty. I was riding my scooter and Mom was pushing a manual wheelchair which was loaded with too much stuff, such as overnight bags, her purse and other items. When ready to board the ship, Mom didn’t think she would be able to push the wheelchair up the very long ramp system and I wasn’t sure my scooter would fit either, so an RCI employee directed us to enter at the bottom floor of the ship. Mom dumped all the stuff out of the wheelchair when trying to push it over strips sticking up between us and the ship floor. There was not one RCI employee to help us enter the ship or to direct us to where we were to go. When we entered, we were surrounded by an ocean of luggage and employees handling luggage. We had a terrible time getting an elevator with room on it. After a great deal of waiting and anxiety borne of the confusion of not knowing what we were doing and having no one to ask, we made it to the floor of our cabin and found it ready for us. Later, we found that because we could not enter the ship through the same way as everyone else, we missed the ship boarding picture. Despite our efforts to figure out how to get one made later, we never did get one. The photography people said it couldn’t be done. Assessment: For goodness sake – can’t RCI have someone at the boarding area who knows how and where to direct disabled people? Is there a good reason why we have to be treated like luggage? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone was there to say “Welcome Aboard” and take our picture just like everyone else? Some people in the parking lot who could find their behinds with both hands would also be a help.

Ship Assessment: It’s an older ship and looks a little on the worn side according to my mother, who has been on many cruises, but it is still a nice ship. It’s a little small for a cruise ship, but that is actually a good thing for some people who tire out with excessive walking. Our handicap room was very large and nice. It accommodated my scooter and my portable wheelchair in a corner without even being in the way. The bathroom was also large. The shower was a roll-in. I was provided with a toilet riser to make the toilet high enough for me to use. Grab bars were in good places. I had a sharps container provided for needles, as I give myself shots every day, and a fridge for medications. The balcony was ramped on the outside, but for a person unable to walk at all, would require going over 2” or so tracking for the sliding door. I was able to step over it. The balcony was also generously sized and we ate breakfast out there several times. I had no problem driving my large scooter through the door to enter the room. We could not have asked for a nicer room. The swimming pool has a handicap lift chair, but after a long game of charades with guys who don’t speak English well, I was told that it only takes a person to the wading area surrounding the pool. That wouldn’t help me much, as I need to be lifted into and out of the pool itself, so that was disappointing. I couldn’t use the ship’s pool. I would have loved some high bistro tables so I could get out of my wheelchair, but there were none. The chairs were all too low at the tables for me to get out of. The bar had some bar stools – all used by old smoking and drinking men. One of the four hot tubs near the pool has a lift into and out of it, which I did get to use and it was very nice. Apparently, the lift was fascinating for the other passengers, as they all stared like crazy as I was lifted into the hot tub. Neither the pool nor any of the hot tubs are accessible in the adult’s only Solarium swimming area with the indoor pool. There are steps for everything and no lifts. The nightclubs and several other areas, because of their design with furniture in the way, are difficult for moving a wheelchair or scooter. The need more things to do for people with disabilities. Sometimes, I think people mistakenly believe that people with disabilities are all old farts who love old fart activities. One of the things that annoyed me about my fellow passengers is that whenever there was something to see, such as dancing waiters or a funny part of a nightclub routine that was visual, the able bodied people would jump to their feet and block the view for everyone behind them, including we people in wheelchairs.

Moving around the ship: Metal strips in the halls made it too hard for my mother to push my portable wheelchair, so I used my scooter as much as possible. For off-ship trips, we called Housekeeping to ask for a person to push me down to the area for disembarking. I managed the halls in my scooter, although sometimes, it was hard to get through when housekeeping carts were in the halls. It was hard sometimes to get through crowds in certain areas of the casino and the Shops on Board. The elevators are roomy and we had very little problem catching an elevator. I backed out in my scooter. The other passengers – about 95% of them – were very nice about this. I had only a couple instances where other passengers would race ahead of me into an elevator which I had been waiting for longer. I saw one instance of a rude disabled woman in a scooter who thought she was entitled to skip lines because she was in a scooter. Made me mad.

Food: This was my first cruise and I thought the food was pretty darn good, but my mother says that Carnival’s is better. I loved the desserts. The food service people everywhere were excellent and very helpful. We ate in the dining area whenever we could because we found the Windjammer buffet area on the pool deck to be too difficult for us with me in the scooter. For the first few days of our cruise, the Windjammer buffet was particularly difficult because there was no beginning and no end to the buffet line. It was just two big, round buffets with no entry line. The only way to get in there was to jump in front of another passenger, which was really hard with a big scooter involved. Few people would allow a scooter in front of them and even then, it was impossible to see the food because it was too high up. When we had to eat there, Mom had to choose and get all my food and drinks for me, then go to get her own. I have to hand it to the employees, though, because twice an employee got my food for me and brought it to the table. After we told a couple RCI employees about how stupid the design was for getting food, it was changed and they made a start and end to the buffet lines. It worked much better for everyone. Still, it would be nice if people in wheelchairs could see and choose their food. I recommend eating in the dining room where the waiters and others were such an enhancement to the experience. We loved our food people.

Shows: Mediocre in quality. Two comedians were good. One was absolutely awful and we left after ½ hour. The cruise singers and dancers were good, with two of the four of their “stars” being the best. (the two black main singers were the best). The magic show was amusing. My mother, the experienced cruiser, tells me that the shows were no way close to those she saw on the larger Carnival ships. There were no second acts.

Accessibility for Shows: Two areas most of the way in the back for people with disabilities and their families to sit. Each area holds about 4 regular or wheelchairs. I had to go an hour early to have a place to sit for a show. One night, when the Broadway show tunes were planned, every single chair had been stolen from the handicapped sections and moved to other places. Able bodied people had taken the chairs to use so that their family groups could sit together. I asked theater employees to help, but no one seemed to know what to do. After about 45 minutes of waiting, they brought in a really high stool from the casino for my mother to sit in beside me. It would have been awfully uncomfortable, so we had to leave and missed the show. I went to the purser’s desk and told them what happened and explained that they needed to have a theater employee whose job it was to make sure there were seats for the disabled. The next night, the seats were there and we were thanked by several of the other guests with disabilities. Even then, someone had stolen a couple handicap chairs from the handicapped section before I got there. This time, a theater employee made them return the chairs. The handicapped area was equipped with signs identifying it as such, in case anyone is wondering. The problem was selfish, mean able-bodied people. I hope that the ship employees will continue to keep an eye on this. One improvement they could make is to provide more space for the disabled by taking the two open and more roomy couch-style seating areas in front of the handicap sections and designating them as also for the disabled. There were more disabled people than there was seating for them.

DESTINATIONS

First Port - Old San Juan, Puerto Rico: The ship docked at Pier 4, which was the most desirable place to dock for proximity to Old San Juan. The ramp to exit the ship was short and extremely steep. Two men brought my wheelchair down with me backwards down the ramp. I closed my eyes during the procedure. People without mobility problems could walk to Old San Juan, but the city is extremely hilly and it is terribly hot there. The streets are also cobblestone and very hard for pushing portable wheelchairs on them. The curbs are high to the point of being a curiosity, they’re so extreme. My mother and I hired a taxi driver without difficulty and he put my fold-up wheelchair in his trunk. His “pimp” in the taxi business told us that our driver knew all the local history, which is something we said we were looking for, but in reality, the guy knew very little and his command of English wasn’t good enough to communicate much of what he did know. When we saw the historical sites I was looking for, I read out loud to my mother what I had with me of the history of the locations. After a tour of the city, we told the driver we wanted to go shopping at a place where local made crafts and jewelry could be found, but he told us that none of the shopping in the city was going to be suitable for Mom to push me in that wheelchair, given the hills and cobblestones. We saw many elderly people walking in that heat and up those hills and wondered why none had yet keeled over and croaked right there. After we emphasized over and over again that we wanted to go to something like a Puerto Rican flea market, the driver suggested Plaza de las Americas. We didn’t know what it was and after another 15 minute drive, which added $20.00 to the cost of our taxi expense round-trip, we ended up at a regular mall like every big mall in the continental U.S. I told the driver that we could see Sears and Penneys at home, but Mom decided to try it for a little bit. After 15 minutes, we determined that we were wasting time and hailed another taxi. We then returned to the ship because there was absolutely nothing to do for the disabled in Old San Juan but take a tour from the inside of a vehicle and go to a shopping mall. Overall assessment: I would have loved it had I been healthy. We got to see the sights, but having to do so only from the inside of a car was a bummer. The port was just beautiful and I enjoyed our ship passing by the castles as we sailed in. Leaving the ship may not be worth it for anyone with limited mobility unless you are able to find something to do there and somewhere to go that is handicap friendly. We found our tour by car worthwhile.

Second Port – St. Thomas: The only cruise line sponsored excursion on the cruise which was advertised as wheelchair accessible was at this port and we had purchased it. The trip was called “Accessible Shopping.” There were two buses with a capacity of about 16 people each. One bus was already full when we arrived that morning and we were directed to the second bus, which thank God, had only two seats left. The bus could hold only about two wheelchairs. On my bus, only two of us had portable wheelchairs with us. I was the only person who had to use the lift to get me in and out of the bus because I cannot walk up or down 8” stairs. The bus seats are very small and barely held both me and my overweight mother. The mother of another disabled passenger helped me transfer in and out of my seat. The driver gave a little tour of the area but we could not understand him well because of his accent and because he held the mike too close to his mouth. First, we stopped at a beautiful overlook of the ocean and there was a little flea market type place there selling t-shirts and other tourist goods. The prices were good and the spot is lovely for pictures. When we arrived, the driver overheard the mothers of two other passengers discussing how they were keeping their sons on the bus, so when he stopped there and all the healthy passengers got off, he leaped off the bus and disappeared, leaving me unable to disembark the bus. He never asked me if I wanted to get off the bus and I assumed that he understood that I would be wanting to use the lift at every stop. We lost about ten minutes of our ½ hour stop as my mother looked for him in the crowd on top of the 5 minutes it takes to operate the lift. When we found him, my mother and I ripped him a new one and he said it was our fault for not telling him I wanted off. Why he thought we would pay $130 between the two of us to get on a bus with a lift and not use it is beyond me, but after that, he didn’t abandon me again. We had our picture taken with a donkey before leaving. Next, the driver took us to the Mountaintop Shopping area which had a breathtaking view and very nice shops with good accessibility. We had ½ hour to shop, but after 5 minutes to get me off the bus again and then another several minutes for my mother to use the bathroom, we were down to about 15. The bathroom had many stalls but only one handicap stall in the women’s room and it was clogged and not flushing. I decided to hold it until I could get somewhere better. I bought a beautiful tablecloth before we scrambled back to the bus to leave. After the tour was done, many of the passengers wanted dropped off at the Havensight shopping area near the ship docking location. We decided to return to the ship to pee, eat lunch and exchange wheelchairs for my motorized scooter. When ready to shop, my mother refused to take the free trolley to Havensight because she was afraid to leave me by myself to drive my scooter there. It was very hot and the length of about two city blocks to walk to the mall, but Mom did it. I had to trouble driving my scooter right off the ship ramp and to Havensight and the shopping area there was accessible, even if some of the shops are rather small. We shopped until Mother dropped. I talked her into taking the trolley back to the ship and we separated. I scooted back to ship and waited for Mom, who didn’t show up for a long time. As the deadline for return to the ship approached, I was beginning to panic when I saw my mother from afar walking down those two blocks in the heat. What happened was that the trolley never showed up at her stop at Havensight to take her back to the ship. There were several other families with small children walking as well for the same reason. I was worried about my mother’s well-being in the heat and for her age, and when one of the free busses dropped off its load of passengers, I asked him to go get her for the little distance she had left. Overall Assessment: The best shopping of the cruise. Havensight has all the same stores as those in the town of St. Thomas, but is an accessible spot for the disabled. As for the expensive tour on the wheelchair accessible bus, I think you could do better for the money hiring your own driver privately and spending as much time as you like at each location he takes you to. I would like to return to St. Thomas for a week someday.

Third Port – Samana, Dominican Republic: My mother and I seemed to be the only people on our ship who had a really good time at this port. It was the very first time Royal Carribean ever used this port at all and we were an experiment. The view from the ship was beautiful, but the authorities made our captain anchor us three miles from the dock. There were only four total smallish tender boats to take all of us ashore, and the ship had people get numbers to determine when they would board a tender. We decided to allow all the “me first” people who always have to be first in line at everything to go before we bothered to get a number. I asked several people if they would be able to get me on a tender with a portable wheelchair and was assured that they could. I was also told that I could board a tender without having to go up or down steps. At the last minute before I was to board a tender, I was introduced to a flight of stairs and told that going down them was the only way I could go ashore. Therefore, with two men on either side of me, I very slowly went down a flight of steps. Luckily, they weren’t really high ones, but it was scary regardless. Then I had to step on a moving tender boat, also down a step, that was jumping around in the water. I was terrified but did it without falling. On the other side, I was met by two RCI men who spoke little English who were determined to pull me out of the tender by my arms before I could explain that if they did so, my arms would pulled out of their sockets because my legs wouldn’t follow. I yelled at them to please listen to my instructions of how to help me get out of the boat so I wouldn’t fall. I made it. Mom and I again hooked up with a taxi driver. He took us on a tour of a very poor and scary looking local market before we asked him to take us to a shopping market that looked safer. He drove us not far up the road from the docking area to a local craft and junk market used by locals and any tourist who find it. They had music and dancing there, plus lots of good buys on jewelry and wonderful local art. The people were very nice and we enjoyed them a great deal. Our driver also served to wheel me around the market, which was wheelchair accessible and ramped. He was also our bodyguard, which was important for an elderly woman and a disabled one traveling alone in a strange area. Even though it rained buckets for awhile when we were there, we had more fun at that port than anywhere our whole trip. Other cruise passengers who had not booked excursions simply came over, saw nothing there and went back to the ship. The ship received a lot of complaints about this port because most people found nothing to do there and it took a long time to tender. Overall Assessment: As usual, there were no excursions possible for the disabled at this port, but then again, there was little for the non-disabled to do at this port. We loved it anyway. Our advice is to hire a driver to take you to this local market up the road from where the tender unloads and have a good time there for a couple of hours shopping and socializing with the locals. We really enjoyed this place. We think it was our favorite stop of the cruise. We saw a beautiful shopping plaza for tourists which was almost done being built and consisted of pastel painted buildings that look like homes. After more tourist attractions are done at this stop, I think it will be a wonderful location for cruise ship stops. The people here are lovely.

Fourth Port – Labadee, Haiti: I remember someone else calling this port a “disaster” for her disabled husband, and that was no exaggeration. The port there is breathtakingly beautiful, as is the island leased by Royal Carribean for this stop. Tendering was done in a huge tender and they rolled me right onto it in my wheelchair. For quite some time we were upset because we didn’t understand that the cement area we were on was part of the tender and thought they were filling up the boat and not leaving room for us. None of the ship employees working to load the tender could speak English well enough to communicate. If your skin is sensitive, be prepared to cover up. They put me out in the sun in the front of the tender on both the ride there and back because the covered area was down a flight of steps. I didn’t mind getting a little sun, but I was out there a long time when waiting to come back to the ship. Once we arrived on the island, I was met by an RCI local employee with a beach wheelchair. They took my portable chair and put me in the beach one. Then, much to my surprise, the guy took off at a high rate of speed with my older, overweight mother trying to run to keep up with us. He spoke little to no English and I couldn’t get him to understand that I wanted him to slow down and that we wanted to figure out where we wanted to go before kidnapped me in my big beach wheelchair. The man said either “yes” or “no problem” to everything we said to him but obviously understood nothing. Finally, my winded mother and I were taken to the furthest beach from the docking area. He wanted me to get out of the wheelchair and transfer to a lounge chair in the searing hot sun. We could not make him understand that I would not be able to get up from that lounge chair if I used it. It would take several people to get me up and they had taken my regular chair at the dock. The man wouldn’t leave and we could not seem to make him understand that I needed to keep the chair for the day, otherwise, I would be stranded in this beach lounge unable to leave it. The other problem was that because of my muscular disease, I would have been entirely unable to get up from that beach lounge anyway had I transferred into it. It was too low to the ground. We figured out that the Haitian man wanted the beach chair back so that he could use it to bring other disabled people to dump on lounges and abandon in the hot sun. After ½ hour of playing charades, my Mom stuffed money in his hand and began motioning to him to leave. Another RCI employee heard her tell our guy to “go away” and told her that she shouldn’t “abuse the help.” She wasn’t being abusive, but was frustrated by the half hour effort to get the guy to leave us with the wheelchair. The water looked calm and I told my mother that these chairs are capable going right into the water so she wheeled me down to the beach. The sand was very deep and like quicksand. My mother had a hard time walking in it herself. Before I could get her to listen to my protest, she wheeled me into the water too far, before I could assess the situation, and the chair began to float. She lost control of it and dumped me over the side into the water. Mom was worried about having to pay for the chair if it floated away, so she left me flopping around helplessly in the water as she walked the chair back to the beach. The sand was moving under me, I was too weak to fight the strong current and I was on the ground, which is the when I am the weakest in my ability to take care of myself. The waves were coming and I knew I couldn’t keep my head above water, so I began to yell for help. Two men from the beach came in to get me. It took three men and two women to get me back into the wheelchair and onto the beach. Once, I actually was standing but the sand was so deep that I fell back down onto my knees. My mother could not even attempt to swim at the beach because she couldn’t walk in that sand. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humor about this experience. After returning from my water adventure, Mom and ordered the special Labadee alcoholic beverage served on the beach. It had lots of rum, which I needed by that point, but was sickeningly sweet and not very cold.

When leaving to board the ship, we saw a beach close to the tender area that looked much calmer and the sand looked better for walking. We heard from another passenger the next day that this beach, which is the first one on the left of the three beaches, is the calmest and that we had been taken to the roughest one.

There are two shopping buildings where locals sell crafts and art. The first is the market. Be advised that the vendors there are the most aggressive sales people my mother and I, both, have ever seen on any of our trips in our lifetimes. It is impossible to even look at their wares in peace without them waving stuff in your face and screaming. They are competitive with each other and if you look at something sold by one vendor, a competitor will run over and begin shoving their version of the item in your face and yelling. I was in this giant beach wheelchair and they surrounded my chair. Mom couldn’t move through them to get me out of there and I had five of these people screaming in my face. Finally, Mom decided to play the crazy American and began screaming and pulling her hair, and I covered my face with my hands. They backed off and we got out of there as fast as we could. It felt like I was in a surrealistic bad movie about Hatian voodoo. We heard many other ship passengers complain about the overly aggressive vendors. The smaller shopping area is run by Royal Carribean and they don’t bargain over their prices, which is a relief, but the wares at both places are junk. The jewelry there is made of seeds and beads; it looks like stuff made by children. The only thing worth buying, if they fit in with your décor, are the woodwork items. They have carved wood canes and walking sticks that our fantastic woodworking. A local dance group did a show with music and native dancing and they were absolutely wonderful. We found their show better than anything we saw on the ship. The lunch barbeque was good, but also difficult for us because Mom had to get the food and drinks for both of us. I felt imprisoned in that big beach wheelchair and couldn’t move. There was no accessible place for a wheelchair at the picnic tables. Most tables were full anyway. Finally, a wonderful fellow passenger who is a nurse saw us struggling and had her group pick up and move a picnic table so that my wheelchair could be pushed up onto the concrete at the end of a table. I could have gotten out of the wheelchair to sit down, but the tables were too low for me to get up from. There was not one Royal Carribean employee to help. Those we did encounter during this entire day couldn’t speak English. Overall assessment: Oh, my God. This was an experience my family will tell stories about for years, but it was very, very difficult at the time. It’s a beautiful place and would have been a lot of fun for healthy, non-disabled people. RCI needs to pave some paths for wheelchairs and scooters. Even in the beach wheelchair, my mother had a terrible time pushing it because the sand is so deep everywhere we went. There needs to be help getting food for the disabled and a place for us to eat it where we can use a table. The cruise line needs to have some people who speak English there to help the passengers with information. They need to put a stop to the kidnapping of disabled passengers and what I heard another disabled passenger refer to as the “captive wheelchair situation.” What makes RCI think that people with disabilities want to be dumped on lounge chairs on the beach and left there to bake in the hot sun with nothing to do and no way to leave? They also need to do something about the aggressive vendors. It was a terrible experience to have all these people screaming in my face. The only thing nice to do here for the disabled was to watch the show, but even that is a challenge because of the picnic tables surrounding the show dance area. The non-disabled sit at these tables and obstruct the view for anyone in a wheelchair. Luckily, my mother found a good spot for me and shooed people away who tried to stand in front of me, so I did get to enjoy the show. I never felt more disabled by my illness that I did this day in Labadee, Haiti. I felt tormented by only being able to watch other people do the fun and wonderful things I was dying to do. They had a zip line there and parasailing. I would have been thrilled just to have been able to get in the water and swim, but the beach we were on was impossible for me to do that. It is such a beautiful place. If you go, I suggest that after the guy loads you into the captive wheelchair, you have your family member refuse the assistance of the attendant and do not allow them to take off with you in that beach wheelchair. If they’re driving, you have no control over where they take you because they don’t speak English and don’t care where you want to go. Proceed to the very first beach on the left. Depending on your level of mobility, that area is the best for trying to go swimming. Don’t go on this trip without a strong person capable of pushing the beach wheelchair in deep sand. Try to get a good spot near the dance show because it is the only decent thing for a disabled person to do at this stop.

Disembarking the Ship: The only time we felt Royal Carribean was really well organized for the job. Everything went smoothly and we were off and through customs without a glitch. The luggage pick-up was well designed and went smoothly.

Overall Cruise Assessment: It was overall a good time but also a learning experience. This was a mother-daughter trip but would have been easier if we had been able to take a man with us to help with the physical parts of hauling me around. I would have liked to have been able to participate in more of the wonderful excursions and activities, but there was little for people with mobility problems to do. I found that the best experiences were when we hired our own people to take us on tours or to shopping areas. I missed not being able to go swimming once during the entire cruise because no place was accessible for me. I can eat and drink very well with little assistance, so I did a lot of this. It was nice to not have to cook or do laundry for nine days. I got to see places to which I want to return someday for a week. (Dominican Republic and St. Thomas). I enjoyed spending time with my mother. We also very much enjoyed the people with whom we shared our table in the dining room. I’m not sure if this cruising thing is the best way to go for those who want to participate in more activities at the ports of call and otherwise. The cruise lines really should do better to provide things to do for the disabled, including at ports of call. I know it can be done if more people care.

[KL&KR]

:eek: Thank you so much for writing this all out! Your experience in Labadee is so frightening--it sounds like my worst nightmares of what could go wrong on shore. And your experiences on board are very similar to ours (my partner has never been able to use the pools either). I'm glad you had some fun and funny times though, and hope you continue cruising...

 

Kristen (and Kathy)

[halfcrippledcruiser]

I'm glad people are reading my "book" on this as I hope to spare some other folks from the more difficult experiences we had. I'm glad I did it, but I'm just not sure I'll ever do it again. I don't know if there would have been more to do for disabled people on one of the newer, bigger ships. I would like to have more time in each port of call. Cruising has its benefits, but I think I just might not be the right person for it. I like to stay a while at the destinations. For many, it's the ship they love most. For me, it's the places I go and the people who live there that gets me excited. Maybe someday I'll try it again if a cruise line begins to really excel at providing some excursions and activities on-board for the disabled.

[sueart46]

Thanks for the details!

[KL&KR]

We were lucky enough once to go hear a quadriplegic travel specialist talk about disabled traveling. One of her comments (she had great things to say!) was that traveling to the "unknown''--any area outside your everyday comfort zone, really--is by its nature a challenge. You are, at some level, gambling your comfort and even your safety--and for her, that challenge was part of the fun. I really admire you for pushing to the max to go ashore and see the sights; I am so much more timid (except when Kathy pushed me to do something or go somewhere teeth-chattering--like wandering off by ourselves down the side streets in what seemed to be the poorer side of Acapulco on a $3K electric cart). Anyhow, cruising or not, hope you have more fun traveling. I hear taking the Alaskan ferries from port to port is a great adventure--you can hop off, hop on as you like, people sleep on the deck(!), and the ADA applicability would give you at least a fighting chance ...:p

Kristen

 

Kristen

[Muskoka2]

I am afraid the cruiselines just do not "get it". Their staff, to start, need to speak English and understand it. They also need to sit in a wheelchair and ride a scooter around the ship as part of their training with a couple of shore excursions in the same. I hope the cruiselines are reading and listening. There is a lot of room for improvement.

The cruiseline needs to give you some compensation for all of your upsets.

Take care and all of the best.