The Fun Ship: Part Three/Onboard

Cruising is a favorite means of travel for people with disabilities due to the relative ease of the experience. Your hotel room travels with you, and meals are easily found and abundant. I’ve listed below seven accessibility issues to consider as you book your next cruise.

Water Areas The Fantasy boasts 4 hot tubs, one large pool, 3 water slides, and a splash and play toddler area. However, it cannot boast that it offers a transfer lift at any of these stations at the time of this post. Sadly, if you cannot perform your own transfer or be lifted by another individual, you will be unable to access the water areas. Hopefully this oversight will be corrected soon and newer ships will include pool accessibility as part of their original design.

Dining Both Fantasy dining rooms are located on the Atlantic Deck and have multilevel floor plans. Ramp access is available to make all tables accessible for wheelchair use. Breakfast and dinner are served in the formal dining rooms with buffet dining available on the Lido Deck for all 3 meals. Pizza and ice cream are offered 24 hours a day. Room service is also provided and complimentary with room fare.

Muster Stations Every cruise departing from the United States is required to complete an emergency evacuation drill prior to leaving the port. Carnival Cruise Line refers to this as the Muster Station drill. Your assigned muster station is located on your Sail and Sign card, and is determined by your room location. Guests requiring special assistance are required to report to the muster station during the drill but are asked to remain in the gathering spot when the other passengers practice lining up for the life boats. The instructor assured us that we would receive assistance accessing the life boats from the special needs crew during an actual evacuation. I strongly prefer to never have the opportunity to review their proficiency at evacuating passengers with mobility impairments.

Medical Center Each Carnival Cruise is equipped with basic medical facilities. They are staffed by a licensed physician, although licensure may not be held in the United States and hours are limited. The medical center is designed to serve as a triage unit for more serious illnesses and a comfort station for basic needs such motion sickness and first aid care. If you require more major medical care, you will be required to depart the ship at the next port to seek treatment inland.

Bathrooms Accessible public restrooms can be found on three of the seven decks with public gathering spaces; the Atlantic, Promenade, and Lido. Restroom locations as well as accessible paths on each deck can be found on the ship’s ADA deck plan.

Elevators While the ship can be maneuvered with relative ease, wait times at the elevators can get to be a bit annoying depending upon the time of day. As you can see from the deck plan, the Atlantic Deck cannot be traveled from the forward to the aft of the ship due to the location of the dining rooms. Therefore, you want to make sure you travel on an elevator that puts you on the correct end of the ship if your destination is located on the Atlantic Deck. Also, I know that staterooms on higher decks are more popular and thus more expensive. However, I personally think it is easiest to access the elevators from the Riviera Deck, the lowest deck, since you will be able to board an empty elevator.

Sun Deck In addition to lack of access to water areas, the Sun Deck is unavailable to people using wheelchairs. The Sun Deck contains a jogging track and miniature golf course, but it does not contain an elevator. The Carnival Fantasy launched in 1990, the same year that the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, and is one of the oldest ships still in the Carnival fleet. Hopefully newer ship designs eliminate this lack of access.

Carnival provides additional information about its special needs policies as well as further contact information on its website.

ACCESSIBILITY WINS: Relative ease of travel to multiple destinations; general ability to maneuver the ship

ROOM TO IMPROVE: Lift availabilty for pools and hot tubs; access to the sports deck

Previous posts in this series: The Fun Ship: Part One/Cabin Features; The Fun Ship: Part Two/Bahamas Ports of Call

The Fun Ship: Part Two/Bahamas Ports of Call

Our five nights aboard the Carnival Fantasy included two Bahamian ports of call: Nassau and Freeport. I was truly anxious about getting off the ship and had no idea what to expect with accessibility. There are many advantages to using a power wheelchair versus manual, but portability is not one of them. For this reason, we decided to leave the power chair on board the Fantasy for our first port of call and debarked with the stroller wheelchair.

Nassau: This port is non-tendered and therefore an easy exit from the ship to the large concrete pier. The ramp from the ship to the pier is narrow and steep depending upon the tides but manageable. Once on land, the pier area can easily be navigated without encountering curbs and other obstacles. Our greatest challenge was when a Category 5 hurricane came out of nowhere while we were in the middle of the breezeway between the dock and the straw market. I have never seen wind and rain of that extreme. Palm trees began bending side to side, the waves of the port were lapping up over the edges of the breezeway, and sand was stinging the bottom of our legs. Not our finest moment. We later heard the storm was categorized as a Tropical Wave, not a Category 5 hurricane. Whatever.

In the straw market, we were able to easily maneuver the stroller wheelchair into the main buildings. The space was tight and crowded, but that was likely due to everyone trying to escape certain death if they went outdoors into the storm. The straw market had all of the expected fare: outrageously priced hair braiding, shell art, t-shirts, and other sundries.

After our time in the market, we headed to the Atlantis Resort for lunch. We didn’t want to spend a huge sum of money, plus the weather was truly awful, so we did not pay to enter the Atlantis beach and waterpark area. We traveled to Atlantis by taxi. Since we had the portable wheelchair, we did not require wheelchair accessible transportation. However, I did take time to speak with the taxi driver and learned that the island has 2 wheelchair accessible van taxis. If you are in need of this transportation, the other taxi drivers will call in to the main office and request an appropriate vehicle for you.

I am beginning to believe that money drives accessibility construction more than legislation. Because more people with disabilities are traveling, newer resorts are more likely to cater to the disabled traveler. At the Atlantis resort, we found modern construction that was easily navigated. Appropriate stair lifts, ramps, wide entry ways, and handicapped bathrooms were present in the public areas of the resort. I’d love to checkout the waterpark, but that will have to be saved for another time!

Freeport: Again, our weather was not great for our second port of call. However, we did take the power wheelchair off the ship and into the local markets. We found ample curb cutouts off of sidewalks and never felt “stuck”. As you can see from the picture below, individual shops featured ramp access into the buildings. However, most businesses were so full of merchandise that it really was not possible to navigate the store.

Our first experience outside of the United States with a wheelchair was a success. We didn’t attempt the craziest excursions, but we gained an immense amount of confidence.

Next post in this series: The Fun Ship: Part Three/Onboard
Previous post in this series: The Fun Ship: Part One/Cabin Features

The Fun Ship: Part One/Cabin Features

Carnival Cruise Line refers to itself as The Fun Ships. Based on our experience, we agree! However, this post is intended to be about logistics. I’ll follow up with another post on the fun at another time. Blah, blah, blah…

We were gifted a 5 night cruise aboard the Carnival Fantasy from Charleston, SC to the Bahamas. It’s highly unlikely we would’ve ever made the leap to try cruising otherwise. All the unknowns: fitting the wheelchair into the cabin, sea sickness, leaving the safety of the Americans with Disabilities jurisdiction, the list of fears is endless. But…it was free. As long as we came home alive, we would consider it a success.

Our biggest concern was the appropriateness of our cabin, but it blew away our expectations. Here are some photos of the room’s distinct features:

Cabin door opener, lock, and thermostat were placed at a sitting height on the wall.

Claire opening the cabin door by herself.

 Claire modeling the grab bars around the toilet and roll under sink. Notice the button on the wall that allowed Claire to automatically open the bathroom door. Not necessarily my favorite feature; I will spare the details. Also notice the drain in the floor. The big draw back of a roll-in shower on a cruise is the flow of water ALL over your bathroom. There’s really no way to prevent getting the whole floor soaked. Thankfully we had a wonderful steward cleaning behind us.

Shower chair with adjustable height shower nozzle. It was COMPLICATED to figure out how to lower the shower chair! The adults struggled. The six year old figured it out in about 30 seconds.

 Our cabin was HUGE! My preteen nieces and nephews thought we were so “lucky.” Yep, lucky us!!!

Bed arrangement. We weren’t able to push the bottom bunks together to make a king size bed since the wheelchair accessible path would be compromised. Not everything can be perfect all the time, right?

The cabin also featured two peep holes in the cabin door. One was at the standard standing height. The other was located at a sitting height. The door lock card swipe  in the hallway was also located at a sitting height.

ACCESSIBILITY WINS: Cabin design and size

ROOM TO IMPROVE: Limited power outlets make bringing a power strip a must if you have multiple medical and technological devices that need to be charged.

Next post in this series: The Fun Ship: Part Two/Bahamas Ports of Call