Handicap Transport

[mbrown2097]

Taking family and parents to DW in Sept. Father has mobility issues and will be renting an ECV. It appears from reading previous posts that no matter where we stay or park, that we will rely on Disney transportation of some sort. Is this an accurate statement? I want to spare him the frustration/embarrassment of loading and unloading but it doesn't seem possible.

 

[SueM in MN]

If he has never used an ECV before, have him practice at places like Target, Walmart or grocery stores that have them for customers who have mobility problems. Those ECVs are much bigger and harder to manouver than the ones you can rent, plus they have a big cart stuck on the front. If he is able to get to the point where he feels fairly comfortable on them, using one of the rental ones will be much easier.

Then, when he does get to the resort, have him practice driving a bit in a quiet place. He will need to be able to feel fairly comfortable going straight, turning in both directions and backing into a spot from both directions. He will need to be able to do this both for the buses and to pull into parking spaces for shows. Most people pick these skills up fairly quickly, especially if they have driven a car before.
When he's ready to venture out to the parks, Epcot is the easiest to start with. It is least congested and has the widest paths. AK and MK are hardest because they have narrow paths and MK gets very busy and congested.

If you stay at one of the Epcot resorts, there are walking paths and boats to get to both MGM Studio and Epcot. The boats are easy to get on with a wheelchair or ECV. The monorails are also easy with an ECV or wheelchair.
If you stay at one of the MK monorail resorts, you can use the monorails (again, easy to use with a wheelchair or ECV) to get to both MK and Epcot.

There is information about using wheelchairs/ECVs with the buses on the disABILITIES FAQs thread. You can get there by following the link in my signature to get to the disABILITIES Board; the FAQs thread is near the top of the board.

 

[clkelley]

To avoid the buses as much as possible you need to stay at:

Epcot Resorts - Pathway to Epcot and Studios, ride through Epcot, Monorail to MK

Monorail Resorts - Monorail to MK and Epcot, ride through Epcot, Pathway to Studios

Wilderness Lodge or Ft. Wilderness, boat to MK, boat, then monorail to Epcot, drive through Epcot, pathway to Studios.

The only buses you would have to deal with is Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney.

 

[cranbiz]

ALL WDW Buses are handicapped equipped. Even the old RTS bus,

Most times an audience control CM will call for a low floor bus when they see an ECV in a load zone. These are the buses with the ramps instead of the lifts and they are far easier to manouver an ECV on. He has nothing to be embarrased about. A Disney transport CM will not treat him any worse because of the ECV, It's just the opposite, he gets treated better. He gets to load first. (Also get's to leave last, that's to make it easier on everybody)

He should practice in reverse. A lot of people don't and it is interesting to see them try to manouver on the bus. I have had my toes run over a couple of times.