Nassau Shore Excursions with Wheelchair

[SamsHappyMom]

Really disappoInted to see that most of the shore excursions do not accept wheelchair users. Please share your experiences.....

 

[lanejudy]

Welcome to the disABILITIES Forum!

Unfortunately, many of the foreign countries visited by DCL do not have similar accessibility laws to which we are accustomed in the U.S.

What excursions interest you? It appears many require a collapsible wheelchair, and I believe that is likely due to the transportation to/from the excursion. One person in a wheelchair may have different abilities than another, so I don't want to guess as to what might be plausible for your party with regards to transferring, etc. I don't know if you could arrange private excursions and include private transportation. (I'm not even sure what is available for accessible transportation in Nassau.)

You might try cross-posting on the Disney Cruise Line Forum to see if anyone there has experience with wheelchairs on Nassau excursions.

 

[tobikaye]

We did not do any excursions in Nassau on our cruise. We did see someone that we had seen on embarkation day that was using an EVC, getting off at Nassau and was being taken somewhere on a golf cart. I was told this was someone on a DCL excursion and they were using the golf cart to get to the pick up point as the person could walk, just not long distances. I am not sure which excursion they were doing, but there were some that would not have been too much walking once at the designation.

 

[SamsHappyMom]

Thank you for your replies. I will also post in the Cruise Line forum for more perspectives. My DH uses a collapsible wheelchair and can transfer/walk several feet with the use of forearm crutches. We have a 12 year old boy. We were considering the Junkanoo excursion because we all like history. I looked at the prices of hiring a private driver on the DCL website, and although we can put the wheelchair in the trunk of a car, a sedan rental was not an option, which I thought was strange. The SUV and limo rental is too pricey for just a family of three.
We are first timers in Nassau, so maybe there will be a lot to see if we just walk/roll around the touristy areas? And is that safe?
Thank you for all advice!!

 

[tobikaye]

The walkways in some parts of Nassau were rough and not every corner had a cutout for a wheelchair. My sister was doing pretty well when we went on our cruise so only needed her rollator. There were many places where we had to lift her rollator down and she had to step down. She went back to the ship earlier with my dad so that she could do an event, so I did not pay as close attention the remainder of the walk, but there were some places where we had to do stairs to keep going on the route we were on.

I had already decided that if I did Nassau again with my sister and did not stay on the ship, that we would do a ship excursion that she would be okay without her mobility aid. Another option with her might be to see about a bus, or taxi, with her rollator to the zoo and back. My sister has a developmental disability along with her mobility disability so it makes some new situations difficult for her.

I did not find Nassau unsafe, but it is no different than any other city where you need to keep aware of your surroundings.

 

[videogal1]

Really disappoInted to see that most of the shore excursions do not accept wheelchair users. Please share your experiences.....

I've been to Nassau several times with DCL once with a cane as mobility aid and the rest with my scooter and Service Dog. The stores have steps up into them, which was a hassle with the cane, impossible with the scooter. I found myself joining the street traffic for short distances with the scooter (not a good idea unless your mobility device is the size of a tank...the traffic is nuts!)...as some sections of sidewalk were impassible.

I had better luck going on shore excursions in the Caribbean and Mexico with Holland America, though. By that time, however, I'd had enough cruising experience to know the importance of contacting private businesses to provide the tours to the interesting places offered officially by the cruise lines...It's always an adventure, though...If you do take a private tour, though, be sure to let the ship front desk know the particulars. I nearly missed the ship when I was left stranded by a tour operator who decided that my scooter was too much trouble to take back to the ship from Treasure Island on his boat (although we all had arrived there with no trouble) told me a bus had been arranged (false) and simply left to return to the ship with the rest of the tourists. Luckily, someone was counting passengers and they waited. This guy was one of the cruise lines official excursion tour operators, too...so you can have adventures regardless of the amount of care you take beforehand to maximize safety and minimize problems. I think the person directing the excursions on the Holland America cruise made the point that since the ship sailed with a group of disabled passengers (this was a Service Dog training cruise and there were ten handlers with their dogs plus staff), then it was the responsibility of the cruise line to offer accessible excursions to those passengers that met the ADA definition of disabled.

The ADA may only apply to the U.S. itself as a nation, but either the 5th or 12th Circuit Court (I've forgotten which one) required that cruise companies modify their programs and property to comply with ADA access standards regardless of under what flag the ship sails. Then Norwegian cruise lines got spanked in a Supreme Court decision (Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd.) for their lack of access.

Ask DCL to provide you with local contacts who could provide accessible options that parallel their excursion offerings. They should at least be able to do that for their full fare-paying disabled passengers. Send them a copy of the court decision with your request and proposed itinerary.

Any accessible excursion offered by DCL should not cost you more than the same excursion offered to non-disabled passengers. There are snags, however. It is common for taxi passengers with Service Dogs to be charged a full passenger fare for the Service Dog...I don't remember if the scooter cost extra. I think it was Dclfun and I who shared an enclosed bed of a truck normally used in the construction trade for our excursion to see cliff divers on one cruise...Wheelchair, scooter, service dogs, ropes, tools, generator, bags of concrete...very exciting! If you and DCL manage to arrange excursions don't be surprised at the means of transport...I once traveled to see butterflies in the back of a huge cargo van and returned to the ship with the scooter in the bed of a truck...Cash and I squeezed into the cab of another truck.