Renting a GOOD wheelchair for Disneyland

[bclydia]

Hello!
We are driving from BC down to Anaheim to Disneyland in August.
One of my family members has limited mobility and will need a wheelchair
while we're in the parks. There is just no room to bring her chair in the van with us and so we're planning to rent a chair down there.
What I'm wondering is can we rent a good chair somewhere? By "good chair" I'm looking for more than the standard transport chair. I'd like to find her one with a good cushion and it must have stroller handles. DH and I are both tall and we'll be doing all the pushing. The handles on a typical stock chair are way too low and cause back pain.
Has anyone had any experience with a company that can rent us what we need?
Thanks so much!
Lydia

 

[WheeledTraveler]

I don't know of any rental company anywhere that would have the sort of custom manual wheelchair you're describing. They do rent manual wheelchairs with big back wheels (transport chairs usually have 4 smaller casters), but they're the heavy big type that you'd find at general rental companies. From an offsite vendor in Orlando you can find them at a size that may fit better/be lighter than if you were to try to rent at the parks. If you could bring her wheelchair cushion, then you'd at least be able to have a cushion you know works. (I've actually used my wheelchair cushion while sitting in a car so that may be something that would work for her.)

I believe someone did post here maybe 6 months ago who'd found and bought push handle extenders that would clamp onto push handles (theoretically even on rental chairs) to at least make them higher.

The rental company in Orlando that would probably be the best as far as both finding a wheelchair that works and knowing the options for a rental is Care Medical. Care provides more than just wheelchairs and ECVs and are more of a DME rental company. (I thought they were also a DME that sold products, but it doesn't look like it from their website.)

Really the problem is that what you're looking for usually is only available on a custom chair and it's not cost-effective for a rental company have those.

Not knowing anything about your party-member's personal wheelchair, you might want to look closer to home to see if it's possible to rent a cargo carrier or something that would attach to the van and could fit her wheelchair. I know not all wheelchairs fit in the external carriers (mine wouldn't), but another option would be to put luggage in an external carrier so that you can fit the wheelchair in the van. Depending on how much you travel with the party member who is a wheelchair user (or with large amounts of luggage), a cargo carrier for a car/van might even be something worth buying. Finally, you might want to experiment with packing the van differently. I have a wheelchair with only a folding back (so always has it's width/depth) and, with creative packing, have fit it in some surprising places that I didn't think it would fit.

I also don't know if there's any possibility that the member of your party who uses a wheelchair could travel separately. It's more expensive to do something like fly, but it would save the cost the wheelchair rental. Depending on what her impairments are, flying might even be better for her health. Obviously, this idea only works if she's an adult who could travel on her own (using airport assistance as needed) or another person could stay and travel with her and wouldn't be missing anything other than a drive with/without hotel stays.

I hope something I said could be helpful.

 

[bclydia]

Thanks so much for trying to help!
Unfortunately, we're going to Disneyland not WDW so I'm hoping to find a rental there.
My family member isn't able to travel separately and with 7 of us in a minivan, we don't have much hope of bringing her regular chair. She'd be fine in a plain rental chair but OUR backs won't make it very long if we are pushing those regular handles. I've never understood why the makers assume everyone is under 5'6".
Hmm, now I need to track down those push handle extenders. If anyone knows anything about those, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
Thanks so much!!!

 

[Evette]

I just saw that push handle extensions are available at Amazon.com, the ones I saw were about $50.00 and extend up to 8 inches. Hopefully this is something that will work for you. Have a wonderful trip to Disneyland!

 

[WheeledTraveler]

Sorry, I completely missed the Anaheim part of your post. It still might be worth bringing her cushion, even in a rental wheelchair. Depending on her size, Deckert's is a wheelchair rental company mentioned fairly often here so may have something that will be more her size than the general park rentals. It looks like they do more than just rentals (Full name is Deckert's Surgical) so they might even have info about handle extenders.

If you search this forum, a link and picture of the handle extenders I'm thinking of were posted. I just can't remember the post title or good specifics to search for that one post. Actual questions about the availability of extenders are fairly common here. I think it may have been the most recent of those posts where in the replies there's the info for the handle extenders that poster found.