WDW Wheelchair Width?

[hematite153]

Does anyone know what the width of the standard wdw wcs is?

(And/or is someone willing to measure one?)

On our first wdw trip, we discovered 6 hours into our first day what we should have already known--my DW's skin could only tolerate about 5 hours of walking on hot cement per week. We got lucky and had a great experience with a resort chair. (Yes, the first one we were given was broken but a CM noticed this and directed us to a place where they'd either fix it or replace it and 15 minutes later we had a chair for the week that worked great.)

So, on our second trip we said, "no need to rent offsite, we'll just use resort chairs" and ended up spending at least an hour/day dealing with problems.

Since then, we have rented chairs from home--cheaper than renting in Orlando and we have the chair for travel as well.

However, we are considering trying the resort chairs again for our upcoming trip. We are flying from an airport 4 hours away and traveling with friends and their 16 month-old. Thus, space in the car will be at a premium. Plus, we had a good experience once so we have reason to hope for another. Don't worry, I'll include the numbers for Orlando offsite rental companies when I'm packing so that I'll have a backup option in place.

The remaining piece of information that we don't have is the width of the chairs so that we can compare my DW's comfort in a chair from home versus a chair from wdw. I've tried looking everywhere I can think of and I just seem to find cost information for the onsite chairs.

Can anyone help us? Thanks!

 

[SueM in MN]

I don't know for sure the width of the WDW rental wheelchairs because they don't list it, but a standard width wheelchair is usually 18 inches wide. i know the parks have limited numbers of the wider ones, so if 18 isn't wide enough, I guess you might need those phone numbers to call one of the off-site places.

Extra wide can be 20, 22 or 24 inches wide (probably 20 inches is most common for extra wide).

Good luck and hope you have a great trip.

 

[hematite153]

I don't know for sure the width of the WDW rental wheelchairs because they don't list it, but a standard width wheelchair is usually 18 inches wide.

Thanks, Sue.

18 inches is wide enough and seems to be the standard from the offsite places in Orlando. However, we have encountered locations that consider 16 inch chairs normal--not sure why--and those are not wide enough.

The place we rent from at home seems to consider anything from 17-20 inches as standard (they don't seem to differentiate within these widths unless you make a specific request). 17 inches works in a transport chair but is tight in a full chair.

If we can find confirmation that wdw uses 18 inch chairs then we'll probably risk trying for the resort chair. But, if they are narrower, then we'll probably rent from home and make a request for 18-20 inches (i.e. we'd like to avoid the 17 inch chairs).

 

[SueM in MN]

Thanks, Sue.

18 inches is wide enough and seems to be the standard from the offsite places in Orlando. However, we have encountered locations that consider 16 inch chairs normal--not sure why--and those are not wide enough.

The place we rent from at home seems to consider anything from 17-20 inches as standard (they don't seem to differentiate within these widths unless you make a specific request). 17 inches works in a transport chair but is tight in a full chair.

If we can find confirmation that wdw uses 18 inch chairs then we'll probably risk trying for the resort chair. But, if they are narrower, then we'll probably rent from home and make a request for 18-20 inches (i.e. we'd like to avoid the 17 inch chairs).

I think at one time the standard was 16 inches, so the older ones might be that width.
The newer standard that places have been going with is 18 inches and some even have 20 as their standard.
That might be why there is so much variation.