Category: Advice

This post has been written by Chris Cammis, Disability Trainer & Advisor at Disabled Living. He shares his advice for booking a cruise holiday when you have a disability, to help you make the most of your experience.

This form of travel has become a firm favourite for many disabled travellers in recent years for obvious reasons. It can be great fun but I do recommend that you read on to avoid pitfalls and enhance your enjoyment.

Before booking, check the cruise line website to see if there are deck plans of the boat you are interested in. You may be given dimensions of rooms, location of accessible rooms, important distances and so on which will be relevant to your planning. Generally, newer and bigger boats have better facilities.

For instance, some (smaller) river cruise line boats seem to have no adapted cabins at all although they advertise heavily in the older traveler market, whereas ocean cruisers generally will have them. It’s often a balance where the smaller boat has more of a friendly environment but may not have the physical adaptations you need.

If confronted about the lack of facilities they will often say they are not registered in the UK so do not need to comply with UK legislation.

Generally the craft are physically very comfortable – level, smooth floors, plenty of lifts, lots of space, well lit, warm and so on – perfect for most of us.

The main issue I find is getting off the boat at each destination. You are at the mercy of tides, dock structure, depth of water and timetables. The boat may not know exactly where it is docking until told at the last minute due to other traffic and you may only be able to reach land on a small ferry boat from the liner as the gangplank may be very steep and/or very narrow.

If transferring by a small boat, it’s ultimately up to the captain whether he will risk danger to you and his crew trying the transfer. Sometimes there may be a choice of different size boats taking people from different points on board. So I advise that you do your research. I’ve often found most staff don’t know all the details. So you may miss out if you rely on them completely.

In Vietnam only one member of senior staff knew there were two sizes of boats going ashore from two parts of the ship. And I needed to be escorted through the staff-only decks to one particular boat so I could get on via a level gangplank rather than by negotiating a precarious flight of steps.

Once off you will need transport. A question to consider – is it accessible? The cruise company will have various buses for various trips which you can book online beforehand or on-board and pay extra for. These buses are virtually never accessible.

If you comment they will say they are in a foreign country and have no control over access rules in that country (although we all know the buses would all be made accessible overnight if the cruise company said only accessible ones would do).

Bigger companies may lay on accessible trips with appropriate transport (if they have enough takers). So do your research online beforehand so that you can ask any specific questions.

I have to confess that I had a wonderful accessible trip around St Petersburg. There were only two disabled passengers (including me) with their companions. There was a minibus which had access to everywhere and a driver on a mission to show us all the delights of the city. We saw all the standard sights and more without queuing and spent the rest of the voyage telling everyone else what they had missed.

Staff on-board are often hazy here. They really want everyone to go on their basic trips so they make lots of extra money. They don’t have a vested interest in doing lots of disability research for one or two disabled travellers who can’t go on the official trips.

Don’t despair, there is always a way. The popular hop on-hop off double deckers which take tourists around many cities of the world are always accessible. If they cover your destination, they will be on the dockside so buy your 24 hour or 48 hour ticket and you will be taken to every tourist destination available.

Alternatively, you could book a taxi on your own. Just discuss where you want to go, when you have to be back and shake on a price. If language is an issue (very rare with English) the driver will have pictures of destinations so you can just point.

Bigger destinations will have independent travel companies so you can book online. Check itineraries, interpreters, costs, times, and difficulties then go ahead. It doesn’t have to go through the cruise company.

If you do make your own arrangements, make sure you have the right visas etc. Normally the staff on-board will organise the appropriate paperwork. But if you are going off-piste you might need to make your own arrangements well beforehand. Russia and Cambodia come to mind.

Don’t get me wrong – I love cruising. It works beautifully for me as a wheelchair user. But my partner and I do put in the hours online beforehand to make the on-land part work well.

Would you like to share an accessible travel experience on Disabled Living’s blog? Get in touch by sending an email to: info@disabledliving.co.uk or call us on 0161 214 4590.

This post has been written by Chris Cammiss, Disability Trainer & Advisor at Disabled Living. Chris has been a wheelchair user since childhood. After graduating from The University of Manchester, he was a secondary schoolteacher for 28 years. Chris now delivers Disability Awareness training and conducts Access Audits over the UK. He travels widely and has accumulated a lifetime’s experience in this environment. He shares his advice for travelling on an aeroplane with your disability.

Flying has become much easier over the years with international guidelines bringing some sort of consistency to the process. However each country, airport and airline has its own individual variations.

Here is some advice from Chris to those with disabilities who are travelling in the future.

When booking the flights either online or in store, check that your disability is recorded. Also, make sure the precise nature of the help required is noted. It is important to consider possible circumstances.

Can a wheelchair user walk at all? This is necessary for ordering the aisle chair for use on-board. Do you need help around the airport? Can you walk unaided for any distance? Do you need a buggy? Can you see at all? You’re entitled to all sorts of help all round the airport and onto the plane itself.

These questions may seem intrusive but the precise level of help needed is what’s important. Members of staff are usually trained to be sensitive here.

When checking in, make sure this information has been noted. At this point check-in staff should send a message through to the assistance point, making your arrival known. It’s useful at this point to go to the assistance point yourself to double-check. Check-in staff often ring the assistance point but if the phone is engaged they may forget to ring later or may be too busy, so the assistance team could think that you haven’t turned up.

At check-in, you can get a travel tag for your wheelchair, walking frame etc if it is to be loaded aboard to make sure it doesn’t get mixed up with the airport’s own equipment. This is not part of your baggage weight allowance.

I don’t personally find it helpful to pre-book seats. Different airlines have different policies on placing disabled travellers in aisle seats, non-aisle seats, seating at a bulkhead, avoiding bulkheads and so on so I leave it to them.

If you are to transfer from an aisle chair check if the seat arm will lift to aid smooth transfer. Usually they do but not always. Each aircraft is different internally.

There will always be an aisle chair available to get you to your seat in the aircraft if you need it. However, it may be the property of the airport therefore; there may not be an aisle chair on the plane in flight although this is best practice.  Check, especially for long flights. Consider urine bottles or similar to use at your seat. You may also wish to consider using your wheelchair cushion to sit on for extra comfort on long flights.

All this may seem fairly obvious but I was once helped onto a 10 hour flight to Cuba to be told after take-off that the plane was a double decker, the toilet was on the other floor to me and they didn’t carry an aisle chair – no contingency plan at all.

En route to New Zealand I asked for the aisle chair and appropriate assistance to then be asked, “What? You can’t walk at all?” as if it was my fault that I was putting the staff to so much trouble. I mentioned this to the Head Steward who saw unemployment staring him in the face and was deluged for the rest of the flight with every expensive gift they could think of.

Assistance staff will be trained, but this could have been by watching a 20 min DVD. You will encounter a range of people – many women as this is seen as a caring role and men close to retirement as the role is seen as less physical than other roles, so you may not be helped by the big strong tough guy who would make the whole process easier – far from it.

You may also find yourself transferring in a space with no support, limited help, but lots of concerned onlookers and so on. Your companion may find themselves overwhelmed – carrying their own luggage, yours as well, maybe a cushion or similar, passports and boarding passes. They become invisible as you receive all the help.

Once on board you should be on the Steward’s list so staff should make themselves known to you, asking what they can do.

Knowing how roughly luggage can be treated in loading/unloading and how tricky turbulence can be regular disabled travellers will often not take their best/most expensive wheelchair or other equipment with them on planes. It’s hard to give statistics as people often won’t claim damages but I’ve had two bad breakages of my wheelchair in the last ten years – one wrecked the footplate, and the other twisted the frame.

Each could have compromised the holiday. Luckily we were able to improvise in each case. You could check coverage in your travel insurance if you are concerned.

Equipment in the hold should be delivered to you at the plane entrance as you get off if that’s what you require, rather than at baggage retrieval, as I once experienced.

You may have to wait to be helped off a plane. If staff have several disabled passengers to help or several flights have arrived close together or the terminal is huge, there could be a problem. But it is a legal requirement that airline staff can’t all leave the plane until all passengers are off so you’ll always have someone to talk to.

If all else fails do what they do in Peru. On take-off they cross themselves and after a successful landing they burst into applause. I hope this helps and happy flying!

Would you like to share your experience of travelling on an aeroplane with your disability? Get in touch with us via email: info@disabledliving.co.uk or call us on 0161 214 4590.