We recently received word of some fairly lousy attitudes towards accessibility on holiday cruises. Margaret contacted us with two stories of cruise companies which were a bit of a let down in this area.
Firstly, this is what happened when she called up to book with a firm called Cruise and Maritime:
“I was making a telephone booking on their ship Discovery, a ship we had travelled on a few years ago when it was owned by Voyages of Discovery. I ascertained that the grade of cabin we wanted was available and asked if there was a separate bath and shower as my husband is unable to use a shower over the bath. At this stage I was asked if my husband used a wheelchair. When I said “Yes”, I was told he would not be able to use the wheelchair around the ship and that he would not be given any help on getting on and off the ship because of “health and safety”. When I queried why, I was told the ships passageways were too narrow! That was the end of our conversation.
“As I said we had previously travelled on Discovery and admittedly at that stage my husband was not in a wheelchair but utilised crutches and I do not remember areas being very narrow. This company offer disabled cabins but we prefer to upgrade to a suite and as long as there is a walk-in shower my husband can manage very well.”
That seems pretty poor attempt to make things accessible, as far as we see it. But are accessible cruises out there? Saga for instance, the company for those more advanced in years, must surely facilitate for the less physically able…. erm, no!
“Last year we went on a Saga cruise on the Saga Sapphire. We were astounded to be told that, because of health and safety, staff could not assist in getting on and off the ship and were not allowed to help with the wheelchair. We have never encountered this problem before, having travelled with American owned ships where the staff bend over backwards to help. Their gangways adapt to enable wheelchairs to be pushed on an off the ship and they even help with getting on and off tender ships. We wrongly assumed that Saga would be well set up for helping disabled passengers, catering as they do for the over 50s, but this certainly is not the case. In fact the only public disabled toilets on the ship were on Deck 5, the restaurants are on Deck 9!!
“To be honest we are now very reluctant to look at other cruises although it would appear that companies such as P&O are very good at catering for the disabled. However their ships are rather large and we are used to cruising on small ships (up to 700 passengers). If you know of any cruise lines, going out of the UK, as we don’t relish flying any more, I would be very pleased to learn of these.
“I don’t know if you have had similar comments from other disabled people but would welcome your comments on the matter.”
First of all, we want to thank Margaret for her comments on her experiences with cruise companies. It sounds incredibly frustrating, especially since it seems to us that, with minor adaptations, a cruise holiday could probably be quite an accessible trip. The health and safety excuse, in particular, comes across as being rather bewildering. Surely it’s not best for anybody’s health or safety if you have to try and board the ship yourself and fall into the water!
Unfortunately, we don’t have any veteran cruisers here at BBS Towers so our personal experience is limited, although we have heard more positive things about the bigger, American cruise ships, which would reinforce what Margaret says. We’re going to have to defer to readers on this and ask anyone reading if you have any advice?
In addition we’re also going to contact the relevant companies via email and Twitter to ask them to explain why they can’t be more helpful towards wheelchair users. We’d appreciate if any readers with Twitter could support this by retweeting our comments.