Well as you have started this new topic....thought I'd ask this possibly silly question. Is there a limit to the number of disabled passengers, cruise lines will accept....due to health & safety concerns ? Is there actually a site that says what each cruise lines limit is ? regards jack
Posts: 239 | Location: uk | Registered: July 09, 2007
Good question, Jack. I'd guess it depends on the severity of the disabilities. Obviously if a ship has 100 motorized chair passengers aboard, it would tax the crew's abilities in an emergency much more than if the number were 20. And then on the other hand they have to tread lightly else find themselves in trouble with the government for discrimination.
I do know that at my place of employment - a federal installation - we have to have X number of handicapped parking spaces based on the total number of employees. Handicapped slots are added when our workforce increases in size, and vice versa. But on any given day, not every person with a handicapped decal on their car is guaranteed a special parking slot. Perhaps the same thing goes with the number of handicapped cabins on ships, and along with that the number of significantly disabled passengers.
BTW, I have a quadriplegic niece, a good friend who is a double amputee (both legs), and one of our best employees is paralyzed from the chest down. And of course my wife spent much of the past year in a wheelchair or worse, so I am not looking at this without some level of understanding for the disabled.
I too wish I know the correct answer. A standard part of my booking process is to always ask about special needs, whatever they may be. There is a fixed number of wheelchair accessible cabins but many people confined to a wheelchair book regular cabins regularly. Some because the categories they want have no more openings and some for other reasons. I don't pry too much but I do notify the cruiseline if special needs are present (unless the client asks me not to, which happens more than you'd imagine). Most of the lines have a form they require whether or not an accessible cabin is chosen. There must be a reason for such notification requests.
Where I work it has become a large enough segment of the cruising world we have a seperate Dept trained just for special needs bookings.
I have one big pet peave in this area. You'd be shocked how many clients with no such need for a wheelchair accessible cabin have discovered they have larger bathroom (for turning radius) and are often larger than other staterooms in the same category. We get calls regularly asking for these cabins by able bodied clients. Much like you often see abuses of handicapped parking spaces. Some lines are finally cracking down and requiring the forms before they'll release these cabins but some lines have a first come first served basis for booking these.
I can't stand it when people abuse the disability "things" such as your example of the cabins, and man, those parking spaces! We have employees who I know are not disabled but they have a spouse or other relative who is, and so they use that person's handicapped placard so they can get a parking spot up close to the plant. It galls the hell out of me but our security people can't/won't do anything about it and tell us the TVA Police are the only ones who can. Of course, the closest TVA Police outpost is many miles away and they aren't going to make a long trip just to issue a parking ticket.
Aren't they supposed to patrol the parking areas? Our pd is suppose to, but most of the time they're busy on their wireless internet. Wonder what they're surfing for?
