A Week in Orlando: Part 3 Renting a power wheelchair

I arrived at my Resort after the delivery hours of Randy's Mobility, the company I chose to rent my power wheelchair from. They were kind enough to drop it at my Resort so it would be ready when I arrived. What I did not anticipate was how difficult it would be to figure out on my own. I had to make two phone calls to their incredibly helpful staff, the first one to locate the chair, and the second one to figure out how to turn it on. When I located my chair, it was plugged in and charging outside of the arcade. The seat back was folded down, presumably for transport, and it took me longer than it probably should have to figure out how to flip the seat up using a lever very similar to one on a car seat. Once I had that up, I unplugged the charger and turned on the chair, but when I moved the joystick nothing happened! I tried everything I could think of, but probably because I was unfamiliar with this chair, and power chairs in general, I didn't realize that the charger was plugged into the joystick unit and that it had to be unplugged before the chair would operate. I learned this from my second call to Randy's Mobility. I am happy to report that the person I interacted with, Eddie, was incredibly friendly, helpful, and patient with me and never made me feel like I was a bother. It probably didn't help that I was trying to learn to use a power chair for the first time when I was exhausted from a long day of airline travel and trying to push my luggage as well! 

I had been assigned a room at the farthest possible location from the lobby, which I'll discuss in a later post, so I had quite a bit of opportunity for practice. I learned quickly that carpet and alternative path construction, like bricks or cobblestone, are not a good match for either the chair or the luggage. Just a few feet into an area paved with brick I realized it was not a good choice, and I reversed out of there, taking a longer path that had a regular sidewalk. Which reminds me, one of the things I really really appreciated about the power chair I used was that it did not beep when I was backing up. It's socially challenging enough for me to be learning how to use this thing without drawing tons of attention to myself. On the way to my room I realized that even though I was not walking and even though my luggage had wheels, it didn't mean that it was going to be easy for me to physically maneuver them. I barely made it to my room because my shoulder was in so much pain from pushing the luggage, and I could not switch arms because the joystick was on the right side. In hindsight, instead of going straight to my room as the My Disney Experience App suggested, I should have stopped at Bell services and asked them for help with my luggage. I thought this set up with the power chair and the rolling luggage would work just fine, but it was harder than I thought, so I would like to brainstorm some potential alternatives for the future. Perhaps I can even find a way to bungee my luggage to my chair so I'm not having to hold it with my arm? 

I was pleasantly surprised by the maneuverability and power of the chair I rented. I think it was from Pride Mobility? It did just fine on hills and ramps and was able to navigate over bumps and dips satisfactorily. It did just fine, that is, until the battery unexpectedly died. There were maybe 10 notches on the battery level gauge and buy 2:00 in the afternoon I had only gone down two notches. I decided I would try to locate a charging spot at the next Resort I visited to give it a little more juice, but unfortunately the battery died entirely before I was able to make it to the main Resort building. That means it went from eight notches to zero in very little distance. When I called Randy's mobility for assistance, they explained to me that 6 to 7 hours is the expected battery life of this particular chair and it would take 8 hours to charge it back to full battery. I was not at all aware of that, or I would have planned my day very differently. As it was, I was stuck at the Port Orleans Resort for an hour trying to get enough battery in the chair to make it back to my Resort. Between charging time and travel time, this stole about 2 hours of my day, and for the rest of the day I was without a power chair so my travel was significantly limited. Eddie, from Randy's mobility, offered to trade out the chair on the next morning for one with a newer battery, and I accepted the offer.

 Sadly, though, I lost another hour and a half Tuesday morning waiting to get the chair switched out. First, I didn't realize that my ringer was still off on my phone and Eddie had attempted to contact me to confirm the chair switch out, so I lost about 15 minutes to that because it took me that long to realize I had missed a call. Then, I don't know if he hit traffic or what, but it took him more than 45 minutes to get to me. He said he tried to call me, but the number he had down was completely wrong. If I had known I would lose another hour and a half to waiting, I might have just risked the chair battery for the day, but hindsight is 20/20 and there's no way I could have known. At least the chair battery lasted me until the required drop off time of 4:00 p.m. that day.

I'll cover in my next post how the chair did with Disney Resort Transportation.

Here's the thing: I'm really glad I took the opportunity to rent this chair. I learned a lot about using a power wheelchair and it gave me the ability to go farther, see more, and do more than I could have without it. I would recommend Randy's Mobility because of their prices and customer service, as long as you are aware of the limitations of the device you are renting, ie a 6 to 7 hour battery life, and you only attempt to coordinate a meetup when you have plenty of room in your schedule.