Accessible cruising to Alaska on the Norwegian Encore

 

    Cruising with a wheelchair seems simple, you're just doing what everyone else does, but on wheels, right? Wrong.  What may seem simple can actually be VERY difficult when you consider that even a small step will block your path, or the door to your cabin may not be wide enough for your wheelchair to get through. This is my experience on the Norwegian Encore, your mileage may vary.

    The boarding procedure in Seattle was simple and being in my chair meant that we got to skip almost every line.  We did get the slowest, most confused check-in agent, but that's ok I think we still saved a bunch of time over all.  I didn't have any trouble with the ramps, but I made my husband stay right behind me when they were steeper.  I had a bad experience on a Carnival cruise in January with a ramp being too steep and I'm extra careful now!  There were elevators available pretty quickly any time steps were present and it was pretty easy to maneuver around the boarding area. 

    Our room wasn't ready until 2:30pm and we were aboard by 11am so we had plenty of time to kill.  It seemed that the only lunch available was in the cafeteria (Garden Cafe) - but it turned out later that we could have gone to a sit down restaurant if we'd waited till noon.  It pays to ask at the restaurant instead of random crew stationed in busy elevator bays!  Navigating the Garden cafe was tricky, but we'd done it before so we had an idea of what to do.  My husband held my plate and filled it as we went, he'd call out what things were if I couldn't see them (which was most things because my vision is so impaired). Once my plate was full we found a table we wanted (I like sitting by the window in a quiet area). We were on the ship pretty early so there was TONS of available tables.  This would not be the case later in the cruise. My husband would pull a chair out for me and I'd roll right up the table.  Then he'd grab me a beverage from the nearby station and go fill his plate. It worked out pretty well and there were so many tasty options! The downside of the Garden cafe is that cross contamination is almost guaranteed and you're most likely to catch a nasty norovirus here because not everyone practices healthy food handling and the crew can only do so much.  We don't tend to eat in the buffet on cruises very often if we can avoid it.

    After lunch we headed to the spa because we had planned to purchase thermal suite passes. The Thermal Suite is an area of the spa filled with treatment pools and rooms like saunas and steam rooms.  They even have a snow room, but I chose to bypass that one!  I parked my chair at the desk and walked through the thermal suite on our tour because it's not super accessible.  I guess you could do it if you had to, but you wouldn't want to wheel into the sauna or steam room and I don't remember there being a chair lift for the therapy pool so I'm not sure what you'd do in there.  I either walked to the thermal suite or parked my chair out front when visiting.

    When the announcement came that our rooms were ready we headed there and I was so surprised!  Our room was down a long hall and it was lined with luggage making it difficult if not impossible to wheel past.  My husband went ahead of me and moved larger pieces making it possible for me to pass.  It was handy that he did because he realized that some of our luggage was way down the hall from our room - something that's never happened with us on NCL before.  Later in the cruise the hall was often littered with cleaning carts that would have to be moved in order for me to get by, so not a small issue.  Get a room nearest an elevator bank if possible to avoid hallways!  When we got to the room we encountered another new experience, my chair wouldn't fit through the door!  I didn't get an accessible room (I'm sure it would have fit then) because none were available when we booked the cruise, but we'd been in several regular rooms with the chair and not had any issues.  It had always been a snug fit, but it was doable.  This time it definitely was not!  So we had to fold the chair up and have my husband lift it into the room - not insignificant since it weighs nearly 80 pounds. There was plenty of room to store the chair folded up at the end of the couch which was nice and made the room very usable. Again, if you need to stay in your chair, you will HAVE to get an accessible room.

    As far as the rest of the ship goes, I left my chair in the room when we went to the shows because the only wheelchair spots in the theater were in the back at the top and I wouldn't have been able to see anything.  Everything else required stairs.  The casino was pretty accessible, I just needed someone to pull out the chair for me before I pulled in.  Most of the shopping is in the hall so that was fine, I would have had trouble in some of their smaller boutiques but I wasn't interested in them anyways. We did a wine tasting at the cellar and that went pretty well, I just needed my husband to run and rinse my glass in between types. Otherwise I was able to manage on my own.  The observation lounge is both very accessible and not very depending on what you want to do.  The main path is wide and easily navigable.  Where you'll run into trouble is the seating areas near the windows.  The furniture gets moved around here by the passengers so much that you'd have trouble getting a wheelchair through.  Again, having my husband with me he could move whatever was needed. This was our first cruise with both of us being Platinum Lattitude members (their loyalty program) which entitled us to a behind the scenes tour of the ship.  We were informed that it was NOT accessible and had to repeatedly assure the person booking us that I would be able to walk it. Again, if you were not able to walk short distances or do stairs you would be unable to participate in this. I did fine with the ramps getting on and off the ship, though I had my husband handy in case of emergency.  I was able to sit in the restaurants just fine as long as someone pulled out a chair for me.

    Finally, the hardest part of cruising in a wheelchair - the elevators!  Under normal circumstances, elevator banks on cruise ships are tricky to navigate, but when you can't just slide into a small space and have to wait for a mostly empty car you'll be waiting a while!  Sometimes we would see 5-10 cars open and not have room for me, especially when we were in port and people were trying to get off the ship. Here's the trick, go the opposite direction from everyone else, regardless of where you're trying to end up.  If everyone is trying to go down, go up.  Eventually the elevator will reach the top and have to turn around.  Yes, it takes a little longer, but it's definitely doable.  Utilizing this strategy we never spent more than 5 minutes waiting for an elevator.

Here's the thing: If you're going on a cruise in a wheelchair you're going to need a lot of help.  My cousin has done this on her own and found that people were more than happy to help wherever she needed it, but I was so glad to have my husband with me so I had the help ready at hand!