Is Las Vegas Wheelchair Friendly?

 As unbelievable as it is, it turns out that not everyone loves cruising as much as I do! My husband is one of those "not everyone"s. He's a great sport and more than willing to come along with me on my adventures, but it's not really his thing. What does he like to do? Head to a city and just go out exploring. I so appreciate him joining me on cruises lately and I wanted to meet him where he's at. So I set about finding a city we could get to that I could get around in my wheelchair well. This matters a lot because I can't get more than a few blocks without the chair these days. I have two permanently sprained ankles and walking is more than a little difficult. 

 Until you have to be aware, most people don't recognize what it's like to try to get around a place in a wheelchair. Are there good sidewalks? In New Orleans we encountered some terrible ones that had my husband pushing me down the middle of the road! In Antigua, Guatemala the sidewalks were almost too narrow for the chair to navigate and had frequent large chunks missing. Then you have to think about crossing streets and driveways. In order for wheelchairs to be able to navigate this, the sidewalk has to have a cut out, a dip down that brings it to the level of the street. Some places have this, some don't. Next you have to think about stairs. Obviously, you're not going to try to get a wheelchair up and down stairs, so are there ramps around that can get you to places? Do stores have a level entry with a door wide enough to get through? Are the aisles large enough to navigate shopping? Are they adorable little boutiques with two steps to get into and every square inch crammed with stuff? See, I told you, you don't think about these things until you have to. 

 One of the places that I had heard was very wheelchair friendly and accessible was Las Vegas. It's a newer city so many of those things are more factored into the city planning. In older places like Boston you'll run into a lot of cobblestone and plenty of historic places that are full of stairs and no elevators. So, I made a few plans and off we went! 

 First, I have to give a thank you to God, because my wheelchair actually made it through the flight without getting damaged! We landed in Las Vegas, picked up my wheelchair on the jet bridge, and headed to the terminal. There we were shocked to find that the baggage claim and exit was on another level and ALL of the elevators heading there were broken. We only found this out after going from one to another down the entire length of the terminal. At the end we finally found a staff member who directed us half-way back down the terminal to an elevator that went to another terminal and would get us on the right level to get to the baggage claim. There was no signage about this detour anywhere, just signs saying each elevator was temporarily out of order. We wound our way through the airport and eventually found our way to the rideshare pickup.

 I am pleased to report that both Uber and Lyft have been amazing at transporting my chairs. I only bring them when I have my husband to lift them into the back and arrange them as I am unable to do so. I'm not sure what people that need this assistance to as I don't believe the drivers will lift something 80 lbs? But our drivers have never complained and have been willing to be creative in baggage placement so we could fit everything in. We drove the strangest, most circuitous route from the airport to our hotel, but I guess that's just the way the streets work here?

 We're staying at a WorldMark timeshare, Las Vegas Boulevard, a membership to which my fabulous Sister-In-Law gifted us a long time ago. They are nice because you have a full condo with a complete kitchen and in-room laundry as well as great pools, hot tubs, etc. I thought that we would be coming at just the right time of year where it would be lovely and warm but not too hot, as I know it gets as they head into summer. I was wrong. It rained our first two full days here and until yesterday the temperature was so cold my husband and I both needed our winter jackets outside. That's ok, though. We brought plenty to do indoors and at least the pool is pretty to look at! I do feel bad for the three lifeguards they have around it that are bundled up in their winter gear watching an empty pool though!

 

As I mentioned, I planned this trip for us to have a home base and go out exploring around the city in my husband's preferred traveling style. I had read that parking was terrible in Las Vegas, and it is. It also seemed that there were multiple options for getting around without having your own car, so I didn't rent us one. We took an uber to our hotel, as I mentioned, and since then we've been walking or taking a shuttle or bus to wherever we're going. The hotel has a shuttle that operates once and hour and takes you to the Excalibur hotel on the strip. That's nice, and we took it on our first day, but there are limited seats so you have to get there pretty early and it only goes to the one place so you have to walk up to four and a half miles after getting off it to get where you're going. I was very pleased that they did actually have wheelchair access on the shuttle as I was told they didn't when I called ahead. We were just hoping we could carry it on, folded up, but they had a whole lift and everything. The busses are pretty good as well. They have a phone app that helps you buy a pass and another app that helps you plan your trip and gives you an accurate time estimate that the bus will arrive at your stop. Honestly, though, Google maps did just as good of a job and I already had that, so you don't need the transit app. Each bus had a ramp for me to board and an area to park my chair. Sometimes the driver had to make people move for me, which I felt bad about, but there's not a lot I can do about it besides apologize. On some busses they would secure my chair with hooks, and on others there was an arm that came down and kept the chair in place, although both primarily relied on my chair's brakes. I liked the hooks better as I got to ride facing forward and see where we were going. 

 In order to get to the strip we had to take two busses, one heading towards town and another that just goes up and down the strip (called the Deuce). I'll admit, I was pretty sad when riding the Deuce because it's a double decker bus with cool views upstairs that I couldn't see and I had to ride backwards and the windows around me were covered so I didn't get to see as much as I'd hoped. But it got me where I needed to go and for a decent price, compared to a rideshare or taxi. It also takes a while, so you have to keep that in mind. To get from our hotel to the end of the strip is a little over 9 miles, but it takes over 90 minutes to get there. For you math lovers, that's 6 miles an hour, just a little faster than my power chair can go. All that time takes a toll that I hadn't accounted for. I figured we'd head out from our hotel, hop a quick ride, and spend a few hours each day on the strip exploring. I hadn't thought about the fact that it would take a few hours to get to and from the hotel and that this time would drain my energy as well. That left little in my tank to do the exploring once we got there, but thankfully I was in my chair so I didn't have to spend much energy. Yet again, I'm super grateful to my amazing husband who pushed me all over town!

 Las Vegas is, indeed, a newer city. So new that there is construction everywhere! Where there are sidewalks they are mostly great, although we ran into a few tiled ones that were pretty rough to roll over. It looks pretty, but the designers probably didn't try riding over them on a wheelchair! I said "Where there are sidewalks" because they aren't everywhere. Across the street from our hotel for example. We went to "The Bar" across the street, yes that's the name of the establishment, a couple of days ago for dinner and it was tricky because to get there you have to navigate along the side of a highway (speed limit 45 but I don't think anyone was driving that slow) with little to no shoulder. Also, with all the construction downtown, sidewalks are not guaranteed everywhere.

 The city planners also thought it would be a great idea to have all these pedestrian bridges to get across streets instead of crosswalks. I'm sure it cuts down on car vs human accidents, but again, I'm not sure they tried out their design with a wheelchair. Most of the bridges have at least one set of escalators on each side for able-bodied people to get easily up and down from them. In theory, each set of escalators also came with an elevator but, you guessed it, at least half of them were out of commission. 

 When we encountered this we would either have to walk a few blocks down to the next one to see if it worked or attempt to navigate the maze of a shopping center or casino on the same corner to see if they had a working elevator. We spent nearly ten minutes in a Walgreens with people pointing us here and there to locate one when finally the manager told us they only had a freight elevator, but if we just headed around the corner, the elevator across the street "always worked." Thanks to construction, around the corner was actually about three blocks, but thankfully he was right and we were able to get an elevator that took us up to the bridge level and then we just had to navigate a couple of bridges to finally get across the street. The whole thing took about half an hour, much longer than a crosswalk would have. 

 Needless to say, we stayed on our side of the street for the remainder of the day. We've also gotten pretty good at locating elevators in shopping malls! Once you get where you're going, things are pretty easy to navigate. We found the casinos and many of the shops had wide spaces between things that the chair could get through easily. Like I mentioned, most of the sidewalks were pretty good and there were cutouts everywhere we needed them. The power doors were usually one-sided (I'm guessing because they want to keep the air-conditioning in as much as possible) which is tricky to get a chair through, but it worked. Lots of the restaurants and stores didn't have power doors so my husband got pretty good at holding the door open with his foot while he wheeled me in backwards. There were surprisingly few people here that offered to help with the door. We've encountered that a lot more in other places. All of the restaurants we've visited were able to get us a table that worked with the chair and they had gluten free options that worked for me as well.

 So what kind of exploring did we do? Well, we checked out several of the main casinos

 We watched the fountains at the Bellagio. This was particularly interesting as a family decided to perform their wedding ceremony at the same time as the exact fountain show we were watching.

 We visited the Fremont Street Experience. 

And we saw Piff the Magic Dragon! This was a highlight I had been looking forward to ever since my husband saw tickets on sale. We have enjoyed following America's Got Talent (AGT) for many years and Piff was one of our favorite magicians. It doesn't hurt that he has an adorable chihuahua in his act!

 Because the transportation hit me so much more than I had expected, and my Visible tracker strangely stopped counting properly, I ended up overdoing it on a couple of days, so we had to take break days I hadn't expected. On one of them, my husband did push me a mile and a half each way (in 40mph winds no less!) to a wonderful restaurant called the Bootlegger Bistro. The lady at check-in told us it was just a couple of blocks down to the left 😂. It had fun, old-Vegas charm and delicious food! We played games and enjoyed the gas fireplace in our room. It wasn't a bad way to spend a day, but it wasn't what I had expected either.

 So how would I summarize my time in Vegas? I had a nice trip, but then if my husband is with me pretty much anywhere is a good time!

 Would I go back? I don't think so. I mean, it was an interesting place, but I'm not into upscale shopping malls (think Louis Vitton, Prada, Chanel, etc) or wild partying or thrill rides. I enjoy the occassional slot machine, but I can do that in a lot of places. The theming was incredible for each casino/hotel, but it got to be a bit much as you jumped from castles to New York to ancient Rome. And while they were cool, they weren't terribly meaningful, so it felt kind of empty. What I mean by this is with the theming at Disneyland, it's tied to movies, books, memories with my kids. When I see the 100 Acre Woods, I'm not just seeing a cute theme, I'm feeling all the feels from a lifetime of loving Pooh. I'm not hit in the same way by a giant statue fountain of Greek gods.

Here's the Thing: Is Las Vegas Wheelchair accessible? Yes, if you are very, very patient and have plenty of energy. Is it wheelchair friendly? I would have to say no. There are accommodations most places, but you have to work for it. So what place is wheelchair friendly? Just wait until May when I tell you about Disney World!