One of the main reasons why a person with disability may choose to book a cruise for their holiday is for the ease of travel. This could be for several reasons – eliminating commuting through an airport and dealing with long flights, packing and unpacking each time you change destinations and having to communicate with various suppliers to check if they offer accessible facilities or not.
With a cruise, you unpack only once, your accessible accommodation has been booked far in advance with a guarantee that you will not have to worry about whether you can access your room or bathroom, and most importantly, the staff will be aware of your needs.
The only time that you will need to be extra careful when booking a cruise is being aware of the offered itinerary and ports.
Depending on the destination, you will find that some cruise lines have a mixture of ports where they will either dock or tender. Knowing the difference between the two and being able to organise yourself in an advance will make a big difference to your holiday.
If a cruise line is docking at a port, this means that there is a terminal available where you will be able to disembark by the same way that you embarked in your hometown. This allows you to have a bit more flexibility with your time as the crowds move faster, and you can move freely.
Disembarking by tender is handled differently by every cruise line, but it is always at the digression of the Captain. If the Captain decides that weather, sea or tidal conditions are not ideal, the tender disembarkation will be cancelled, and you will unfortunately miss out on that port as your safety is the cruise line’s main concern.
Sometimes in an itinerary, a cruise line either does not have access to the pier or terminal, or due to tide is unable to get close enough to disembark its’ guests. A ship can anchor as far as 1km away from shore, which is why disembarkation is done by “tender”. A tender means that all guests are to disembark by lifeboats which are used to ferry passengers from the ship to the shore.
It is important to note that regardless of the method of disembarkation, preference is always given to guests who have an off-shore excursion as they must meet a guide by a specific time. If you have given the cruise line plenty of notice of your assistance requirements, every cruise line will do their best to give you priority access to disembarking your cruise.
However, when disembarking via tender, you will experience a greater waiting time due to having to wait for the life boats to make their return trip with guests to shore. If you want to guarantee being one of the first to disembark on tender days, we recommend booking in for a shore excursion. The process is very easy – you will be given a coloured ticket and you’ll embark a life boat once your colour has been called out.
The other important thing to note for tender days, is that you are unable to explore at leisure. Your embarking and disembarking times are based around on when the life boats are doing their trips between the shore and the ship. On days where you disembark directly onto a pier, it is very easy to explore at your own pace as you will get the opportunity to embark and disembark throughout the day.
While you are on-board your cruise and are unsure of the process, simply ask one of the many helpful staff members who are there to support you. If you advised the cruise line about your disability and assistance required in advance, everything should run smoothly for you on each port day. You can simply sit back and relax.
The cruises I have been on recently won’t let wheelchairs onto tenders.
When you consider the size of some passengers, compared to the crew members it is understandable that it is risky for both passenger & crew.
How true the article…..we were on Holland America and heading into Greenland - a tender port. They had a wheelchair accessible tender, the sky was blue without even a slight breeze, the sea was like glass and some ‘safety officer’ who we never met deemed it too dangerous for my husband (a T2 Paraplegic with good upper body strength) to leave the ship. Next time we may not give them any warning that we are coming as there were plenty of people they had to practically carry on and off the tender. Although when we complained, they said that no one was carried. When questioned on why they had a wheelchair accessible tender that they would not allow a wheelchair into, they said that if he could walk there wouldn’t be a problem. I wrote several letters of complaint and in the end we were offered a discount on our next cruise as a way of saying sorry.
I have read your blog and really like the content, keep up the posts as I will be back.
On P & O we were originally scheduled to dock at Circular Quay in Sydney but ended up anchoring offshore. We have family in Sydney & really wanted to see them. Tendering proved to be an adventure in terror. P & O requires folding wheelchairs - OK I have one - and you have to walk onto the tender. The crew helped but the boat was bobbing up and down & the ship going the other way. I made it but won’t attempt it again. We had similar circumstances on the return trip.