Travel by taking a cruise

“Taking a Cruise would be my dream vacation, but my children and I have Mito.”

Some families find cruises a nice alternative to vacations on land. In general, the ships themselves are accessible and there are wheelchairs on board if you want to borrow one. Most ships also have disabled rooms. Many shore excursions are easy for the disabled to do and there is plenty of time to rest onboard the ship. There is always a medical staff on board the ship if needed also.

Be sure to call the cruise line ahead of time to find out their accessibility to travelers with disabilities. Also, be sure they know of your medical conditions and whether they will need any sort of treatment while on the ship.

• If you need a refrigerator for medications, be sure the stateroom has that available.
• If you require medical supplies to be shipped, make sure you have a contact person and an exact location of where they will need to be shipped to.
• Ask that the supplies be shipped to arrive at the port the day of the cruise and be sure that your supplies are onboard the ship before it leaves the port.
• Before the ship leaves the port, you may also want to count the medical supplies or go down the inventory list to be sure that everything is accounted for.

One family’s experience:

We did a two week trip to Alaska with Princess Cruise lines. This took the whole heat issue out of the trip. One week was spent on land and one week on a cruise ship. Princess did a fantastic job organizing all the handicapped accessible transfers/transportation, modified activities so our daughter could still go, and allowed us to ship our medical supplies ahead to the cruise ship. They had our medical supplies waiting in our room when we boarded the ship. They understood the need to make sure we had what we needed for a week before the cruise departure. Our first week was spent on a land tour and again they allowed us to ship our first week’s supplies to the first lodge so we would not have to take it on the plane.

After the trip was over, Princess took our leftover supplies and had them shipped home for us. They were very accommodating. Each night the cabin steward came to our room to see if we needed extra linens, water, trash bags, etc. to accommodate our daughter.