First the downs.

My disabled husband and I took a 5 day Bahamas cruise on Explorer of the Seas for a little birthday/holiday getaway. It was an interesting adventure just to get started. We originally booked a cruise out of Tampa, but this cruise was cancelled by Royal Caribbean. I discovered this on my own while trying to access some info. I don't know when they were going to inform us. Regardless, they did find us a different cruise out of a different port, on different dates. The itinerary and ship didn't matter, as we were not planning on excursions due to the disability. We were set up with a disabled room, given some OBC , and not charged more even though the cruise was a bit more expensive. In the end the change was good.

Getting on and off was a nightmare. We arrived at the port, dock 6 at 11 am and traffic was backed up. After self parking we got in a whirlwind of disorganized guests waiting to get in the door. No line just masses of people. I tried to give my bags to the porter, but he said they will scan them just inside the door. I wrongly assumed they would then take them and deliver them to our room. MISTAKE. They scanned them but I had to haul them myself until we could get to our cabin 3 hours later. Getting off was also disorganized. We got stuck for 15 minutes in an open doored elevator because we we reached the floor to disembark it was again a mass of people. We eventually got off and because the ship came into dock 10 we had to be bussed to our car at the parking garage at 6. The bus folks were great. Remember all this occurred while I was pulling all our luggage while my husband was in a power chair. Not fun. Read more