I traveled with my husband and three young children, 12, 8, and 3. I had cruised ten years ago with RCI, but this was the first time with my children. I was a little worried because my oldest son has cerebral palsy and is in a power wheelchair. On the ship, we were treated very well and the staff was very accommodating. There was plenty of room in our accessible cabin, which slept 5, in the hallways as long as the housekeeping carts stayed on one side of the hallway, and throughout the dining and entertainment areas of the boat. The elevators were a little tricky, especially during high traffic times. Just a heads up, the center elevators are the busiest, the foreward and aft elevators less busy. It may be worth driving to the front or back of the boat for these elevators during busy times (like after the fireworks).

For port activities, our two stops were at Freeport and Disney's private island, Castaway Cay. My boys wanted to go to Atlantis to go to the aquariums and water park. Since a power chair is not allowed inside of the water park (but fine in the aquariums and rest of grounds), we brought a manual chair (Convaid stroller) as a checked piece of luggage in a travel bag and chose to use that chair that day. It is collapsible, which helped with transfer options from the boat to Atlantis. I never could get assistance with booking accessible transfers with Disney, so we chose to set it up on our own. We bought our passes through "Bahamas Day Pass" (http://www.bahamasdaypass.com/) and they worked fine. We actually saved money because Disney was trying to charge for my 3 year old, but his admission in Atlantis was free (they charge 4 and up). This site seemed to only charge what it would cost at the gate and we could buy them in advance. For transfers, I am pleased to say that we were bombarded with taxi drivers wanted to cram my son in to any vehicle they could, but we went with arrangements by an accessible van company, Gerard Lewis (gerardblewis@hotmail.com), Owner, Courteous Transfers and Tours (http://courteoustaxibahamas.com/). He seemed to be able to transport power or manual chairs. Costs varied depending on what type of vehicle was required, but all seemed reasonable.

For Castaway Cay, my boys didn't want to get off the boat so we didn't. To explain, I need to comment about how packed the pools and water slide gets. It's REALLY packed and this was slow season. It was so packed that while passengers were on the boat, we could not get a chair near the pool, let alone try to maneuver my disabled son into a pool. BUT when everyone was off the boat at Castaway Cay, we pretty much had the pool deck and slides to ourselves. It was nice. I noticed there was another family with a son that had a disability and they did the same thing. We live in Florida, so we didn't really miss the day on their island, but really enjoyed their pool facilities on the boat without the crush. Read more