Wheelchair Accessibility on Castaway Cay

[ajh88]

We are finally booking a big family cruise (12 total passengers) - looking at a 4 day Bahamas cruise on the Dream for May 2020. I need to book pretty quickly as my parents would like the 1 BR concierge stateroom but need it HC accessible, and from the looks of it, there is only one available.

My mom uses a mobility chair - she does not have the use of one leg, but she can bear weight and transfer with her "good" leg. We would like to try for a cabana at CC, but I have a couple of questions:

1. What is the accessibility situation like? We have had a cabana before (with just the 4 of us), but never had to consider the accessibility aspect.

2. With our party size, should I be trying to book 2 regular cabanas (which I might prefer, ) or the family cabana? I've also never really looked into the family cabana before.

I know we have awhile to figure this out, but I was hoping to get a bit of information if possible.

TIA!!

 

[serenitynow]

Only Cabana #1 is fully accessible with ramps. There are concrete sidewalks around the beach areas and the food, bathrooms and activity areas that are relatively easy for wheelchairs and ECV to navigate. They have sand wheelchairs available for free rentals while on the beach, but they are tough to push. The shuttle/tram on Castaway Cay can accept wheelchairs and ECVs in the very first shuttle car tram.

 

[clten]

As serenitynow indicated, you can get around most of Castaway Cay in a wheelchair - the paths are paved and pretty smooth. The trams do have space on the first car for wheelchairs - if you are going at a busy time, you may have to wait a tram or two (when we went with both my parents in wheelchairs, it took until the 4th tram until we were able to get on. You can walk the path rather than ride the tram but in our case the wheelchair pushers had some limitations of their own.) If you are concierge and going to a cabana, maybe you'll have better luck than we did when we requested a little assistance to get my parents from the ship to the cabana.

Cabana 1 is the only accessible cabana and isn't usually available for general booking so if you need it, concierge should be able to get it for you. The other cabanas do have a few steps from the walking path into the cabana and then from the cabana down to the beach. So if those are going to be a problem, I'd recommend getting Cabana 1. But then you won't be able to fit your whole group into that cabana.

They do have sand wheelchairs and the cabana host did offer to have one waiting at our cabana if we wanted it. So you wouldn't have to worry about stopping at the one spot they have for sand wheelchair/wagon pick-up. But those wheelchairs are very difficult to use and my parents have limited mobility so it was easier for us to escort them down the beach when they wanted to sit by the water.

 

[Magical_Suitcase]

Here is photo of the sand wheelchairs taken last month.

 

[ajh88]

Thank you for the responses and information!!