cobright
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2013
Absolutely fair viewpoint. I only suggest getting a little time behind the wheel in advance of the trip before making a decision. With just a little practice, most people take to driving a mobility scooter intuitively. Similarly, most people underestimate the toll pushing someone in a wheelchair for a day takes. If you think about how whipped you are at the end of a day in WDW, the OP'd be supplying the motive effort for a full extra person, and using seldom used muscles to do so.Again, just cautioning to take your mom's concerns as valid and important. Physical soreness may be much better for y'all's enjoyment of the trip than the mental stress she might feel with an ecv.
As a non-sequitur, pushing mom in a wheelchair will put you entirely at the mercy of strangers with regards to closed doors.
The phenomenon, mentioned already, of 'becoming invisible' when using a mobility device like a wheelchair or ECV is very real, and the likely hood of fellow pedestrians stumbling into (or running into, climbing over, etc.) a wheel-bound guest is much higher than the other way around (admittedly with lesser effect, usually). It's my experience that these events are fewer when I can walk alongside my Power-chaired friend.
The OP and his mum should absolutely trust his mum's judgement. At the same time, the general social environment does its best to make using a mobility scooter seem like reckless luxury and the actually rare accidents involving them are very rare, and where the driver is at fault rarer still. Out of all the personal injuries reported within the Disney parks each year, about a half-dozen are ECV or power-chair related.