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  I think people must understand that an expiration date is in most cases an arbitrarily derived date which has little or no experimental evidence to justify it. To truly determine the shelf life of a medication would require a clinical trial which would be very expensive, ethically unjustified since it would require administering a medication to a sick patient which could be inactive or possibly toxic, would need to extend over a significant time period.   Chemical tests of decomposition would also be expensive and again, be of little benefit.  Most prescription medication is consumed within the time span the prescription was written for and knowing it will be good a few years latter will not benefit almost all of the people who have purchased the drug.

   Many may question the validity of my statements as they have those of others but let me provide some examples demonstrating the truth of what I say.  The first is the "use by dates" we see on most packaged foods.  The most  glaring absurdity of these dates is the date on my shaker of Himalayan Crystal Salt.  According to the label, the "salt is hand-mined deep inside the pristine Himalayan Mountains.  The salt while being locked within the earth...over millions of years..." was finally placed in the bottle I purchased.  The use by date is 3/3/2020.  It is now two years past the expiration date.  Should I really believe it is unusable two years after the expiration date when it remained usable over millions of years sitting in a cave in the Himalayas?  How many will throw the bottle away because the salt is expired?

  Now more on point for medication expiration dates and the veracity of what I will say can easily be verified in your own home.  For 11 prescriptions filled in a pharmacy for a variety of chemically different compounds, the pharmacist assigned discard by date, expiration date, is one year after the date the prescription was filled regardless of the chemical properties of the medication.  Three of the prescriptions were provided in the manufacturers bottle with the pharmacy placing their label with expiration date over the manufacturers label.  By peeling back the pharmacy label, the manufacturers expiration dates were 2/2023, 07/2024, 09/2023.  Who do we believe, the pharmacist who filled the prescription and covered the manufacturer label or the manufacturer who indicates  a year more of utility.

   The point I am making is the exact time a food or drug can be consumed without loss of effectiveness or  toxicity is at best a guesstimate rather than a scientifically determined fact.  It provides guidance which we as consumers must  use to determine if we are comfortable using the product.  If I were the OP, I would have little hesitancy in using the patches but in full disclosure, my adult children are hesitant to eat in my house.  I am willing to consume items that are two to three years past their use by date assuming the cans are not damaged or the products did not become unwrapped in the freezer but they falsely believe that I will poison myself by failing to adhere to an expiration date..

You need to determine independently from the cruise line if Sitka is currently a tender port. Last year we cruised Alaska with Holland America and Sitka and Icy straight point we’re both listed as tender ports. I contacted HA directly and was told they are tender ports. You can google port schedules and they will list scheduled ship berths. For both ports our ship was listed with a dock, not a tender berth. I was in contact with tour providers in both ports and they said we would dock and they even confirmed with harbor master. Contrary to HA we did dock. Repeating cruise this year and HA site still list these as tender ports while port schedule lists a dock. Bottom line is you need to get information directly from the port rather than from Cruise line since at least HA for some unknown reason provides incorrect/outdated  information regarding tender ports

10 hours ago, Flatbush Flyer said:

 

 

For anyone even remotely involved in higher education, the included web link, which was not a ".EDU" address was a dead giveaway. Even then, many "spoofers" use phoney ".EDU" addresses to draw folks into their phishing/malware schemes.

 

 

 

NEVER click on an unsolicited/unverified web link - even those that end in ".EDU"

As one who is actively rather than remotely involved in higher education I must take issue with your statement in the first quoted paragraph but your conclusion in the second is right on. My students are participating in a colleagues research project that requires completing a survey. The web link has one word from the University’s name, same as our city, but it does not include “EDU”. It is a legitimate survey and is the site that hosts all university surveys. 

  That being said I concur that one should never click on unsolicited/unverified links. 

Here is another tour choice but I have no experience with them. I believe autoprogresso has yours as well but on the website they do not indicate whether the tour is from Merida or progresso They operate the shuttle from the ship to town so I am sure they have something but do not know if they can be booked in advance

https://www.shoreexcursioneer.com/progreso/uxmal-mayan-ruins-lunch-highlights.html

I would suggest you consider Uxmal. In my opinion, it is as impressive as Chichen, saw both on the same lad trip, and there will be less travel time allowing more time to view the ruins. It is also a more compact site reducing the amount of on site walking as the temperature and humidity will be high

On 11/25/2018 at 4:02 PM, NorthernLite said:

 Lack of tip bars or a bar that crosses between the back wheels means you will have a difficult or impossible time doing a pop up over curbs on shore. Please remember that cruise towns in Alaska are rather person heavy during the summer so getting in and out of the chair at each uncut curb you find may upset people behind you. On the street please use curb cuts found at intersections (those of us who use chairs fulltime get flack from people who have been abused (their thinking) by part time users who do not follow normal chair ettiquette). Last problem I would worry about most are very helpful ship crew seeing you approach to disembark while seated will be right there as soon as your card is swiped to help you down the ramp off the ship. This is great unless at the end of the ramp there are steps added due to the tide of the moment. Then they will lift you while in the chair and to do so they will grab parts they do on regular wheelchairs. On my chair these are sturdy and welded together. On a transport chair they are often barely clicked into place or your butt is covering all the welded parts. The crew, from what I have seen, do not remotely like the idea of someone who needs the chair for distance deciding to stand up at this point because many part time users tend toward being slightly unsteady on their feet when first leaving the chair. 

 

 

Disclaimer:  These are our experiences and from reading the threads on cruise critic I realize others have different opinions and experiences. Have never used a traditional wheelchair so can not make comparisons.

For Reference;, we are at the age for mandatory social security and we use a Nova transport chair with big rear wheels.  My wife can only walk about 50-100ft and we have been using a transport chair at home and for travel for more than 50 years.  The chair has been all over Eastern Europe, Mexico by land and sea, Panama canal cruises, Caribbean cruises and in the past two years Alaska.   I push she rides for as much as 5 miles on a long day walking throughout the areas we are visiting.  She will remain in the chair for a half to a full day without discomfort.  On many occasions she finds the chair more comfortable than the chairs in restaurants remaining in the transport chair to eat.  We have toured cities with cobblestones, Antigua being the most difficult, gone over unpaved surfaces and explored most places in the ports visited.  We can navigate virtually any area except sand.  It is important for the pusher to look at the pavement they are traveling over as when you are moving quickly and hit a raised portion of the sidewalk the chair can tip forward ejecting the occupant.  As the front wheels on a regular wheelchair are small like on a transport chair, I would think this is not a problem unique to transport chairs.Has happened to us when we first started using the chair.  We did not encounter any problems on our recent Alaska trips except for some steep hills which would be difficult to push any type of chair up or control the descent.  For example, in Ketchican we  walked through Creek Street and then ascended to a salmon hatchery and totem park outside and above town.  We did find that some of the permanent concrete docks were below street level independent of tide, I beleive Juneau was the worst, and it was a hard push up and hangon down.  Succinctly stated, the use of a transport chair did not impede our ability to explore the Alaska ports as well as a good portion of the world.  

I do wish to add some information regarding the comments above.  Every transport chair we have owned has a metal footrest? on either side which I can place a foot on doing the pop up over curbs.  In Merida the curbs were over two feet high and I had no problem doing the pop up and I routinely do one to get into our house that has a six  inch curb at the door.  Their is a problem with people they abuse the person in the wheelchair.  People stand in the middle of walkways having conversations making it impossible to pass.  People walking down a street suddenly stop and you must remember not to tailgate.  What is perhaps the worst are the people who jump over the foot rests of the wheelchair to cut in front of you.

I agree with the poster that with the transport chair you need to be careful where the crew holds the chair to lift it.  I simply point out  that they must grab the front frame rather than the footrest and have never had a problem or had the chair damaged.  On small boat excursions in Mexico, crew actually carried my wife in the chair down the ramp and onto the boat.

In our experience a transport chair is a very good choice

My wife uses a transport chair to get around. We have done the monkeys a number of times and have had no problems getting around. We are in fact returning with our grandchildren next Wednesday. Have not done the zip lines so can not comment.

I don’t know about Belize but we had no issue with mom’s wheelchair on the tenders today in Grand Cayman. They’re pretty nonspecific about it and just say it’s dependent on the tenders themselves and if conditions are safe enough to allow it. It was a calm day here and the tenders had ramps that were easy enough to navigate.

 

 

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Thanks for the information. I guess I just assumed you were doing the same ports as we are next week. We get on when you get off.

I did see a few people in wheelchairs and on scooters on the tenders. There is an elevator that goes to deck 0, but you will have to notify a crew member that you will need to use one.

 

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Thanks. Just the information we needed.

Sounds like you turned lemons into lemonade. My wife uses a wheelchair and has limited mobility. Did you see any wheelchair users on the tender? Do you need to walk down stairs to access the tender platform or is there elevator access to the tender loading floor? On some ships we have tendered in Belize while on others we could not.

Thanks. Does the driver provide assistance getting up the stairs onto the bus. Usually my wife can do the stairs but sometimes after a long tour, doing 8 h Turnagain Arm, she could have difficulty.

We are doing this cruise next week and my wife also uses a portable wheelchair. Do you know if wheelchairs can be accomadated on the tender to Belize? Like your mother she can walk short distances but could not do a full flight of stairs if the tender platform level can not be accessed without an elevator

It is my understanding that a shuttle is provided from the dock into Anchorage. Could you let me know what kind of vehicle is used, are the lines long and what is done to accommodate those in a manual foldable wheelchair.

It is my understanding that transportation is provided from the dock into Anchorage. Could you please comment on the type of transport used, if there are long lines and what type of accommodation is provided for wheelchair users

We are doing this cruise in July. Do you think a wheelchair could negotiate the gravel path or did they have some toe of transportation available to the pilot house? If there was transportation did you notice if there was a long line?

Yes...the Zaandam was at the dock....both Icy Strait Point and Sitka have docks....you would only need to tender if there were more than one ship that day at the port.....and they docked before you.....:)

Thanks. I thought the Zandaam docked but Ha claimed they did not on the phone even when I pointed out the port schedule indicated we were the only ship in port that day

The Holland America site lists this and Sitka as tender ports. The picture seems to show that you did use the dock. Did you actually dock as the picture suggests?

What type of vehicle do they use for the cruise shuttle, a van, a tour is, a school bus? Do they also have an accessible shuttle to accommodate wheelchairs and is it equipped with a lift!

I have mobility problems and use a wheelchair. I can transfer but it is difficult to walk up stairs into a bus especially if it is the steep steps on a school bus. Do they have taxis to get from the ship to the town of Progresso or is it only by bus. If only by bus, what type of bus and is there a place for a collapsible wheelchair?

For those who have taken this cruise, which if any ports are tender ports?

As is often the case with the news media, they do not bother to get all of the facts and thus spread inaccurate information.

A new travel advisory for Mexico has been issued on January 10. The first sentence of the advisory states: Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory." The advisory gives the general warning regarding increased risk in Sinaloa and then if one continues to read the specifics for each individual state as the second sentence of the advisory recommends one finds under Sinaloa:

"U.S. government employees are prohibited from travel in most areas of the state (Sinaloa). In areas where travel is permitted, the following restrictions are in place:

Mazatlan: U.S. government travel is permitted only in Zona Dorada, the historic town center, and direct routes to and from these locations and the airport or the cruise ship terminal.

When you get the rest of the story it is clear that there has been no change regarding the travel warning for Mazatlan. The tourist areas of Mazatlan are prefectly safe as we have found during two week land trips for the past twenty years. There has been a major increase in crime in the capital of Sinaloa, Cualiacan, which is 100 miles away but this has not impacted the safety of Mazatlan. For those who want to read the complete updated State Department travel advisory for Mexico it can be found at:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html

Do not miss out on an enjoyable experience in Mazatlan due the failure of the media to provide the complete story

Have done it multiple times pushing a transport chair. No problems

Not all cruise lines give out free tote bags. In fact in the last 5 years of my cruising HAL was the only cruise line that gave out totes bags . The foot rests would never fit in a HAL totes

Not true! In July I received a princess tote bag and two weeks ago I received one from celebrity in addition to the numerous HAL totes I have. In fact it is one of the HAL totes, both old line fabric and newer blue polyester? Which I routinely use to carry my wife’s Nova transport chair footrests. Perhaps your HAL totes are the mini ones and not the standard size ones we have

Put them in the tote bag the cruise lines give out and store in overhead

http://www.slothsanctuary.com/frequently-asked-questions/general-questions/#Touch

 

And you know the sloth enjoyed it because it told you so?

 

I can provide other links, but any human can Google that for themselves.

 

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The FAQ does not provide a link to a peer reviewed study supporting their assertion nor do they address the issue of whether handling by sanctuary staff induces tachycardia. This is an important point since tachycardia is a physiological response to both pleasurable as well as stressful situations.

Any human who has been in a loving relationship knows without resorting to google that an increased heart rate, tachycardia, is a physiological response to pleasure. For those who have not had this experience, you can find peer reviewed studies using google or searching on pubmed. The keywords should be obvious to any human.