Warning re Handicapped Cabins (Triumph 9286)

[virginiab]

We got "upgraded" on an Inside Guarantee to a great location on the Lido Deck. When I searched here on the boards, I couldn't find any reference to it. If you get it (or maybe any of the sideways inside cabins that are set up for wheelchair use) here's what you need to know....

 

If you are using a wheelchair (we were not), you will probably be pleased with the big bathroom that you can roll right into, lots of grab bars, a fold-down seat in the shower. In the room, the desk area has been adjusted to be wider than usual and has no lap drawer, so it should be suitable for use with a wheelchair.

 

The bad news is that this bigger bathroom and wider desk all fit into a regular sized interior cabin, so something had to go. What went were the chair and table that are usually in an interior cabin and half of the closet space. What's left is one regular width closet with two shelves above a mid-height shelf that is mostly taken up by the safe. Below the shelves is a hanging bar that runs from the front of the cabinet to the back and is high enough for jackets, pants folded over hangers etc. There is a less than half width second closet with one (or two if you want) hanging bar but no shelves. The two life jackets, standing on end, pretty well filled the bottom of this closet until we moved them to an under-bed location.

 

This amount and configuration of storage space was not what we had expected or packed for, so it took us a couple of days to figure out how to cope with it.

 

If you are traveling alone, the space will be okay, but NOT what you would expect from a Carnival cabin. If you are alone and in a wheelchair and cannot stand at all, the closet shelves will probably be too tall to be of use, so you may be limited to the three drawers and the hanging areas of the closets. Also, the 2 beds are pretty close together and I wonder if you can get any but the narrowest wheelchair beyond the foot of the beds....

 

This was one cabin when the shoe organizer on the bathroom door would have been a big help; it would have freed up one of the drawers.

 

So I guess the lesson is that if you get an unusually shaped or aligned cabin, you might want to wonder if it is a handicapped cabin and if so, what the furniture and storage arrangements may be. As we had previously had a cabin that was aligned as this one was (but was NOT a handicapped cabin) we thought we knew what we were getting. Oops, we were wrong. This cruise we lost the "cabin guarantee" bingo game.

 

THis cabin might have been an upgrade from a 1A but it was not an upgrade from a 4A. I always think of the interior cabins as very uniform, and really any one of them will do as well as another. Now I have realized that this is not quite true.... I know some handicapped cabins are bigger than usual to provide space for the extra amenities. Some, apparently, are not. The cabin next to ours appeared to be identical to ours.

[pacerzfan]

Thanks for the info, virginab

[victory2020]

That's too bad. I was on Princess in a handicapped cabin & the whole thing was huge!