Cruises are a hot topic when it comes to travelling with a disability or illness. I have spoken so often about special assistance and the help you can get when you fly – but what about when you cruise? Here is my own experience of requesting and receiving special assistance with different cruise lines and I will add to this to keep it up to date with the different cruise lines we sail with and if our experience differs by the specific ship within the same cruise line then I will mention that too.
Costa Cruises
Before you sail, you will fill in a special needs form for Costa Cruises to process and determine what help you need (and just to be clear, they will use the form to decide if you are fit to sail with them too). The form is an annoying 17 pages long and they expect you to fill in every single section even if its irrelevant to you (e.g. the parts about diabetes they still wanted filled in but with a cross or a no in the answer fields). Make sure to sign every line where a signature of yours could go, even if the section it is in is irrelevant to you.
When we boarded the ship, we had been given priority boarding. I am not sure why this is, but I just know we were given it and at the cruise terminal we were taken through to check-in immediately.
Despite stating in the forms that I, an autistic adult, would rely on David for any help I needed, we were given cabins that were fairly far apart. My cabin was on deck 1, at the very back of the ship. David’s cabin was in the middle of deck 7. I don’t think there will be a room that is noisier than the room we had at the back of deck 1. It was the noise of the propeller when it was used, and it also shook the entire room beyond anything I have ever experienced on a cruise ship before. This is quite distressing if you have autism, especially as it happens when you go into and out of a port which happened to be when we were still asleep in early mornings of port days. The bonus of the location is that it was quiet without anyone else needing to pass our room to get to their own.
Sylvie has an allergy to cow milk. Her doctors advised to avoid all animal milk. She also has had reactions to oat milk and soy milk and we were advised to avoid those too. I put all of these on her 17-page form but somehow her deadly allergy was not copied from the paper form to the ships computer system and so they were unaware of her very dangerous allergy when we first went to eat at the restaurant. We explained it many times, and were continuously given a lactose-free menu for her. We kept explaining that she is not lactose intolerant but language barriers prevented us being able to explain this to the servers in the restaurant. An Instagram story got the attention of Costa Cruises who called the ship we were on, and we were taken into a meeting with guest services who did seem to understand and tried to resolve the issue for us. Unfortunately, the seriousness of her allergy wasn’t understood and her food continued to be cooked alongside other food which we often found pieces of on her plate.
Travis, Luke and myself all have autism. Due to the issues with the allergy and confusion at the restaurant, guest services advised that we eat in the sit-down restaurant for every meal, every day (as opposed to the buffet restaurant which is harder to control). We explained that this was causing both boys distress, and asked if our meals could be eaten in our room – they agreed this was fine and offered to also find a quiet table for us to eat at in a public space if we wanted. They also said we could contact them if there was absolutely anything they could do for us after that.
MSC
MSC have a much more reasonable special needs form which is 4 pages long. You can download it here. I did not want to have to print the form multiple times, scan and upload it and then send it over. It is a faff and honestly I seem to always be asked to re-do something on forms which makes it a double faff. Without a PDF editor, the best way to edit this form for me was to upload it to a Google drive, open it as a word document, fill it in and then download it as a PDF. Once you have completed the form you can use one of the below emails to send it in (if you used a travel agent please send it to them and they will forward it).
UK: specialservicesuk@msccruises.co.uk
US: specialneeds@msccruisesusa.com
MSC responded so quickly to my email to acknowledge the forms and let me know they were sent to be processed – it was honestly around 1 hour from me sending them to me getting their reply. I thought it was amazing so I emailed them to say thank you. I shortly got an email back asking me to send in a list of everything I planned to bring (I had said that due to allergies and restrictive eating disorders that I would bring some extra food for the kids). They wanted a list, with exact quantities and images of any food I was going to bring. This was a surprise to me, and not something I could do as I plan to buy the food in Taiwan before we board the cruise. I emailed them saying this and was then told not to bring homemade food and only food that meets EU requirements and that no one on the ship will ‘store or manipulate’ and of the food I bring (meaning they will not cook any ramen noodles I told them I was bringing. I have asked them to clarify how they intend to accommodate the needs of my children if they don’t intend to help me cook something simple like noodles.
I will update this post after we sail to include any accommodations they made for us during sailing.
Royal Caribbean
Royal Caribbean also have a much more reasonable form at only 4 pages. I filled them out for each member of my family and sent them over to Seascanner who we booked the cruise through. I got a reply within 24 hours to say that they were received and sent to Royal Caribbean to process. Royal Caribbean have a lot of information available about the types of accommodations they can make – especially for autistic individuals. I have high hopes that they will be understanding and make the cruise as enjoyable as possible for us.
I will update this post after we sail with them to include details of any accommodations they made for us.