Disney rents strollers and electric scooters inside the park. It's a good service. But the scooters are almost twice as expensive as outside companies. They don't include canopies. And there is still a lot of walking to get inside the park to get to the scooter rental location.
If you have a handicapped parking permit you can park in the handicap parking lot, where there are a free wheel chairs for to get you to the stroller & scooter rental location inside the park. But if they have run out of wheelchairs in the parking lot, you either ask Grandma to walk it, or send one person out to recover a wheel chair and return with it.
Walker Mobility provides an excellent service. They delivered our scooter to our hotel prior to our arrival. We picked it up in the valet area. We kept it in our room and charged it each night. They have a wide selection of scooters. We added a canopy to ours to shield Grandma from the sun and sometimes rain.
Initially Grandparents will be apprehensive about riding around in a scooter. There is a stigma attached to it. But thousands of people rent these and ride around the parks everyday. There are also crowds to navigate, and the crowds can be unkind. So I would try to make a special effort to stay with the scooter and make way so the driver would feel as comfortable as possible.
Also when driving the scooter in narrow passages or onto a ferry boat, we would have the Grandparent transfer off and one of us would act as harbor pilot to navigate the difficult passage.
Scooters can be parked in the same areas as strollers. And some rides with long lines were able to accommodate scooters all the way up to the point where you board the ride. Also, with a scooter, we were allowed to enter some rides through the exit and skip the regular line entirely.
A logistical caveat when renting a scooter from an outside company is how you will get into the parks. It depends on your hotel location and transportation choices. If you are staying at a Monorail or Epcot area hotel, then you can get the scooter on the boat or monorail and make it to the parks. If you are staying at a hotel that you would normally drive from to get to the parks, then you may need to rent a minivan or SUV. Scooters do disassemble but it's easiest to rent a minivan that has a large flat back row so two people can lift the scooter into the van without taking it apart into a bunch of pieces. We like the Toyota Sienna from Alamo. If this presents too much of a hassle, it might be best to arrive in the handicapped parking lot early, use a free wheel chair to get into the park, and pay a little extra to rent a Disney Scooter.
The best part of our scooter rental experience is the appreciation you receive from the family member who enjoyed using it. It makes the trip for them less stressful, and more enjoyable. It makes adventuring into the park each day easier and less tiring. They get to enjoy memorable moments with their precious grandchildren that will last a lifetime. And after the magical Disney vacation is over, and you all return home from the happiest place on earth, they can go right back to disliking you.
No comments:
Post a Comment