After reading plenty of stories about wheelchairs damaged in aircraft holds, one of our members was nervous about flying to Barcelona with a power chair. Two trips and four flights later, on Vueling and easyJet and with two different chairs, both chairs have come back without damage.
The single best piece of preparation, in their words, was a laminated sheet about the chair, in English on one side and Spanish on the other. It gives airport staff the chair's make and weight, its battery type, how to disconnect it, and how its owner needs to be transferred. At the Barcelona check-in desk, staff had all the details in front of them and check-in took about five minutes. The template is available to anyone who asks in the thread.
The post also tells the story of arriving in Barcelona without the chair's charger, and goes through which of Gaudí's buildings were easy to visit in a power chair.
Read the Barcelona power chair trip report
Can you help?
You don't need to know everything. One detail from your own trip is enough.
Have you taken the train in Switzerland? A traveller with a walker will be there in early December, getting around by rail, and would like to know what the seating is like and whether there are accessible toilets on board. Share your Swiss train experience
River cruises look easy in the brochure, but a reply in the thread warns that the hallways are narrow and that you sometimes have to step across a neighbouring boat to reach the pier. That is a real worry for someone who uses a rollator and can't manage stairs, but still wants to join the tours ashore. If a cruise line or an excursion has worked for you, please share it in the river cruise thread.
One question has a deadline. A wheelchair user arriving in Shiretoko, in eastern Hokkaido, on 27 October wants to rent a car with hand controls. Do you know a company in Japan that offers one? Answer the hand-control car question
Worth reading
Protecting a folding power chair when you fly. One new owner of a Jazzy Ultralight could only find a thin canvas travel bag with no padding, so they asked what other owners do. The two answers they got are quite different. One owner gave up on bags and removes the joystick and battery before checking the chair at the gate. Another has flown to Hong Kong, Manila and Tokyo with theirs and asked each time for it to go in the cabin closet, though they point out that the flight crew makes the final decision. Read the folding power chair travel case discussion
For something lighter, someone made a vlog of their day at Disney California Adventure on a mobility scooter, and found that many of the rides have a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. What's your favourite ride there?
Thank you for being part of tabifolk. If you have a trip coming up, come and ask. If you have just come back, come and tell us how it went. And if you know someone planning a trip who could use some help, please send them our way.