[Travelandtourism] Traveling with a guide dog out of the country and on a cruise ship

[Cindy Handel]

Cheryl,

Where is Orlando?  You said:

"Orlando is a US State so there is no worry in that of where you want to go 
on an excursion, "

I'm not aware of this U.S. state.

Cindy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "cheryl echevarria" <cherylandmaxx at hotmail.com>
To: "nagdu" <nagdu at nfbnet.org>; "travelandtourism" 
<travelandtourism at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 10:18 AM
Subject: [Travelandtourism] Traveling with a guide dog out of the country 
and on a cruise ship


Good morning all:

Now that I have some time, I will be posting my reviews and experience of my 
recent cruise and excursions.

This particular post is in reference to cruising with a guide dog from the 
prep work, to the onboard experience, this is also in reference to leaving 
the main land of the US.

Before I start, yesterday, as I had posted, someone asked me about traveling 
with their guide dog to Puerto Rico.  Well, since I have yet to take Maxx to 
PR with us, it was an awakening to the fact, that whenever you leave the 
mainland of the US, which also includes Canada and Mexico (some people may 
not have had this issue in the past, but these are the rules per the USDA.) 
that you must have in your possession a Certified USDA Veterinarian Health 
Certificate, now when you call your  vet and let them know you are going out 
of the country, you need to ask if he/she is one, if not they will know 
where your closest one is, if not there is a listing on the United Stated 
Department of Agriculture website.

  Which I am willing to send to NAGDU/travel and tourism the information so 
that everyone has the link to the as well.

The link is: 
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/animals/animal_import/animal_imports_states.shtml<http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/animals/animal_import/animal_imports_states.shtml>


When traveling especially with a service animal, in this case, a cruise.

Planning ahead, if you know you want to cruise in April starting planning as 
early as possible.  For those that have cruised before the staterooms are 
sometimes smaller than a hotel room, and having the room for the dog might 
be limited.  In this case, even though I will not be doing this again, I 
asked for an accessible stateroom, some of this might repeat when speaking 
of traveling period for someone who is disabled.  Because this was a travel 
agent graduation cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines, all us travel agents 
had balcony accommodations, and every level of the ships have an accessible 
stateroom and no they are not more or less money then those for everyone 
else.

When planning your cruise with a guide dog, you need to call like I said way 
in advanced if you would like an accessible stateroom, there are many people 
I am glad to say that are traveling, and these rooms go very fast.

You need to let your travel agent, know you are bring your guide, they will 
accommodate you but if you don't tell them, they will not know to make a box 
for your dog to do his business.  Also, they do not put the box in your 
room, it is a health issue, and no they will not put the boxes on the 
balconies if you have one.

On Norwegian Cruise Lines, what they do is they will ask you what kind of 
stuffing you want in the box, it is a similar box to what we do at 
convention only smaller.  The placing of it is in a crew area only area.

Explanation here:  On a cruise, there is an area every few staterooms in 
between that the crew move between to take there carts or need to take an 
elevator to get to the next floor, basically behind the scenes, so near our 
stateroom there was one of these doors and we were shown the box for the 
dog.

Again, depending on the floor you are staying will determine where this is.

Maxx was confused at first because it was inside and not outside the box, 
and when Maxx is away anywhere, it takes him at least a day to go do his 
business, but he finally liked it and all was good.

You also need to do your homework on where you are going in my case it was 
Orlando, Great Stirrup Cay (which is Norwegian's own private island in the 
Bahamas), all the cruise lines have them, and Nassau (Paradise Island) in 
the Bahamas.

Orlando is a US State so there is no worry in that of where you want to go 
on an excursion, we decided not to go anywhere in Orlando, and stay on the 
ship, and check out the rest of what was available to do.

We didn't go to Great Stirrup Cay because at the island they bring ship 
tenders to the ship and that day their was 9 and 10 foot swells and the 
manager of the island said it was to dangerous to bring the boats out, so we 
had another day at sea. Also in the same area was Disney and Royal Caribbean 
and they couldn't get into there islands as well. These private islands are 
to shallow for the ships to have a pier to port to.

In the Bahamas, we did have an issue with one of the excursions we wanted to 
do.  I did call the excursion department with the cruise lines prior to what 
we wanted to do, and they told me we never had a problem with services 
animals and our excursions.  Well, I did and the cruise line has been 
informed, I did give a report back to the Access Department and management 
upon my return, the good, the bad and the ugly.  They are on it, so that 
these issues never happen again.

Anyway the issue we had was, I wanted to go swimming with the dolphins, my 
sister and brother-in-law, niece and nephew, were cruising with us, and they 
were going to this.

So when I registered for this on the ship they had no problem with it, but 
the following day I was told that I couldn't bring my dog.  This was not 
from the cruise lines but the people who run the program.  They were going 
to allow it this once just for me, since I was a travel agent. I said no, 
and that we were going to do something else.  I have the e-mail from the 
company themselves of the excuse of why they didn't want to dog there. I 
mean Maxx was not going to go in the water with the dolphins, the supplier 
was concerned, since afterwards that in the same area that they have sea 
lions and that they have a less tolerance for illness and that they were 
concerned that they would get sick from the dog.

In either case, I don't do anything that all of you cannot go and do.

We went to the Atlantis Resort and it was well worth it, had an awesome 
time:

To read more go to:

http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com<http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com/>


Leading the Way in Independent Travel!

Cheryl Echevarria
http://www.echevarriatravel.com<http://www.echevarriatravel.com/>
631-456-5394
reservations at echevarriatravel.com<mailto:reservations at echevarriatravel.com>

For daily updates read our blog at
http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com<http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com/>
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