The only real differences I have seen is in the bathroom as you have stated. I often have to move furniture around to make certain aspects of the room accessible for me. Speaking of Showers I have yet to try that in an ADA room. It is not that the hotel is failing in that regards it is just that the risk of slipping and falling are just too high for me to even try to shower. Needless to say this does prevent me for staying at a hotel for more than 2 or 3 days.
Unless the room is ENORMOUS I think it is near impossible for a room to be set up to resolve all access issues since disabilities vary greatly. Fortunately for me I am able to make those kinds of changes to the room. I am sure if I was not able to I could ask the hotel to send someone to my room to move pieces of furniture around to accommodate my needs during my stay.
A few years ago a brand new hotel opened not far from me. They were proud of their facilities for disabled guests.
There is, apparently, an organisation of people with various disabilities that check these things out. The hotel failed on several of the points described above:
The beds were too high.
The bathroom doors opened the wrong way (you don’t want them to be blocked if someone falls)
There was a pull-cord for an alarm in the bathroom, but it was out of reach if you were sitting on the WC,
The springs on the room doors were far too strong.
I think that there were other problems that I don’t remember.
Standards vary hugely: My mother lost a leg and we used to take her out in her wheelchair for lunch regularly. Some places that advertised that they had accessible facilities totally failed - We found the disabled loo up a couple of steps and so small that there was no room for a chair, let alone to turn around. At one place I recall we had to enter the restaurant via the goods entrance and through the kitchen. At another, the only access to the facilities was by going outside, through the car park, and in the back door.
I forgot about the door springs; YES! All set way too strong. I am fortunate in that I have decent upper body strength where I can muscle open a door and/or jam my luggage in to prop it open so I can overcome this obstacle but I imagine how challenging this would be for an individual that may not have adequate strength.
There should be no excuse in newer hotels/restaurants for poor entry access. I can be a bit more forgiving if it is an older establishment but should still be rectified.
I have been in a chair for almost 10 years now and it has really opened my eyes to all of the various challenges that await the disabled. I have come to really count on Google maps street view. I always check out any new place I may be going to see if there are any obstacles I need to be aware or or in some cases prevent me from going due to access issues. Better to problem solve before I get there or find another place to go if access is impossible.
I’m a six foot tall guy of typical strength and abilities, and yes, some room doors are ridiculously difficult. I was at a Doubletree last month where I had to really lean into the door to push it open. It was effectively childproof. Fortunately their cookies gave me the extra strength.
They may be designed to react similar to fire doors to limit the spread of a fire. I really can not think of any other reason why the tension is set so high.
Yes I has always believed that to be a reason as well but still find it strange the force is great enough to probably injure a child if he or she were not paying attention. I dealt with one a few months ago that was probably strong enough to break a child’s finger. Perhaps that was just an anomaly.
See, me, who has been away this weekend at a hotel with his family, wonder why in the fuck all the pillows are so goddamned big. I CANNOT – seriously – cannot – sleep with those goddamned pillows without getting a crick in my neck. I want some nice, flat, pillows. But I feel like every hotel bed I’ve slept in has these pillow that brings my head to a 45 degree angle unless I sleep on the very, very edge of them. Sure, I can’t be the only one, can I?
I’ve had many uncomfortable hotel pillows like the ones you describe. Recently however, due to either luck or a new trend, I’ve had several hotels in a row with perfect pillows.
DON’T LEAVE ME HANGING!!! WHO? What hotel chain has normal pillows? Obviously, I am the outlier, as this would have been solved long ago. But still. Who has normal pillows? Not pillows that have been blown up like hot air baloons?
Have you checked the pillows for dead hooker body parts? They used to put them under the bed in 2014 (or so I heard up thread). perhaps policies have changed.
perhaps policies have changed.