TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Accessible Experience of the Month

Accessible Holiday Train Rides with Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad

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Historic trains don’t usually make it onto the radar for disabled travelers. Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad is changing that, and the magic of an accessible train ride runs well beyond the holiday season. 

Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad offers different holiday train options varying in length and focus, including anything from a short ride, featuring storytelling, caroling, milk and cookies with Mrs. Claus, a visit from Santa, and pre- or post-ride activities in the Event Barn like letters to Santa, petting farm, cocoa, and s’mores, to a three hour peaceful, holiday-themed journey through the historic Trough canyon with eagle watching, festive dining in Premium, Superior, or Club Service, and stunning winter photography opportunities. 

All excursions feature the same accessibility, holiday spirit, and scenic adventure.

“We want every guest to experience the beauty, excitement, and wonder of our excursions—comfortably, safely, and without compromise,” 

shared Kimberly Byard, Public Relations Specialist. The historic trains are vintage, so not fully ADA-compliant, but the team has worked hard to create an experience that welcomes all.

Accessibility at the Station

Wheelchair-accessible parking, entrances, seating, and restrooms are available at the station. Select cars also include accessible onboard restrooms, allowing guests to enjoy the trip without worry.

Boarding & Onboard Assistance

Step-free boarding is available for all excursions at Wappocomo Station and during the All Day Petersburg layover. Our crew is always ready to assist with transfers, and two assist wheelchairs are available on-site. While aisles and doorways are narrower than modern trains, personal wheelchairs up to 23 inches wide can often be accommodated with advance notice. Wait staff in every car are trained to assist with seating, mobility, or other needs to ensure that every guest is cared for throughout the journey.

Seating & Classes of Service

Guests may choose from five classes of service, each offering a distinct way to experience the trip. Our Reservations Team can help select the best option based on mobility needs, restroom access, and comfort preferences. Observatory cars are step-free and feature bench seating for panoramic views, with crew members available to assist those using limited mobility devices.

Immersive Experiences from Your Seat

From your assigned seat, you can fully enjoy the journey—there’s no need to move from car to car to take in the experience. Guests are surrounded by live historical narration about the railroad, the region, and the wildlife along the way. Dining experiences are served right to your seat, with upgraded Dining and Club cars offering full climate control for year-round comfort. Standard Coach and Standard Dining cars feature windows that open for fresh mountain air. Select cars include accessible onboard restrooms for convenience.

Every Trough Canyon excursion provides breathtaking scenery through the historic Trough area where resident bald eagles live in their secluded habitat. Spring and early summer bring eaglets taking their first flights and calling to one another for feeding and security. Fall showcases juveniles interacting with adults against brilliant foliage, while winter reveals nest restoration and preparation for the next generation. Each season brings its own remarkable story.

Recreational activities—such as birdwatching, photography, journaling, sketching, or simply relaxing—can all be enjoyed comfortably from your seat. For a more immersive nature experience, guests may also visit our step-free open-air observatory cars, offering panoramic canyon views and an outdoor element to the adventure with crew assistance.

All Day Petersburg Excursion

This extended excursion includes a layover in Petersburg, with ramp access for boarding and deboarding. The town provides free public bus transportation, making it easy to explore local shops, dining, historic sites, and culture.

Environmental & Seasonal Considerations

Our open-air observatory cars provide immersive, up-close nature views but are naturally exposed to weather. Guests may prefer to enjoy the same sights from their seats in climate-controlled cars. We recommend dressing in layers and bringing lap blankets, sunscreen, hats, binoculars, and cameras for the best experience.

Dietary Needs & Medical Support

Please let us know at the time of booking if you have any allergies or special dietary needs. Our kitchen and onboard teams will do their best to accommodate requests. Crew members are trained in CPR and general medical response for emergencies.

Communication & Booking

To ensure the most comfortable experience, please call our Reservations Team at 304-424-0736 to discuss your specific needs and confirm the best seating arrangement. Online booking also allows you to leave notes, but speaking with our team directly helps us personalize your visit.

Accessible Experience: Lincoln Caverns

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By Jennifer Allen

Jennifer Allen and her 3 children, including a child using a wheelchair, explore an illuminated cave featuring dramatic stalactites and stalagmites along a railed pathway. The golden-hued limestone formations create a striking backdrop as they blend with the natural geological features.

A journey towards the center of the earth typically requires a lot of stairs. Thankfully, there are now a small handful of exceptions around the globe. One of those is in a small town in central Pennsylvania. For the first time, I was able to take my three children into a cave – something that I wasn’t sure we would ever be able to do.

While the main entrance to Lincoln Caverns is not wheelchair accessible, Lincoln Caverns has created accessible tours through the original entrance, along the highway. From this entrance, we were able to wheel through tunnels towards the heart of the cavern. I don’t know how much of the cavern we weren’t able to see, but I was really impressed by how much we were able to experience. We didn’t feel like we missed out on anything. Our guide showed us all the features of the cave and we followed his lead as we wandered and explored.

For your own convenience, it’s best to call ahead for the accessible tour, since you do need a personal escort.

Luray Caverns in Virginia also offers tours on wide, paved, well lit paths with a barrier free entrance. Due to some moderate grades, they don’t list themselves as wheelchair accessible.

Fun in Action?  This Party Bus Sucks…You In!

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A man stands between two buses wearing a jumping Joey tshirt in American flag colors

Historically, the party bus has been elitist, if not downright ableist. Jumping Joey’s is changing that. Jumping Joey’s Journey, a local transportation service, has expanded its offerings with the recent acquisition of a 14-passenger, handicap-accessible minibus. From bar crawls and weddings to church events, family trips, and school field trips, Jumping Joey’s Journey delivers more than just a ride – they create an electrifying experience. They call themselves the ultimate party experience on wheels, and now that party will be open to all.

Read the Full Article

It may be time to reach out to your local transportation services to see how you can up your party game.

Can I do Old Quebec City in a Wheelchair?

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Tiffany Gambill is a Massachusetts native with Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA), a rare, incurable, degenerative neuromuscular disorder. She is a full time wheelchair user who blogs to share accessible adventures and vegan eating.

Her disability makes typing difficult, and using voice to text nearly impossible. She doesn’t let that stop her from sharing her journeys and helping others. Below is an abridged version of her experience visiting Quebec as a wheelchair user. You can check out the full story, here. 

Written By Tiffany Rose

Last August, I traveled to Canada with my parents, visiting Montreal and Quebec City. The weather was beautiful, so the crowds were heavy. Finding a wheelchair-accessible hotel for three people in Old Quebec was a challenge, but I discovered The Clarendon Hotel. It looked promising online—and honestly, the bright yellow walls sealed the deal for me.

The accessible entrance was on the side with a concrete ramp and an automatic door that closed a bit fast. Inside, a second ramp led to the ground floor check-in desk, where a man wearing a yellow tie greeted us. We booked their accessible suite, which featured a king bed, sofa bed, tall windows with luxurious curtains, a desk alcove, and gold chairs. The bathroom setup was decent, with a tub and shower chair instead of the roll-in shower I was told I’d have. However, the toilet had drop-down grab bars, and the sink had open space underneath for wheelchair access. My main complaint was the round toilet seat, which felt tight even though I don’t have a big frame.

The hotel had a small elevator, but wait times weren’t bad. On the ground floor was Mordus, a seafood restaurant that served delicious meals. Breakfast was included, and the raspberry butter was heavenly—thankfully, they sold it separately too! Meals like deviled egg seafood, eggs with salmon lox, cappuccinos, and chia pudding made it a standout spot, even for non-hotel guests.

Exploring Quebec City was charming. The streets were made of large stone blocks, manageable in my wheelchair. We admired artist stalls (closed at night), the lit-up Fairmont Hotel, and a nearby monument bustling with street performers, though it was tough for me to get close. We also did the Hop On/Hop Off bus tour, which was a great way to see the city quickly, especially with a 2-day ticket.

Behind the monument, we found the boardwalk, the winter toboggan slide (closed in summer), and the Funicular—a $5 outdoor elevator with stunning river views. Old Town’s shops and restaurants often had steps, but colorful umbrella displays and the historic walled city made up for the limitations.

On our final day, we planned to visit Montmorency Falls but hit Labor Day weekend traffic and found out there was a fee to view the falls. We decided to skip it and head home instead. Overall, Quebec City was beautiful, although navigating accessibility required some flexibility and patience.

Wheelchair-Accessible Camping: Immersing in the Adirondack Wilderness Without Limits

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Jennifer Allen, TravelAbility Editor and founder of Wonders Within Reach, takes on the world’s only fully accessible campground—camping with three kids, including one in a wheelchair.

Three children, one in a wheelchairs smiling inside a three walled logged cabin.

What if there were an accessible campground, deep in the forest, with fully accessible sleeping arrangements, accessible bathrooms, only accessible paths and trails, and… well, fully accessible everything from adventures like fishing and boating to essentials like sleeping and eating? An accessible camping wilderness dream…

But accessible camping is not a dream: John Dillon Park is a real place. It has all those things. This one-of-a-kind, FREE, wheelchair friendly park, built in the heart of the Adirondacks, is centered on accessibility and inclusion.

For our family, John Dillon Park was a game-changer. We’ve stayed at a few accessible campgrounds before. However, even with accessible campsites, the rest of the campground and recreation areas were too hard to navigate. Loose gravel roads; narrow, bumpy mini-golf courses; grassy playgrounds of only slides and high monkey bars make accessible camping pads irrelevant.

Our Accessible Camping Experience

A family walks an rolls along a gravel rail sounded by trees. One child is rolling in his wheelchair while another pulls a green wagon.

People with disabilities often have a hard time finding wheelchair accessible outdoor experiences. National forests don’t grow with the Americans with Disabilities Act in mind. Park systems and recreation areas are made for adventurers – forgetting that wheelchair users are adventurers, too.

When we arrived at John Dillon Park, I was a little bit worried about the quarter mile trail from the parking lot to the accessible cabins with all of our camping gear. We didn’t need any adaptive gear for this trip, thanks to the accessibility of the facilities, but we still had a minivan full of sleeping bags, kid-o-bunks, medical supplies, and food. After we signed in as a park visitor, a volunteer offered to help us deliver our things, but, of course, I wanted to try by myself, first.

The parking lot was loose gravel, but the trail was tightly packed fine gravel that was easy to roll on. The incline percentages are included on the park map so that you can choose the route that’s best for you. We loaded our things into two all-terrain wagons and hit the trail. My eight year old had no problem getting his manual chair down the trail. My eleven year old and I pulled the wagons and the youngest took care of her backpack.

The Accessible Campsite

The trail led us to a pair of lean-tos. A lean-to is like a three-walled cabin, offering shelter from the elements while allowing you to be fully in the wilderness. The lean to had a wide wooden ramp, making it easy to enter and exit. It had one murphy-style wooden bed that pulled down from the wall, and plenty of space for additional cots or floor sleepers.

Our lean-to had an accessible outhouse with an elevated composting toilet with grab bars. A hand sanitizer pump hangs on the wall. These bathrooms are typically semi-private, but no one was staying in our neighboring lean-to, so we had it to ourselves.

We had a food locker to keep our food safe from bears and an accessible campfire with cooking grates. We had an accessible picnic table too.

Accessible Campground Facilities

After setting up our bedding, the kids took off while I worked on dinner. This was actually one of my favorite parts. My crew is old enough to thrive on independent outdoor play, but we rarely have an inclusive outdoor opportunity where all three can navigate the terrain. They explored the woods and went on the mini-adventure of every child’s dream – Tom Sawyer style with no adults. (Maybe that’s a poor comparison. My three are also better at understanding boundaries and staying out of dark caves.)

Dinner was enjoyed at our accessible picnic table – no transfer required. Then we wandered down to the accessible fishing dock to watch the sunset over the lake.

We didn’t make it on an accessible boat trip this visit, but we’ve enjoyed their pontoon before. It’s important not to schedule at high tide if you’re worried about the incline of the boat ramp.

In the dark of the early dawn the next morning, my son was too scared of daddy-long-leggers to use our accessible restroom, so we made the trek back to the indoor ranger station at the parking lot for his enema. This welcome center has electricity and running water and is open 24 hours. The outdoor sink also makes a great kitchen for cleaning dishes before packing up for home.

Three children sitting at a wheelchair accessible picnic table in the woods.

A Few Accessible Camp Notes

An adventure like this can feel overwhelming to families like mine, but I can’t imagine a better place to start.

The staff here is incredible. If there’s anything you can’t do on your own in a wheelchair, don’t hesitate to ask for help. They will go out of their way to help you.

If camping isn’t your thing, I still highly recommend it for all of the other outdoor recreation opportunities like hiking, fishing, boating, picnicking, or whatever style of outdoor retreat suits you. You can claim a day pass and enjoy the rare treat of barrier-free nature.

Whether you’re spending the day or a weekend – the facilities and amenities are always completely free for you to use.

Find the original article here.

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