San Diego, CA, USA - Hotel (Holiday Inn, Rancho Bernardo)

The Holiday Inn Rancho Bernardo is located in Rancho Bernardo in the suburbs of San Diego. These notes are intended to assist wheelchair users considering using the hotel. I reviewed the hotel before, here. At that time I gave it 2 out of 5 and it made the "worst three hotels" list - with the dubious honor of being the worst in the United States in terms of a comfortable, wheelchair accessible room. However, it is one of the cheaper hotels in the area so I ended up staying here again. On this occasion I was given a different room, and had a better experience. So this time it gets 3 and a half out of five giving it an average rating of 2.5 points and, to be fair, lifting it out of the "three worst" list.

The property is in two parts. The accessible rooms seem to be in the main part where reception is located. The lobby and breakfast area are fully accessible and there is level access from outside through automatic doors - no ramp necessary.

My room on this occasion was a king bed, ADA accessible, roll-in shower. Having just one king bed instead of the two queens of the last visit made all the difference in terms of space to move around.  The workdesk was of a good size and height with one easily reached socket in the desk lamp. Wifi in the room worked well (free).

The bed was slightly lower than the wheelchair and relatively easy to transfer in and out of.  Bedroom closet was fine. A/C controls were reachable but a little high. The TV control was left by the bed and easily accessible. Coffee maker, microwave and fridge were all usable.

The bathroom was a comfortable size with good turning space (unlike the last time). The sink was easy to use, and the toilet was low. Grab bars were well positioned. The shower had a large plastic shower seat which was tricky to transfer in and out of. The shower also had two hoses. One was a hand-held rose, on a sliding bar with it's own water controls. This was ideally placed for use from the shower seat. Unfortunately the water control had a heat regulator that was set too low so the water never got warm. Since I'm not too keen on cold showers I was unable to use this rose. The other rose is a fixed, wall mounted rose high in the shower. To use it involved dragging the shower seat to the other end of the shower and transferring there was a lot more difficult. Towels were placed on a rack above the toilet and were extremely difficult to reach.

It was a pity about the shower as otherwise this room was not bad - about middle of the road for accessible American hotels (and, to be fair, American hotels tend to be a lot more accessible than elsewhere in the world!). I've removed the hotel from the "three worst" list and recommend that if you are planning to stay here you insist on a King bed, accessible room and avoid the two doubles.