Personal Travel Narrative
Our ideal accessible date began with dinner at Uprise Bakery in downtown Columbia. Luckily, Uprise Bakery has an accessible entrance wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. We decided to go out on a Thursday evening, so the bakery would be fairly busy. Despite this, our date was able to move around freely and fit comfortably under one of the lower tables at Uprise Bakery. Unfortunately, both the counter and bar were high, making it hard for our date to order food and drinks.
If our date needed to use the restroom, Uprise Bakery has one accessible restroom past the movie theater entrance of Ragtag Cinema. The bathroom had an accessible entrance, three grab bars, and a roll under sink. Despite having to wheel through the movie theater, this bathroom is completely accessible and appropriately designed for disabled individuals.
In case the date gets a little slow, we could move the meeting into Ragtag Cinema, The cinema had a wide entrance and reserved seats specifically for wheelchair users. Additionally, the furniture is moveable to make the theater more accessible.
Uprise Bakery is not perfectly accessible, but have at least made efforts to make their location more accessible. The accessible entrances, low tables and accessible bathrooms make it a good dinner spot for our date!
Next for our entertainment, we took a 4 minute stroll to get to Harpo’s sports bar! Harpo’s has two entry ways, one on Cherry St. and one on 9th St. The only accessible one for our date would be the 9th St. entrance due to the other having stairs right after walking through the door. The 9th street entrance allows one to wheel right into the bar.
To order a drink, we could either go to the bar, which was rather tall. If we were lucky and the bar was not busy, there were plenty of tables at the appropriate height, which a waitress would come serve. Yet, if the bar was busy or even remotely full, it would be hard to find comfortable seating, or even order a drink. Also, the only access is the main floor. The only way to get upstairs is by stairs.
When it comes to the bathrooms in Harpo’s, the entrance was wide enough to fit one with a wheelchair, but sadly, inside the bathroom there is no room or any stalls actually fit for such situation. This part of the date did not go as well as planned.
Finally, we have decided to move on to our privacy-time location. We chose The Tiger Hotel in downtown Columbia since it is close to the spots of meal and entertainment. Unlike the dorm where you might have a roommate, a hotel suite guarantees privacy and comfort amenities such as room service.
To get to The Tiger Hotel from Ragtag theater, we took a roll via E Broadway and the pedestrian road and crosswalks were accessible. It took about 5 minutes to get to the location.
As soon as we got to the hotel, we saw automated doors at the entrance.
As soon as we rolled through them, we saw large numbers of staircases leading to the lobby level. However, staff members pointed out the large elevator left to the entrance. We took it to the lobby. We also want to point out that the hotel had an accessible bathroom one level higher then lobby for all visitors.
To book the room, we had a conversation with staff at the registration desk. We were not able to look at the room itself since it was booked, but here is an information from the manager:
‘We have select king or junior suite rooms (junior suites only have a king bed in them) that are ADA accessible. One specifically has a roll-in shower where as the others have a small lip, but all have bars and seats.’
After the check in in order to get to the room, visitors need to use another elevator. However, size of it’s door is only 32 in, so this might cause certain issues.
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