Castaway Cay evacuated onto Wonder!

[bthrsoon]

Hi all! We just got home today from the 4 day Wonder. I'm not sure if anyone else has already posted this. Our weather was wonderful and seas were calm. We had a great time on Castaway Cay on Tuesday. At dinner, on Tuesday the captain made an announcement that Castaway Cay was in the path on Hurricane Frances and that we would need to ammend our day at sea, in order to help out the island staff. Late Tuesday night the Wonder refuelled in Freeport and we went back to Castaway Cay by 12:45 on Wednesday, where some crew members got off to help the island staff "tie down" the island. The captain had explained that since the island staff only numbers 41, Wonder crew were needed to help and then all were evacuated and came home with us on the Wonder. We loved being the "rescue ship" and the captain thanked everyone and said he had had many offers from passengers to provide assistance on Castaway Cay (but that was not needed). So thankfully the island staff is safe!

 

[mmouse37]

I did read this in one of the threads....what an exciting thing to witness....You guys are the last cruise to see CC in all it's glory....let's hope there is not too much damage to it.

Also read that WDW is putting up the resuced Castaway Cay staff in their hotels.

MJ

 

[LibertyBelle]

Yes mmouse37 WDW held rooms at it's hotels for not only the Cast Members from Castaway Cay but also for the evacutaing Cast members for the Vero Beach Vacation Club resort. I was very impressed with that.

 

[CPM]

Originally posted by LibertyBelle
Yes mmouse37 WDW held rooms at it's hotels for not only the Cast Members from Castaway Cay but also for the evacutaing Cast members for the Vero Beach Vacation Club resort. I was very impressed with that.

I would assume any decent resort would do the same. Where else would they go since they do live on thier island.

 

[Lloyd Dobler]

Originally posted by mmouse37
let's hope there is not too much damage to it.

As I type this the storm is practically right on top of Castaway Cay, at 25.7N, 77.2W. CC is located at 26.1N, 77.5W. The Orlando Sentinel page says that it is right at the southern tip of Great Abaco island, which is the large island off to the east which you can see from the ship when docked at Castaway Cay. The (somewhat) good news is that the storm has weakend slightly and is "only" a category 3 hurricane at this time.

 

[abitjaded]

Were you able to see what they did to batten down the hatches at CC? I just keep hoping it will abate some more. First I worried about my relatives in Ft Myers in the last one until the Red Cross located them five days later, now I have to worry about the one stuck in Pompano Beach. I'm tired of this worrying, and I am in Colorado, not even the path of the storm. I think everyone should just evacuate the whole of Florida and the Caribbean for a while. Open up the airports for free travel outtathere.

Carla

 

[MarkRG]

A number of us weather geeks are discussing it right now on this thread: http://disboards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=638129 I have to say it doesn't look pretty.

And the exact position of CC is:
Lat: 26º 4.608" North
Lon: 77º 32.238" West

I copied it off a map that was on display on the ship one of the times I was onboard. I would guess that is the exact postiion of the dock, as they probably took the reading with the ship's equipment.

 

[D'AngelosdoDisney]

Hi all, i also posted this information on another post. What happened was we went out to sea for several hours after being on CC during the day. Around 1am, DH and I went out to deck 4 after partying at Wavebands. I noticed that we were near land. We were in the on the shore of freeport, awaiting the refueling barge that was heading our way. The wonder had to refuel there so they could make a quick getaway from port canaveral on Thursday. So, we watch the refueling and went to bed. The following day, we went back to CC to evacuate the Island. Was very cool to get to the Island twice in one trip. We were not allowed to leave the ship but got to see it in its stipped form.. No sail boats, jet skis ect. Was a wonderful trip and working on planning our nexted. Eileen