Have you ever gotten sick at Disney?

[ericstac]

This past Dec-Jan trip I got 'food poisoning' and could not leave our resort room for nearly 10 days. It was REALLY bad.. both ways.. disgusting.. all day, all night non-stop. On Christmas morning I found myself in Celebration ER with IV's and junk. got three prescriptions and returned to the Poly to try to get better.. finally did but only spent 6 of the 14 day family vacation feeling good enough to do anything outside of the room.

We had 23 ADR's reserved and most were cancelled same day because we waited until right before the ADR to see if I could make it. The reservation CM's were wonderful about this and never charged us a thing but they insisted every single time to notify Disney of this. When we got home we sent an email letting them know the wonderful time we had as usual plus letting them know about the great CM's on the ADR's and how they were really concerned about me etc etc..

A CM immediately called to interview (interrogate) me on the illness and pretty during my explanations of what happened and stuff she kept tossing in comments about it being a stomach bug.. it was almost like, not it was definitely her trying to convince me in some sort of way to start saying in my own words that it was a stomach bug.. this really angered me because I could care less about blaming WDW on the food poisoning we were just letting them know because WDW told us to let them know. So then she tells me I need to fill out some forms and emails over a big packet that required a ton of information about not only myself but everyone in our party.. They wanted to know all the activities for each person for 3 days prior to the vacation, what was digested, where the person was in public.. EVERYTHING.. plus everything during the vacation in detail.

I was dumbfounded.. but I sat down over a few nights and got all the data together and sent it over.. this took months because it kept getting 'lost' due to the investigation changing hands several times.. finally got it to a person that was currently handling the investigation and it was determined that there was no way it was food poisoning and WDW was not at fault.

So first my trip was a total failure, then WDW ask us to tell them, we do, and they make it some sort of legal battle making sure I know they are not at fault.. Now to me after all this hoopla it seems like they wee at fault and they are trying to skirt the issue and hope that letter satisfied me and I just go away.. which I was never really intending on going after them anyway. I had travel insurance that would cover the med expenses and down time and WDW delayed that submission because during the first conversation they said they would pay for the vacation and losses if the determined it was food poisoning from their restaurant.. So I let them handle it prior to claiming with the insurance company.

This left a sour taste in my mouth with what used to be a great company.. I remember one thing this lady kept saying on the phone was how, 'oh it was most likely a stomach bug correct?' and I would replay with 'umm probably not, I was at the Poly with a family of 5, including 3 children, and I was sitting or bending over the toilet every 5 minutes. If it was a stomach bug one of the other 4 would have definitely gotten sick as well.' I am a meat eater and my family is not, at the buffets I eat all the varieties of meat.. they do not.. this is most likely where the food poisoning came from..

 

[Foxhound3857]

I've been ill once when I went to Disneyland, when I was about 6. The consequences didn't set in until I rode my first coaster for the day, then I was pretty much confined to a wheel chair. I still had a hell of a view of the electrical parade and the fireworks, though.

Disney staff tend to notice when a child is ill though, and quite often they'll inquire if there is anything they can do to help. I actually shared a story about something similar that I witnessed at WDW last year, so I'll copy-paste it here.

I was staying at the Disney All-Star Movies Resort with my family, and while everyone was getting ready for the day (I'm always up early, they're not), I went down to the lobby so I could tour the resort and see the sights. When I got down there, I saw a family in the lounge with their luggage, getting ready to leave. Their DD, looked like she was about 4 or 5 years old, was coughing profusely and seemed like she was really ill, so I took it to mean they were heading home early because the girl was too ill to enjoy the parks. I felt really bad for them.

Well, occasionally characters will wander through the All-Star Movies resort, probably because its more child-oriented than many of Disneys other resorts. So imagine my surprise when I see one of my favorite characters make an appearance in the lobby: Bolt! He had a handler with him and the lobby was fairly quiet save for the ill child, which he noticed immediately. He came over to the family and the handler inquired as to what was going on, to which I overheard that their little girl was indeed very ill and they were about to ask the valet to bring their vehicle so they could leave.

Well, Bolt whispered something to his CM, and she (the CM) told the dad that she would go and get the car from valet, so she took their ticket and went off. And Bolt asked to hold the little girl, so I watched as her mother handed the child to Bolt. He walked over to a nearby couch with her and sat her on his lap, and gently pet her forehead and her tummy, and played with her and rocked her back and forth trying to keep her comfortable. She was so happy to be getting all this attention, she was literally crying tears of joy, and so were her parents. Her mom was just snapping away with the camera.

Bolt stayed with her for a good ten minutes until the CM came back and told them that their car was out front and ready, and helped them with their luggage. As they started heading for the front doors the mother asked to have her child back, but Bolt insisted keeping her company, and he actually picked her up and carried her out to the car while her parents and the CM brought all the luggage out. As they were loading the car, Bolt signed the little girls autograph book, gave her the longest goodbye hug I'd ever seen, and told her that he loved her and that he wished her to be well soon. She gave him a kiss on the nose and he was overwhelmed with joy, and he stayed and waved goodbye to them as they left.

It's experiences like this that show you how caring and dedicated the Disney staff really are. The childs vacation was cut short, but she still had a memory to go home with that will last her forever, and she was all smiles in the end. The Disney staff made sure of that.

Also, Bolt is a rare character, so I was very surprised to see him roaming about. But the person performing him was very, very good, and knew just how to interact with the child. I wish I had taken video of it.

Though I do wish Disney was as nice to all of their staff as they are to their entertainers. My dad has had some not so pleasant engagement with the park managers when he was hired to do some stainless steel kitchenwork for some of the Disneyland restaraunts.

 

[tinkerbesh]

Yep, but just once -- this most recent trip last month. I blame it on the lunch I ate at ABC Commissary, but more likely it was just a quick stomach bug.

Started getting dizzy as we rode from HS to EP. Then so nauseous I couldn't eat a bite of our dinner at Via Napoli. And shortly thereafter I barfed all over the sidewalk in Germany. Felt really sick for about 24 hours and then it was gone.

DH said he noticed that the sidewalk in EP was the perfect color for barf to blend into, and now we both wonder if they designed it that way on purpose... Probably so, huh!

 

[augusta1]

Oh my gosh yes! One year on spring break my youngest dd who was 4 said her belly hurt. We were on the bus back to the resort... Jam packed standing room only and she says I'm going to get sick. We were near the bus exit. As gross as it is I unzipped my jacket and let her get sick on me versus all over the bus and the people around us and ran out the door when it opened at the resort. Then during the night my other dd started getting sick! They were both better by the next evening so it was just a 24 hour bug thankfully but I felt so bad for my babies being sick on vacation.

 

[Toffeewoffy]

OH got a really bad cold a couple of days into our 2012 trip. He actually took to his bed as soon as we got back from whatever we'd been doing on 13th February saying he was going to try and sleep it off. That left DD and me to go out to find dinner on our own (we went to the nearby Golden Corral, but none of us were up to eating that trip for some reason). I was very annoyed with him because it was my birthday on 14th and we had an early ADR at CP booked and I would have been really annoyed if we'd missed it. However, after sleeping right through for 12 hours he felt much, much better in the morning and we were able to go to CP (didn't have a good experience there, but that was overcrowding and seriously poor service to blame for that).

The trouble with OH is that he's a typical man when it comes to being unwell. If something serious is wrong (such as physical pain and stuff) he ignores it until it's become a serious problem. If he's got a cold, then he dying of 'man flu' and drives everyone else mad. The number of times we had to go shopping for cold remedies for him to take (none of which worked until we paid over $10 for some from the Super Target pharmacy)!

I don't get ill, but flying does something to me and I usually spend most of day one of all our holidays with an upset stomach. Whether that's stress of getting everything sorted (I do all the planning and packing) or spending 8½ hours in a poorly airconditioned metal tube coming over the Atlantic I can't say. The absolute worst experience was in 2008 when we'd had a 10-hour delay in Gatwick before we got onto the plane and our day flight ended up being a night flight. We landed at 2am and drove to our villa, falling into bed at 4am. Hardly slept a wink - had to get up at 8am, and went out for breakfast. I had the worse migraine you could imagine, which left me feeling really sick. Walking round Walmart getting our week's food shopping etc, every step I took I thought I was going to throw up. Had to use the Walmart restroom (which luckily was empty) and, well, let's not go into details, but my God! I felt so much better when I came out! The rest of the family spent the afternoon round the pool, but I still felt headachey and fragile (migraines do that to you) and spent the afternoon indoors in the aircon, keeping myself well hydrated. The following day I felt fine.

The weird thing is, I only get this coming out to the US. Coming home, apart from the obvious jetlag (which gets worse the older I get), I never get the stomach problems, but usually catch a stinking cold - again probably from the circulated germs on the plane.

 

[lizzyb]

I got a 24hr bug on the second last day of our holidays. I was 6 months pregnant at the time. It was not fun. Missed out on our last day at the park.

 

[CourtneyL]

It seems like every single trip someone gets sick....
- On our honeymoon trip I had a bad head cold that completely knocked me out for a day and a half.
- DD's first trip at 4 months old, she somehow caught a stomach bug and had massive poopsplosions.
- Nov 2012 DD caught a cold, but thankfully was over it pretty quickly
- Oct 2013 DD caught something nasty, ended up going to Centra Care, CVS walk-in clinic, and a local pediatrician in a 3 day span. She ended up on antibiotics for possible sinus and/or ear infections. She got a rash from either the bug she caught or the antibiotics and she looked like she had the measles. THAT was fun going through the long line at security at MCO with all those people thinking my kid had some contagious disease :roll eyes:
- Jan 2014 DD caught a minor cold on our Disney Cruise. By the end of our trip I wasn't feeling well, turns out I caught the flu! We had change our flights and extend the trip due to a snowstorm at home. An awesome CM at POR was able to get us two nights in a one bedroom unit at OKW (everything else was full! This guy seriously spent an hour searching for a room somewhere on property for two nights!)

I basically assume that on any given trip we will lose a day to sickness. Thankfully we try and do 10+ day trips if we can swing it