Hurricane Irma?

[Tom Cottone]

Back in 1989, I was returning to New York from Ft Myers when Hugo hit. Luckily WDW had rooms available and I ended up with an unexpected WDW mini vacation. The first day was a wash out with rain and windy conditions. 2nd day was cloudy but enjoyed Epcot. 3rd day departed and headed north. The destruction along I95 in South Carolina was massive.

 

[Jennasis]

I have a house in Jacksonville, The storm is supposed to be on top (the eye) at 7:00 a.m. Monday morning. If the surge is anything like predicted from a cat 4 I would suggest you rethink your plans.

Our plan is to be IN Orlando on Sunday. So we are figuring out how to get in as early as possible. So at the moment, we are planning to leave home on Saturday at some point.

 

[Lehuaann]

Thanks for the info!! It's nice to hear from somebody who went through almost our exact situation! I told my roommate that when they start asking for voluntary evacuations, we are jumping on it. I'd rather move when its a little calmer than when things get mandatory and people might be more apt to get panicky.

You're very welcome.

The danger lies in the amount of trees/distance to sites and how much water is sitting from previous storms.

I took this picture on Tuesday, Oct 4, 2016. It had rained quite a lot before Matthew even arrived, so you can see why FW made the decision they did.

 

[perditax]

We are supposed to be driving to Orlando on Sunday the 9th. It's a 9 hour drive from NC and We typically arrive in Orlando at 3pm if we leave at our usual time of 6am. We are thinking of either leaving way earlier (think midnight) and arriving earlier on Sunday or heading down Saturday and getting a cheap overnight somewhere in South Georgia or right over the FL border for the night and then getting to SSR in the morning on Sunday.

Grrr.

Are you not concerned about the storm hitting NC while you're away from home? That's my biggest concern with an upcoming trip's timing (a few days after initial landfall, if any). The Carolinas are still at risk.

 

[RyLanz]

So my wife and I are supposed to be flying out of Maine at 6am Saturday the 9th, we have a layover in DC and should be in Orlando by 1-2pm.. This is our first trip so we really don't know what to do. We just saw the state of emergency. My gut is telling me the flight will be cancelled... should we drive Friday night into Saturday? Wait out the flight and see if it doesn't cancel? When do we start finding out if the flight is cancelled? We're so lost! Please help :/

 

[Alice Hart]

Our plan is to be IN Orlando on Sunday. So we are figuring out how to get in as early as possible. So at the moment, we are planning to leave home on Saturday at some point.

good choice

 

[lawboysam]

We are staying at AKL from 6-21 September. We're coming from the UK so rescheduling our trip is almost impossible - do you think we'll be ok? It looks like a few of you are there around the same time which is reassuring. Is it possible that some of the resorts will be evacuated if it gets really bad, or is it likely that we'll all be staying put in our rooms?

This will be our first experience of a hurricane...

You're going to be fine. My partner is flying in from the UK and we're there Sept 9-22, and we've basically come to terms with the fact we may just be spending two days hanging out in our hotel room. But we're there so long (and so are you), that it'll be relatively easy to move our schedules around. You're going to be fine! As lots of other people in this thread have said, Disney is about the safest place to be in Florida during all this. They will take care of you.

 

[Lehuaann]

I will be checking in to the cabins at Fort Wilderness on 9/8-9/16. If they make us evacuate Fort Wilderness, will we be able to go back after it passes? Or will we have to stay in whatever resort the send us to the rest of the trip? It's funny, I'm not worried about the storm so much, because I feel like I will be safe at Disney, but what is driving me crazy is wondering if I'm going to have to share a room with my niece and her husband. We picked the cabins so we would have our separate space.

Yes, they gave us the choice to go back if we wanted. However, I believe it took a few days to reopen.

 

[OhMari]

I will be checking in to the cabins at Fort Wilderness on 9/8-9/16. If they make us evacuate Fort Wilderness, will we be able to go back after it passes? Or will we have to stay in whatever resort the send us to the rest of the trip? It's funny, I'm not worried about the storm so much, because I feel like I will be safe at Disney, but what is driving me crazy is wondering if I'm going to have to share a room with my niece and her husband. We picked the cabins so we would have our separate space.

DIsney puts you in rooms that they feel is safer than others. They ask that you stay in your rooms, so they know where you are. We were in The Yacht Club and a tornado ripped thru the woods across the street and The Yacht Club did have tree, limb and ther debris scattered all over. We were really scared, since there was really no place to go. We knew about the tornado since we saw it on our scanner phones. Disney does not have sirens. Stay safe and alert.

 

[Jennasis]

Are you not concerned about the storm hitting NC while you're away from home? That's my biggest concern with an upcoming trip's timing (a few days after initial landfall, if any). The Carolinas are still at risk.

No. We aren't near the coast. We are closer to the mountains. The area our farm is is high and dry. We will get plenty of rain and wind, I'm sure.

 

[Tonyz]

We are supposed to be driving to Orlando on Sunday the 9th. It's a 9 hour drive from NC and We typically arrive in Orlando at 3pm if we leave at our usual time of 6am. We are thinking of either leaving way earlier (think midnight) and arriving earlier on Sunday or heading down Saturday and getting a cheap overnight somewhere in South Georgia or right over the FL border for the night and then getting to SSR in the morning on Sunday.

Grrr.

Give it a couple days before you make a decision but I wouldn't want to be driving into Florida on Sunday. Maybe push it back a couple days.

 

[AndreaT7/24]

We fly out on friday the 8 of September stay till sept 14 which mean we will be in the middle of Irma .I keep debating if we should go and ride it out of cancel I want to see what it ends up doing. I hate we planned this a year ago now we may not get to go. Ahhh what to do. I live In Texas and just went through Harvey I don't want to do another one

 

[Jennasis]

Give it a couple days before you make a decision but I wouldn't want to be driving into Florida on Sunday. Maybe push it back a couple days.

We can't push it back a couple of days. Our only option is leaving on Saturday. We are watching the developments carefully to make the right call.

 

[fla4fun]

What wind speed would they close the parks? Restaurants? As of now, Ventusky barely has Orlando hitting 50mph - briefly - but mostly 20-40mph.

We have Citricos reservations on Sunday night and Ohana on Monday morning (staying at Poly) and Chef Mickey's Monday night. If we can make all those reservations, I think we will go, as Hollywood studios isn't a must-do park for us and we have hoppers so can probably get over there later in the week just to do the Frozen Sing-A-Long and TSMM. One of our sons is on the spectrum, so he uses a DAS pass and FP+ isn't as big a deal for us since only a few of the rides he will do even have lines at all.

Citricos might be a problem, and possibly Ohana. It's not necessarily wind speed that causes the issue. If a hurricane warning is issued, there will just be a skeleton crew at the hotel. When I was at WDW for hurricanes, they sold boxed meals out of one of the restaurants, and closed the others. We also didn't have housekeeping for a couple days. So even if Ohana is open, it may just be boxed pre-made meals, not the normal all you care to eat feast. Or Ohana might be completely closed and Kona Cafe would sell the boxed meals. With the current storm tracks, I would predict all guests will be restricted to their rooms Sunday evening, so Citricos would be closed if that is the case.

As far as the parks, it depends on what warnings are in effect, whether there is damage, and how many CMs can get to work. Sometimes they reopen one or two parks at a time, and typically AK is last to open as it has so much to inspect for damage. So you might have plans in Epcot, but only MK may be open.

 

[Amy___M]

How safe are Disney Good Neighbor hotels during a hurricane? As safe as Disney's on site hotels? For instance the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista, right across from Downtown Disney.

 

[Tonyz]

So my wife and I are supposed to be flying out of Maine at 6am Saturday the 9th, we have a layover in DC and should be in Orlando by 1-2pm.. This is our first trip so we really don't know what to do. We just saw the state of emergency. My gut is telling me the flight will be cancelled... should we drive Friday night into Saturday? Wait out the flight and see if it doesn't cancel? When do we start finding out if the flight is cancelled? We're so lost! Please help :/

It's tough to say since it's still pretty far in advance but flying into Orlando on Saturday should be fine.

 

[Tonyz]

We can't push it back a couple of days. Our only option is leaving on Saturday. We are watching the developments carefully to make the right call.

Ah yeah well Saturday should be fine in Orlando (at least as of right now).

 

[fla4fun]

Back in 1989, I was returning to New York from Ft Myers when Hugo hit. Luckily WDW had rooms available and I ended up with an unexpected WDW mini vacation. The first day was a wash out with rain and windy conditions. 2nd day was cloudy but enjoyed Epcot. 3rd day departed and headed north. The destruction along I95 in South Carolina was massive.

I was on vacation at WL during Hugo. That was my first hurricane experience at Disney. We could hear some trees falling during the night, but that one turned out not to be serious. We learned about taking food though, as the boxed lunch at Whispering Canyon was, to put it bluntly, disgusting. I imagine that was Disney's first hurricane experience as well, although I don't know for sure.

 

[RyLanz]

It's tough to say since it's still pretty far in advance but flying into Orlando on Saturday should be fine.

So the state of emergency doesn't automatically cancel all flights to and from Florida?

 

[Steven Clevenger]

So the state of emergency doesn't automatically cancel all flights to and from Florida?

I just got off the phone with Frontier airlines and the representative told me that they won't cancel any flights until 48 hours prior to knowing for sure that it will hit the area.