hurricanes

[eagles]

what happens to tent campers if a hurricane comes? are they warned? are they put up somewhere else? are they told to evacuate? (meaning they just leave the fort and lose their money?).

what happens to the pop up folks and rvers also?

 

[AuburnJen92]

everyone is cleared out of FW and put up in hotels on property

they will not let you stay at the Fort during a TS or HUR.

 

[LONE-STAR]

From my understanding they move you to another resort. Several members on the board have posted about this in the past. Never happened to me though.

 

[Sinclare]

Actually, not during a Tropical storm. We were there several years ago when a Hurricane had been downgraded. My parents/sister went to stay in a motel (on their own accord, WDW didn't make them leave or offer a room). Me and my son stayed and slept like babies ; though we did have to drive all the tent stakes back down the next morning because most of them were almost completely pulled out of the ground.

On a side note, this used to be in the barber shop at MK but management (the only ones that didn't think it was funny) not only made them erase it but they removed the board completely because of it.

 

[Yensid_MD]

We were at the Fort during Fay this past August. About 36 hours before the storm was to arrive they came around and had handouts. They are really on top of their storm procedures and keeping campers informed. We felt very safe and well informed. I cannot remember exactly what it said but was basically telling us that they would keep us informed and if needed when to evacuate.

 

[Tri-circle-D]

I thought that I would chime in here and let you know about a personal experience that we had at the Fort with a hurricane.

This happened back in 1999. I know that because it was right before we bit the bullet and bought our camper. My kids were quite young, and we rented a small pop-up for the first time. It was around Halloween, because I remember that we had Halloween decorations out. We were in the 1400 loop, on Little Bear. We were camping with a group of about ten other families. Two of the families had rented pop-ups, the rest were in tents.

I remember that we got there on a Thursday night. It rained all night that night, and all day the next day. On Friday morning, we all got notes on our cars telling us that a hurricane was approaching, and that they had decided to close the campground, and everybody had to leave. They offered to cancel our reservation, and not charge for the remainder of the stay, or to put us up in one of the Disney hotels, at no additional charge. I am not sure how we found out, but we found out that they were putting everybody in what was then called Dixie Landings (now know as Port Orleans-Riverside).

So, on Friday, the campground starting clearing out. They were also making everybody in the cabins leave too. The whole campground was required to leave.

But not us. My friend with the pop-up and I decided to brave the storm. Mrs. TCD was not happy with this, but she and the other mom went along with their brainless husbands. The entire 1400 loop cleared out. We were the last two campers on the loop by late afternoon. A castmember came by and firmly told us that this was no joke, we had to leave.

So, we packed up our wet pop-ups, and headed over to Dixie Landings. We checked in, and were assigned to one of the bayou rooms. It had a pull out bed under one of the double beds, so the room slept 5. The theme parks were all closed that evening, and it kept on raining. By Saturday morning, the storm had moved on, and they decided that they would re-open the campground that day. We were given the option of staying at Dixie Landings, going back to the campground, or going home with a refund for our unused reservation days. Since we were originally going home on Sunday, and since the weather was still pretty nasty, we opted to leave. Our friends went back to the campground, and we later found out that it was a real pain checking in (imagine everyone trying to check in to the campground at one time!).

What struck me as remarkable about this is that they had enough empty hotel rooms to put everybody in the campground up. Back in those days, it was often the case that you could not get a room reservation on short notice, but here they were with hundreds of rooms available. I think that WDW intentionally limits the number of rooms that it makes available, so that they control their staffing needs, and, apparently, in case the rooms are needed for hurricane evacuees from the Fort.

What we learned from this is that if you are camping at Fort Wilderness during hurricane season, you could be required to leave the campground, but Disney will do a pretty good job taking care of you.

And now, for the rest of the story . . .

When we got home that Saturday, I popped up the camper in our drive way. The weather cleared, and we enjoyed the rest of our camping adventure in our driveway. Within about a month of that, I went and purchased our pop-up, and we have been camping at the Fort regularly ever since! We will have had our camper for ten years coming up this November, my oldest is now heading off to college, and we have memories that will last forever.

TCD

 

[eagles]

wow, thanks for the sharing that story!

 

[rosanafamily]

We were there in 2005 when Charley went thru as a category 3. We were evacuated to Port Orleans and given 2 rooms as we had 6 in our party. The storm got strong enough that we were almost scared...camper was fine in the parking lot, campground had alot of tree damage and remained closed.If I remember correctly all parks except for Animal Kingdom were open the next day.No crowds at all!!

 

[Tnbob]

We were staying at Riverside when Jeanne hit in 04. All the parks were closed as was everything including the food court. As the storm approached people were walking around like nothing was happening and at the hight of the storm people were in the pools. CMs were chasing people out of the pools as the wind was blowing the rain sideways and the managers had to reopen the food court because so many people were in there complaining. They had signs out all day prior telling us that if the storm hit that the food court would be closed for the rest of the day but people got a little testy when they got hungry. We went shopping the day before and got lunch meat and all the fixins for a shut in party.