Ariel8676 said:
I just wanted to let you all know that myself and my family just got back from our trip (11/27-12/2) and none of us got sick. It was me, Dh, MIL, dd 5,dd4,dd1.....we all started taking Airborne a few days before our trip and i carried hand sanitizer with us. We just made sure everyone washed their hands periodically throughout the day and especially before eating anything. For the baby i did use a tiny bit of hand sanitizer and made sure i had extra wipes to clean off the hands.
We didn't do anything that we normally don't do on a daily basis..except maybe for the airborne..this time of year is bad for viruses and colds...and at a theme park there are a lot of people touching everything..and a lot dont wash hands....
Just be careful and be smart..hopefully no one else gets sick!!!!
I could have the post I quoted above, except that we got back from WDW a couple weeks ago, our kids are 6 and 4, and we don't use products like Airborne. We just lived our lives at WDW the same way we live our lives at home -- normal handwashing, etc.
Bicker had a good point. Even if Disney closed down all of the parks and all of the resorts and scrubbed them down so perfectly that you could eat maple walnut ice cream off the floor of the men's room near the front of MK, guests would STILL get sick from time-to-time. PEOPLE are the vector for viruses. Disney can't do a medical exam of each person entering their parks and resorts and deny admission to someone who is feeling under the weather. Even if that were possible (and of course it's not), MANY viruses are contagious BEFORE the host person experiences any symptoms. By the time they are feeling sick, they are no longer highly contagious, in many instances.
Most "bugs" (bacteria and viruses) that cause digestive system problems live for a while on surfaces, such as railings, ride vehicles, counter tops, finger scan pads, door knobs, etc. Normal hand-washing should prevent most illnesses, unless you have a child who licks surfaces. Another important behavioral component to staying healthy is being very careful what you do with your hands AFTER you wash your hands. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth as much as possible. For example, if I'm in a work or social setting where I'm shaking hands a lot, I try to be conscious to NOT use my right hand for anything else other than shaking hands. If I need to rub my eye or nose, I try my best to remember to do it with my left hand, which has not had direct contact with other people's hands.
The possibility of food poisoning (where the vector is food, not other people) is extremely low. Disney uses a network of centralized kitchens. So if there were problems with hamburgers, for example, you'd have literally thousands of people sick with the same symptoms at the same time, because they'd all have been in contact with the same tainted food at the same time. There have not been thousands of people suddenly sickened at WDW recently. It would be HUGE news if that were the case.
Remember the spinach scare from a few months ago? It was all across the news for weeks. Know how many people became ill as a result of that? About 200. That's right, TWO HUNDRED. Two hundred people got sick from the same thing (only slightly more than half required hospitalization) and it made huge national news. Further proof that there is no terrible outbreak of anything at WDW, it's just that YOU noticed a few other people who were sick, and as I said in an earlier post, getting sick while traveling is MUCH more common than getting sick while at home.
