Our 'we'll never go back in summer' trip report

[Sammy Cat]

Hello everyone!

This is just a short intro to our trip report. We just got back yesterday and I am still unpacking but I thought I'd better get this started now before I lose my motivation.

We travelled from June 1 - 13. It was our family's first ever trip to Disney together and first time on-site for me and hubby. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside resort for the first 9 nights and the Loews Royal Pacific Resort the last 3 nights.

If we has to sum up our vacation in one word it would have to be 'HOT'. If we had to sum it up in one phrase, it would be 'Crazy Hot!'

The average daily temperature was 94 degrees or about 35 Celsius (plus humidity!). One good point about the weather is that it didn't rain at all (except our arrival day for about 30 minutes) but I would have welcomed it just to cool off!

I will be posting photos from our trip soon but in the meantime I just wanted to give a brief overview of our trip. I had an itinerary all planned out (as you can see in my pre-trip report) and we followed it pretty closely but there were a few days where we had to stray from our plans and leave the park early because we were not able to cope with the heat.

I was somewhat surprised that our two children, who are 7 and 8, did not have the stamina to do even the 'must-dos' on our list (which was about 5 rides per day). They were not used to the heat and on arrival day, before we even went on one ride, they were ready to go back to the hotel for a swim, lol. And every day there on out we would hear whining, 'can we go back to the hotel for a swim now?' and we would respond, 'but we just got here...", or "we've only done two rides, why don't we do just a couple more..." or 'we haven't even gone on space mountain yet..."

Despite the heat, however, overall we had a good time and we definitely plan on going back in a few years when the kids are a bit older and when the weather is a lot cooler (but not too cool) our kids love to swim and part of the reason we chose June was for great swim weather and also for Star Wars Weekends (my son is a huge fan). But this backfired as well, because our son did not even meet one character. We couldn't even bear to stand and watch the Star Wars parade which was held at high noon. They lasted about 5 minutes out in that heat, if that. Forget about standing in line in the sun and heat to get a photo with Chewbacca. In the end, it seems it was a bad choice on my part to go in June. Next time in a couple of years we think we will plan a late March or early April trip.

Pictures to come....

 

[minnie mouse ears]

I started to post and it disappeared. Weird.

Anyway, we were there from June 3-11th (parks June 4th - 10th.) It was hot but I think the humidity level was better than KY! The week before we left in KY, it was about that temp but the humidity makes it a lot worse! We are having a cool spell since we got home but I don't expect it to last long. We loved FL in June. We just drank a lot of water, used the misters and the fans. I will say that I thought Universal did a better job of fans, etc. in the lines than Disney.

Now... since you are coming from Canada, I can see where it might be unbearable

 

[Sammy Cat]

Yes, I think since we're from the coldest city in Canada 'Winterpeg' (also coldest city in the world with a population over 600,000) it might also have played a part in how difficult things were for us and how hard it was to 'acclimatize', but I think since a worker at Animal Kingdom fainted while we were waiting in line for a donut, this heat may have been a bit extreme, even for Orlando.

I know they were talking about 'record heat' all over the southeast of the U.S. while we were there and I expected the average temperature would be 86-90 but 94 plus humidity was a bit much for us Northerners to handle, for sure. Even in Winnipeg we can get quite hot summers for about three months in June, July, August with an average temperature of around 80, but 94 would be our hottest day of the summer - and that's a dry heat!

Definitely we made use of the misters and fans (our fan was out of batteries by the last day). I will say that wearing hats and drinking water early in the morning really really helped. Yes, Universal was better for coping with the heat, they even sold these refillable drink cups so we didn't spend $2.50 every time we wanted a drink - which was about every 15 minutes, lol.

I think it got even hotter after you left. The first week or so was 92-93, but our last weekend it was averaging 94-95 (one day got up to 98). On our last day of our trip I just about melted standing outside our car in the parking lot for about two minutes to put our last piece of luggage into the car. I've never sweated like that in my life, it was dripping off my face. I needed to get inside ASAP. When we arrived home last night it was a beautiful 73 (or 23 C) but strangely felt a bit on the cool side for us.

 

[rockydek]

We are heading down Saturday...I hope it cools down a little bit.

 

[Sammy Cat]

I hope so, too. I think this was unusually warm for this time of year but a staff member told me it can get up to 130 F some days in July! I just don't know how some people do that. But I guess it all depends on what you are used to and how prepared you are. Other people seemed to be able to handle it a bit better than us.

Just be sure to wear a hat, buy water bottles and chill them to drink that first hour after you arrive at the parks and then continue drinking all day to stay hydrated. We would even get our hats wet to stay cool (needless to say we didn't look so great in the family photos). Also, we survived by doing as many indoor attractions as possible and avoided walking all over the place by doing rides that were right next to each other. We also used fast passes to avoid those long 60+ minute plus waits outside.

Don't get me wrong, we still had a wonderful time, I just think next time it will be easier if we go when the temperatures are cooler.

Have a great trip!