Ernesto, when to cancel your trip?
My girlfriend and I have a flight to Tampa on Wednesday morning and after her conference we are driving to Disney for a few days. Right now it looks like we won't be going since Ernesto is supposed to hit Tampa pretty hard. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of weather affecting your trip plans.
Share stories or advice.
If you're the adventurous type and it's not predicted to go above Cat 1, I'd say go anyway. Cat 1 hurricanes are bad only if you're in an unprepared area. I haven't checked out what the thing's supposed to do, but riding out a hurricane is supposedly a pretty neat experience as long as you do it safely (read: inland).
Other than that, steer clear. Mother Nature's a mofo.
Brett, Resident Launch Whore
Anti-Enthusiast (the undiplomatic one)
Latest predictions are for a more southern route across the state starting near Tampa, which would be bad for BGT/Tampa and likely pretty bad for Orlando...or for a Western route heading north beyond Tallahassee and into Georgia.
By tomorrow night, predictions should localize a little on which of those two courses it might choose.
WDW has only closed twice for huricane's I believe. The keep the parks open under pretty rotten conditions sometimes, just with some things obviously not running. As it stands now, I'd still go.
Real Cbuzz quote of the day -
"The classes i take in collage are so mor adcanced then u could imagen. Dont talk about my emglihs" - Adamforce
The amusement parks there are extremely resilient when it comes to hurricanes. For Charley I believe the Disney World parks only closed about a day and a half (half a day to prepare for the storm and a full day for the landfall of the storm). They were back open after that. The storm seemingly shut down much of the area for about a week due to power outages. Quite amazing how organized the parks are when it comes to that sort of thing. But keep in mind that just because the park may be open, your trip might not be so great due to the way the storm affects the entire area. Traffic lights may be broken or not functional, restaurants could be closed due to a lack of electricity, hotels might be hard to find due to people evacuating inland, etc. It's just not as fun since it feels like you're going into the twilight zone ;)
We have reservations at Port Orleans on the Disney resort, but don't want to have sub-disney experience because of the storm. It looks like the storm will be out of our area by Thursday though so we probably just have to worry about the day we fly in. We aren't getting to Disney until Thursday night due to the conference.
Looking at the weather for Tampa and Orlando it shows Strong thunderstorms for Weds, then great weather the rest of the week. Just some scattered storms and clouds. Depends on what website you check. I guess as long as it is decent Weds morning when we are scheduled to fly into Tampa we should have a great week.
I wouldn't worry about it at all. I would keep to your plans and just monitor the weather reports. Cat. one's are not very bad, but if they start talking cat. two, I would pay attention. Disney is supposed to be one of the best places to be during storms. Or go surfing when you get into Tampa :)
I'm monitoring this storm pretty closely since I'm in South Florida. If your plans call for you going to Disney Thursday or beyond I would urge you not to cancel. The storm should be off the NE coast of Florida by Thursday morning.
I was at a conference in Orlando but had to return to S. Florida this morning. If the storm moves through relatively quickly I hope to catch the tail end of the conference Thursday and then spend the weekend in Orlando.
We will be in Tampa on Weds and it looks like it is not going to get hit anymore. So we are in good shape! Its been nice reading these posts, it helps to relax the mind a bit.
I think another thing that those of us in the Northeast don't get, is how little an area is really affected by these storms. From my perspective the whole state is going to be stormy!
Wahoo, what conference are you at? Hope your house/apartment/life fares well. *** Edited 8/28/2006 9:06:57 PM UTC by eightdotthree***
I was at a State parks conference in Orlando. Many folks from SE Florida left the conference last night or are leaving this morning to ride out whatever we are hit by later today. If the weather clears out Wed night into Thursday then I'm going to head back up to Orlando for the last two days of the Conference and stay the weekend with the family.
I'm hoping to do Sea World on Saturday...if the weather cooperates. I'm told the crowds will be light.
Cool man. It looks like we will be fine in Tampa weds, then ok to head to Disney on Thursday afternoon. We are doing Animal Kingdom, Blizzard Beach and maybe something else.
Be sure to call the airline tonight to make sure your flight hasn't been cancelled or redirected. And then double check again in the morning when you get up.
It does look like the storm will miss Tampa, but they may hold flights until they know the final path of the hurricane.
They closed all college campuses in Orlando tomorrow, if that means anything. It's not going to be too bad, and I plan on going to the Magic Kingdom myself. From what I've heard it seems people in the Orlando area are overreacting. It shouldn't be too bad.
Have a fun trip! Hope you enjoy Everest if you end up going to Animal Kingdom.
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