Vacations during a natural disaster, who else has had one?

[Monorail_Man_NJ]

I've have been to Florida during hurricanes before but the scariest vacation I ever had was in Hawaii.

We had just finished SCUBA diving around Lanai and had returned to the dock in Maui (dive boat).

While eating dinner at a restaurant in Maui the air raid sirens started going off (They test these all the time so generally people in Hawaii don't pay much attention) This time it was followed by an EAS message. A massive earthquake had just hit Japan and a tsunami had been generated. (yeah the one that destroyed Fukashima Nuclear Plant). Needless to say being on an Island with a tsunami in bound was quite scary. And the worst part was noone at the hotel knew what to do. Eventually we drove up the side of a mountain and spent 8 hours there until the all clear was given. There was a lot of property damage but definetely a day I'll never forget.

Anyone else have on vacation during a natural disaster?

 

[BadPinkTink]

Well I was a tourist in New York September 2001. Myself and my friends were on vacation and were due to fly back to Europe on the red eye / 8pm flight out of JFK on September 11.

We were out and about, near St Patricks Cathedral on Madison Avenue when the planes hit. At the start we had no idea what had happened. I managed to get back to the hotel we had just checked out of and we were given back our room. We were stranded in New York for 5 days, until the airports re opened.

 

[bigbabyblues]

We were at WDW during Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, at All Star Movies, with our 3-yo and 15-month old. We brought plenty of snacks, tuna salad cups and other things with us. We arrived on Saturday, had dinner at Chef Mickey's that evening and the parks closed early, I think at 7:00. The storm started in the middle of the night, but it didn't wake us up. We were stuck in our room Saturday night and most of Sunday, and they were good about leaving uodates on the voice mail on the room phone. We didn't lose power or water, and we didn't feel unsafe. We mostly kept our curtains closed, although my husband opened the door at one point because he wanted to see what it was like. Sunday evening, after it had let up except for rain, we were allowed to go down to the main building, and the kids got pics with Pluto. I don't remember if there were other characters, that is the only one they wanted to see anyway. The food court was packed, I think we ordered a pizza and took it back to our room. The parks opened back up on Monday, except for a couple of things like Jungle Cruise and I don't remember what else now. There were a couple of limbs down at our resort that were roped off, but most of the debris had been cleaned up by then.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I was in Wildwood, New Jersey during Hurricane Belle in the 70s when my sister and I were kids. We decided to evacuate a little late to higher ground to my grandmother's friend's house. What I chiefly remember is that we had my great-grandmother (a rather large woman) with us. We all put on trashbags with holes cut out for our heads and arms in a futile attempt to stay dry in the knee deep water in the street, and on the way to this lady's house my great-grandmother screamed that she was having a heart attack...she wasn't, she was like Fred Sanford with the fake heart attacks all the time...and my aunt and my Mom unceremoniously stuffed her into a phone booth until she calmed down. That's my big memory of that day and night. The other one was looking out the door and seeing a couple of plastic flamingoes floating down the street.

 

[dzy76]

I was on the Fantasy in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy caught the ship coming up the coast of Cuba. About 2am we got rocked pretty hard, I literally rolled off the bed! The ship held well, but it was pretty tossed around and there were alot of broken glass and stuff thrown all over! We were late getting into port, barely made our flight that afternoon to fly back to Oregon. It was pretty wild. But it doesn't stop me from wanting to move to Florida!! Pretty much everywhere has something that can happen.

 

[tvguy]

It can take years and years to rebuild after a hurricane. I was on a cruise 6 months after Hurricane David (a Cat 5 storm) destroyed the Caribbean Island of Dominica. It was supposed to be one of the ports we stopped at. It was instead a sea day, we circled the island, and all we could see was what looked like a giant dump. All the buildings were still piles of rubble, piles for crumpled tin from tin buildings.
So I suspect Irma is going to have an impact on tourism dependent places for years.

 

[OhMari]

I have been in 2 tornadoes ripping my home town apart and another town apart. Just being in a basement doesn't cut it. You need to be under a mattress or something very sturdy.

 

[Moana of Motunui]

Not natural disasters but every vacation we plan results in having some type of bad weather. Every year we would go to Avalon, NJ and every year we had damaging thunder/lightening storms for two nights.
Each Disney trip we've done results in blizzard conditions on departure day coming home making us expend our vacation (not that I'm complaining ). This year we had blizzard leaving PA and departing FL so we extended a day on each end. Totally worth the extra money!

 

[kmb584]

I have but in reverse. When Superstorm Sandy hit at home in 2012, my daughter and I were on vacation in WDW. We were supposed to travel home on a Tuesday, I believe, but our flight was canceled the weekend prior because of the storm prediction. The earliest US Air was able to rebook us was that Friday, so we spent an extra three nights in Orlando. The front desk cast members at GF were great with us -- we were able to stay in our room for a discounted rate, and they even offered us 2-day park tickets (which I declined because we had AP, and I didn't know about bridging tickets then!).

 

[Marchand63]

It can take years and years to rebuild after a hurricane. I was on a cruise 6 months after Hurricane David (a Cat 5 storm) destroyed the Caribbean Island of Dominica. It was supposed to be one of the ports we stopped at. It was instead a sea day, we circled the island, and all we could see was what looked like a giant dump. All the buildings were still piles of rubble, piles for crumpled tin from tin buildings.
So I suspect Irma is going to have an impact on tourism dependent places for years.

The islands we are supposed to do in May just got whacked so we may be in the same boat. Not complaining, my heart goes out to those on Dominca & our favorite island & people of St Maarten.

 

[DisneyOma]

We drove down to WDW during Hurricane Charley - drove inland a bit to get past it in the Carolinas. That was tense - not knowing how far inland we should go. Got stuck in Cleveland for a night when Houston got bad weather a few years ago. Got stuck in Denver a decade ago when a snowstorm hit Chicago (our hub flying back home).

 

[loves to dive]

We were in Roatan on a diving trip and on our 2nd to last day, a hurricane decided to head in. When the dive boat pulled up to dock someone met it and said there would be a meeting in restaurant at 6, didn't say a word what the meeting was about. This was (is) an all inclusive dive resort. Meals are served during a certain period of the day and that is it. Supper was served from about 5:30 to around 7. So we go to the meeting and they tell us a hurricane will be there the next day and we have to be out by the next morning. They had no way of helping people to arrange to get out but told us that if we didn't we were on our own because all staff were leaving the resort the next day and no meals would be served. They did allow us to use the office phone since cell phones didn't work, to try to arrange flights and told us they would provide a van to get people to the airport off the island at x hour the next morning and there would just be the one shuttle time, be there or don't get off. We did have internet so we got on the computer to check Delta flights and I went to the office and called Delta and begged and was able to get a round about flight back home. They did charge me a few extra hundred dollars and it took twice as long since we had to island hop. They didn't serve supper that night. We were on the bus and off the island the next morning, a lot of people were not able to get their airlines to switch their flights so they were stuck. The resort did offer to move people who were in buildings off their little island up to the main resort to rooms people were vacating. We found out after we got home that it was an non-event. The other dive resort on the island actually went out diving the next afternoon and didn't ask any of their guests to leave. Needless to say, we never went back to that resort again, which is a shame because the dive operation was great.

 

[ELKA]

In 1991 I was at my family's summer house in Martha's Vineyard. Hurricane Bob was coming. We were evacuated from the house which is actually located on Chappaquidick and for several hours was at the Edgartown primary school. After the hurricane, we had to wait for the ferry dock to be repaired and then found out that there was not going to be electricity for at least five days. No toilets and no lights, we left the next day.

 

[elphaba91]

I was in Shanghai during Typhoon Khanun (a category 4) on a school music trip on 11 September 2005; exactly 12 years ago today! It probably would have been scary, had anyone told me it was happening!

We were billeted out with families from our host school. We arrived on the Saturday and weren't due to see anyone from our group until Monday when we were going to go to school with our hosts (even though lots of us didn't speak any Mandarin!) and then my band had a concert scheduled in People's Square that afternoon.

On Sunday I got a call from my bagpipes teacher (who was my group leader) to say that school and our concert would be cancelled the next day 'because of the weather' and that he'd see me on Tuesday. My host family then proceeded to take me shopping and for a walk in the evening next to the Bund (i.e. the river).

Meanwhile, my choir teacher had rung the students in her group every couple of hours to check on them and one of my friends was advised by her host to stay away from the windows 'so she wouldn't be blown away' (said host also then put The Day After Tomorrow on!). There were evacuation orders in place for people working outdoors or living in sheds and temporary housing. Outside of Shanghai there were even several deaths. A few days later it was iffy whether we would be able to fly out to Hong Kong because of another typhoon, although it was fine in the end.

However, I was happily oblivious to it all at the time and just thought that the Chinese were weird and cancelled school over a bit of rain!

 

[mmouse37]

We were at WDW during Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, at All Star Movies, with our 3-yo and 15-month old. We brought plenty of snacks, tuna salad cups and other things with us. We arrived on Saturday, had dinner at Chef Mickey's that evening and the parks closed early, I think at 7:00. The storm started in the middle of the night, but it didn't wake us up. We were stuck in our room Saturday night and most of Sunday, and they were good about leaving uodates on the voice mail on the room phone. We didn't lose power or water, and we didn't feel unsafe. We mostly kept our curtains closed, although my husband opened the door at one point because he wanted to see what it was like. Sunday evening, after it had let up except for rain, we were allowed to go down to the main building, and the kids got pics with Pluto. I don't remember if there were other characters, that is the only one they wanted to see anyway. The food court was packed, I think we ordered a pizza and took it back to our room. The parks opened back up on Monday, except for a couple of things like Jungle Cruise and I don't remember what else now. There were a couple of limbs down at our resort that were roped off, but most of the debris had been cleaned up by then.

We also were at WDW during hurricane Jeanne in 2004. We rode it out at the Poly. We were on our way to Port Canaveral for our Disney Cruise and were near WDW on I-4 when we got the call that the cruise would not be leaving Saturday but on Monday out of Ft. Lauderdale. PC was being evacuated. I told my husband to pull into WDW and see if we could get a room. All the mods and values were sold out but we got a room at the Poly. Our room was overlooking the Ferry and it was empty so we decided to buy one day tix and hit the Magic Kingdom. It was very empty and eerie. The park wasn't closing until later that night. During the day the wind kept picking up and clouds were moving in. We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights there. I remember we had to bring in our patio furniture so it would not blow around. Disney had box lunches for up to pick up in the lobby. We hit the grocery store and stocked up on stuff to keep in our room. All in all it was fine. We could feel the wind bowing in the sliding glass door and there was water forced under the door so part of the carpet got wet. Never lost power or TV. We were amazed at how quickly the staff had the resort cleaned up after the storm. Disney then bused us down to Ft. Lauderdale to meet the ship.

MJ

 

[klacey1]

I have but in reverse. When Superstorm Sandy hit at home in 2012, my daughter and I were on vacation in WDW. We were supposed to travel home on a Tuesday, I believe, but our flight was canceled the weekend prior because of the storm prediction. The earliest US Air was able to rebook us was that Friday, so we spent an extra three nights in Orlando. The front desk cast members at GF were great with us -- we were able to stay in our room for a discounted rate, and they even offered us 2-day park tickets (which I declined because we had AP, and I didn't know about bridging tickets then!).

Same! We were staying offsite but Sandy grounded us for an extra three nights in Orlando. Unfortunately at that point, my traveling companion, my mom, had to get back to work in NY. But there were no JetBlue flights back to the NYC metro area for another few days. We ended up flying into Boston and renting a car to drive home.

 

[Praying Colonel]

We were doing our first family WDW vacation when Charley came through in 2004. We were staying in a condo on 192. It was a fast-moving storm (moving about 30 mph) and the worst of it was through Orlando in about 2 hours. MK/EP/DHS were open the next day, albeit without FP and monorail service. Still amazing how fast they got everything up and going.

Everything turned out fine for us, but MCO and Sanford were closed for our flight out the next day. The car rental company (National) allowed us to keep our rental and waived the drop-off fee so we were able to drive home.

 

[Klayfish]

DW and I were on our honeymoon at Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas in 1999 when Hurricane Irene went nearby. It didn't hit the Bahamas directly, it hit the tip of FL (around Miami I think) and passed just to our west. We had what were probably tropical storm force sustained winds with Cat 1 gusts, and torrential rain. Well, it was our honeymoon and we were determined not to let it ruin our fun. We took a midnight swim in one of the pools. It was raining so hard that as it hit the pool surface, it was splashing back into our face pretty hard. We had a great time, and it's one of those memories we still talk about.

 

[dadtoagirl03]

I'm leaving on a cruise out of Port Everglades the weekend of Sept. 23rd (I hope). We were scheduled for St. Thomas (assuming this stop will be cancelled), Labadee, and San Juan. The latter 2 fared pretty well so we shall see what happens.

 

[LISAMWDW]

I was at WDW during Hurricane Ernesto in 2006 with my daughter, then 8 years old. It was a little scary but WDW made us feel so safe. Orlando didn't get hit too bad but they closed down the pool and all public areas at the resort and we all stayed in our rooms for the duration.