Hurricane Milton traps Disney visitors vacationing in Florida

They went to Disney World for theme park rides and photo opportunities with Mickey Mouse. Now they’re adding an unexpected adventure to their Disney vacations: they’re descending on the resort to brave a ferocious hurricane heading toward Florida.

In recent days, Hurricane Milton has gone from a nuisance storm system in the Gulf of Mexico to a historic hurricane that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has warned will be a “monster.” The rapid pace at which Milton intensified surprised forecasters — and has left scores of Disney enthusiasts who didn’t expect airport closures or other weather-related travel disruptions stranded in the Orlando area.

“We came to the realization that we’re stuck here,” said Telissa Carpenter, an Indianapolis resident vacationing with her son at Disney for his 30th birthday.

The first time Carpenter heard about weather concerns was over the weekend, a day after she landed in Florida. A notification appeared on her Disney app saying the resort was monitoring a fast-moving storm.

Hours later, she received another notification, this time from her airline: her flight home, scheduled for Tuesday, had been canceled. Alternative modes of transport, including buses and trains, were also booked or cancelled, and the few available flights were beyond the family’s budget.

It’s a wrinkle Carpenter has never experienced in her many years of vacationing at Disney.

“I understand it’s hurricane season, but we’ve been doing this since 2017 and have never really had a problem in October,” she said. “At the time of our plans and departure, we had no idea that it would become such a serious situation.”

Follow live updates on Hurricane Milton

While the Walt Disney World Resort has been largely business as usual so far this week, it announced Tuesday afternoon that the theme parks will be closed beginning Wednesday at 1 p.m., and “it is likely that the theme parks will remain closed on Thursday.”

The announcement came as Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida Tuesday afternoon as a Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, which said in a 5 p.m. advisory that the storm was about 480 miles southwest of Tampa lay. The hurricane is expected to approach Florida’s west-central coast Wednesday evening, with Milton monitoring the densely populated Tampa Bay area for landfall.

The storm has led to evacuation mandates along the coast. Further inland, in the greater Orlando area where Disney is located, the Orlando airport announced it would close at 8 a.m. Wednesday.

According to the fan-run Walt Disney World Magazine, only a handful of hurricanes in Disney’s more than 50-year history have forced the parks to close. The area is as dependent on tourists as tourists from around the world seem to be: Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort and other theme parks make the area the most visited destination in the United States, attracting 74 million tourists last year, The Associated Press reported.

Cara Prior, a kindergarten teacher from Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, drove to Disney in the family’s RV with her husband and 14-year-old daughter on Saturday in anticipation of a fun week. But Disney closed the campground where the family’s RV had parked before the storm, and the family moved to a Disney hotel free of charge.

“I know we’ll probably be sitting in the hotel a little bit nervous tomorrow,” Prior said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before the family went to a Disney event called “Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.” ” But “we are reassured here that Disney has a generator on a generator on a generator – lots of backups.”

Others were able to cancel their Disney trips at the last minute. Kensly Williams, a physician assistant in Fairbury, Nebraska, was scheduled to fly to Florida with her family on Wednesday. When the forecast became increasingly bleak, she decided to make a new appointment.

“I would never want to put my family in danger,” said Williams, whose children are three years and six months old.

She also didn’t want to walk through Disney in a storm.

“I think anyone who has toddlers knows that they don’t tolerate soaking wet well and can tolerate changes in schedule,” she said.

Ashleigh Giliberto, a Miami-based theme park vacation planner, said she strongly discouraged travelers from coming to Florida this week if they didn’t have to.

“People save for years to go to Disney – the average person says, what, once in their life? It’s a big journey for people, and it’s something they look forward to,” she said.

“If someone came to me and said, ‘Would you like to book me a room?’ I’d say, ‘No, I won’t.’ During an active hurricane, I won’t make another reservation. I don’t think it’s smart,” she said.

Carpenter, the tourist from Indiana, said she is nervous about being stuck in Florida because of the hurricane. She did get some good news: She now has a flight home for later in the week after her original flight was canceled. But she said she’s still in wait-and-see mode.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like, or what the aftermath is going to be like, or realistically, if we’ll even be able to get home on Friday.”