The Trip In Between 2 Hurricanes.

With the hurricane season at full blast and Hurricane Dean plowing through the Caribbean, everyone planning on going to WDW are understandably getting anxious. I have a trip in 2 weeks, so naturally I am paying close attention to any weather patterns forming in the Atlantic.

Still, if one lives there, or goes to WDW often enough, one is bound to encounter such weather problems. I'm no exception. In 2004, we were making our usual plan on going to WDW during the Labor Day week. Unfortunately, just around the time we were supposed to fly out, Hurricane Frances was pounding Central Florida and moving so freakingly slow! We had to postponed our flight and our hotel reservations because all flights in and out of Orlando were canceled. We were pay attention to the news literally every hour because we wanted to know when we could fly in, and if the theme parks would be open. On top of that, there was another hurricane (Hurricane Ivan) forming in the atlantic that was predicted to hit Florida around Sunday of that week, the day we were scheduled to fly out of Orlando to go back. We didn't care. We still wanted to go.

Finally, 4 days later than we planned, we flew in to Orlando for our shortened vacation. As we drove from the airport to WDW, and while driving around WDW itself, we could see some of the damage from all of the hurricanes that had struck the area that year alone. It was amazing to know that by Wednesday, WDW was operating as usual. And you know what? That vacation was one of the best times we've ever had at WDW. Due to the hurricane, and the thread of another one possibly coming later in the week, the theme parks were almost empty! We could do even the most popular rides multiple times (and we did!). We could walk in and buy tickets to La Nouba easily, and practically do things that we couldn't do because they were too busy or sold out.

So what started out to be a horrendous event turns out to be quite enjoyable, at least for us. Here are some pictures that we took during that trip.

These are some of the down trees that we see around WDW as we drove around.




The theme parks were practically empty. These are a few snap shots from Epcot.



This is the Magic Kingdom, close to Noon time.


And this is from Disney-MGM Studios.


Downtown Disney was also close to empty. We took the opportunity to walk in and get tickets to see La Nouba that very evening.


As with other things, there's always a silver lining when something like this happens.

Zz.