Hurricanes in Orlando | What to Do When a Hurricane Disrupts Your Plans

Hurricanes in Orlando

Want to know more about hurricanes in Orlando and how they can affect your Holiday? Read on… 

It isn’t uncommon for hurricanes to cause entire regions to come to a stop for days and days. As a result, if you are planning a holiday to a hurricane-prone place such as Orlando and the rest of the state of Florida, you should be prepared for the possibility of disruption. Good planning can’t stop a hurricane, but it can make minimize the frustration that comes from having to manage the consequences thereof.

What Should You Do When a Hurricane Disrupts Your Holiday?

Here are some of the steps that you should take if your holiday plans are going to be disrupted by a hurricane:

Pay Attention to the National Hurricane Center

First and foremost, you should pay attention to the National Hurricane Center, which will be your best source of information about the particular hurricane that you are interested in. You won’t be able to get a perfect prediction because no such thing exists, but you should nonetheless be able to get the best information that is available to interested individuals. As such, even once you have checked the National Hurricane Center’s website, you should continue to monitor the situation so that you can continue getting the latest updates about what you can expect. Of course, you can check a wide range of other sources as well, but you can count on the National Hurricane Center to be the most reliable, not least because it is the source where a lot of those other sources are getting their information from anyways.

Check With Your Hotel or Resort

If you know that there will be a hurricane sometime close to your travel dates, you will want to check in with your hotel or your resort to ask about either cancelling or rescheduling your booking. Different businesses have different policies on this matter, but it isn’t uncommon for them to waive either change fees or cancellation fees or both under the right circumstances. For that matter, if you are still in the process of planning a visit to Orlando, you should contact your potential options to learn more about their change and cancellation policies in the event of a hurricane. This way, you can gain valuable information that will be very useful for planning out your best course of action in case you are traveling during hurricane season.

Check with your Airline

Dealing with airlines can be a serious hassle when your holiday is being threatened by either a hurricane or some other kind of natural disaster. After all, you aren’t privy to the airline’s decision-making process, meaning that you won’t know whether your flight will be cancelled or not until the time approaches. This is particularly true because the airline’s plans tend not to be finalized until it is very late, which is sensible but still potentially very frustrating for someone who has already arrived at the airport without any other plans in mind. In any case, if you learn that your holiday could be disrupted by a hurricane, you should check in with your airline sooner rather than later. It is possible that your airline will step forward to offer you either a change or a cancellation without any fees, but it is also possible that your airline won’t do so until they are actually asked about the possibility. In any case, it doesn’t do you any harm to check in sooner rather than later.

Consider Going Anyways

Orlando is situated inland rather than right on the coast. As a result, it isn’t one of the places that will face the full fury of the hurricane under normal circumstances, though that isn’t to say that its experience will be something to scoff at. Still, it is possible that for certain people under certain circumstances, it will be less inconvenient for them to ride out the hurricane in Orlando rather than cancel their vacation. In fact, since the course of hurricanes aren’t perfectly predictable, it is possible that they will miss the relevant resorts altogether, which can be a good thing for resort-goers because that means less crowding while they make use of the attractions. With that said, if you are actually thinking about going to Orlando anyways in spite of the hurricane, you should keep a couple of things in mind. One, hurricanes aren’t perfectly predictable, meaning that you have no guarantee that your particular hotel or resort will be spared the worst of what the storm has to offer. Two, if your hotel or resort gets hit, you can expect to have to spend some time cooped up in your hotel room with limited services available to you. Sure, you can expect the staff to offer their help within reasonable expectations, but speaking bluntly, there will be serious limits on what they can and cannot do for you. As such, if you choose to go even with the hurricane warning, you could very well wind up with a very boring and very frustrating time, meaning that this isn’t a choice that you should make without serious consideration over the matter.

Buy Travel Insurance

Speaking of which, buying travel insurance is always a good idea when you are headed somewhere. After all, you never know when you will run into problems, meaning that buying travel insurance can be a good way for you to buy some peace of mind. Generally speaking, the more expensive your holiday plans, the more that you should have travel insurance coverage. This is because the more money that you spend, the more that you could lose in the event of something going wrong. As such, if that describes your situation, spending a bit extra to make sure that you have sufficient coverage for all of the contingencies that you need can do a great deal to make sure that you and your financial interests are properly protected. In this as in other things, shopping around can get you a good deal on what you really want as well as what you really need.