We actually had a disney vacation planned over labor day a few of years ago and a hurricane hit before we were scheduled to leave Michigan. Disney was awesome and let us reschedule for another weekend at no cost. Our flights were with AirTran and they rebooked for another weekend, also at no cost to us. I can’t remember the name of the hurricane but I do remember it came inland and Disney did close for a couple of days due to damage. Doesn’t happen often but if it does they are great about compensating for it. By the way Disney in October is now my favorite.

In general, because Orlando sits in the middle of Florida, hurricanes and tropical storms do not usually present our area with an imminent threat. There just are not very good odds that by the time the storm reaches this far inland, it will be much more than just some nasty wind and rain. And frankly, we get storms with nasty wind and rain at least once a week in the summer (or at least it feels like that).

When the poor weather comes, usually what happens is people head indoors and any attractions that have an outdoor component are shut down until the weather passes.

But the bigger issue really is, do the parks compensate guests for lost time due to poor weather? The short answer is no. You’ll find in all the small print associated with buying theme park tickets and other travel services that bad weather is not grounds for a refund. Essentially they are saying that you assume the risk when you buy your tickets. And the parks will also argue that they offer many indoor attractions that are not closed due to weather.

Now, that’s for bad weather. If a real hurricane or tropical storm actually made it inland to Orlando, it is likely that the major theme parks and other various services would be more willing to compensate guests whose plans were ruined. After all, the parks – or for that matter Orlando as a destination – does not want newspaper articles circling the country about how thousands of families were screwed out of their vacation dollars because the parks wouldn’t give out refunds or otherwise work with guests on making new plans.

Two winters ago, when I was working at Universal’s Guest Contact Center, there were a couple terrible winter storms along the East Coast. These storms shut down airports for days. During this time many families were either unable to get to Orlando or were stranded here for extra days. The parks compensated these families by providing refunds for trip cancellations or no penalties for rescheduling (which they usually don’t do). For the families that were stuck in Orlando, many were given extra days of admission.