What Will the Weather Be Like?

Ready for your fast pass to the perfect vacation? This is Talk Travel to Me. Join host Kristy Ouellette and the Mickey Guru Travel Company team for one big travel question every episode. Solo insights or expert round tables all with a sprinkle of magic and the ultimate insider edge. Fasten your seatbelt, it's time to talk travel.

Hey traveler, welcome back to Talk Travel to Me. I'm your host Kristy Ouellette and this week I'm recording this episode from my bed at Disney's Port Orleans Riverside Resort. I was invited down here with one of our Mickey Guru agents, Shalon, and we are going to be learning all about the brand new cruise ship Disney's Believe. It is their reveal, so we're super excited about that. But I also was like getting messages from home and Eric was like, hey, we don't have a podcast. So here we are. I'm answering a question this week that was one of the most common things I'm asked and the one that makes me cringe the most. Well, the most. it makes me cringe a lot because there is no answer that is guaranteed to be correct. And that question is, what will the? weather be like? Seriously, it's it's just so hard to answer. I can do all of the research. I've been to Walt Disney World, especially in Universal, every month during the year. I know what it feels like to be miserably sticky hot in July. I know how glorious it is to be in jeans and a hoodie walking around in January and absolutely loving life. But I can't tell you for sure what the weather will be like. Now, we also get other versions of the same question is, will rain will ruin our day at Disney if it rains? What should we do when it rains at Universal? Should I never cruise during hurricane season? You know, what will the weather be like during spring break? Should we pick a different week just in case? It's one of those things that is a huge concern for the traveler. And I get that you're spending a significant amount of money on a vacation and you don't want to plan it and then arrive and have it be torrentially downpouring for the seven weeks that you seven weeks. Well, that'd be quite a vacation for the seven days you are. finally at your vacation destination. So believe me, I get it currently. Actually, it is pouring here at Walt Disney World and it started yesterday and it's going to be this way till we leave. But I and I do know, though, that the weather has an incredible impact on the activities that you want to do. For example, if you're talking about Curse of the Werewolf over at Epic Universe, if it's downpouring, that ride closes. It's an outdoor attraction. They can't do it in the driving rain. Same thing with Test Track. Test Track goes down at Epcot pretty much when you see like the threat of rain in the distance, like way out there in the distance. Not quite, but a drizzle and it's over. So I totally get it. But unfortunately, the real answer is and I think the people that ask it know this, but nobody knows. Even meteorologists don't know until about a week or so out. And then isn't the joke that they're like almost always wrong anyway, but somehow still managed to have a job. So the thing that we can do is we can look at year over year what's typical, which. really is more about the climate. So we'll know that we can plan around those averages like in the summer in Orlando. It is likely going to rain every single day between three and five p.m I don't understand because I'm not a meteorologist, but I will tell you that the heat and the humidity build all day and the afternoon it just bursts. So that is something that is definitely that's going to happen. Right. And we know that we can plan for that. But then as we get into the cooler months, sometimes that is a little bit in October. Sometimes it's not till November or even December that Orlando cools down. We then can kind of predict what is typical now unless you live under a rock. And if you live under a rock, I'm not sure how you're listening to this podcast now that I think about it. But, you know, climate change is here. It's a very real thing. It is something that is just changing the way things are in all of our communities. So what used to be a really safe time, let's say January in Orlando or perhaps January in Southern California, because that's also a really beautiful time. Suddenly you can have more rain than is typical. So it's important that we look at all kinds of factors when planning your vacation, whether it's one of them, but also the time that you can get out of school and work, the time that we're going to find the lowest crowds and the best deals, like all of these things. And while weather is a consideration, I'm often reminded of a friend of my husband's who always said there is no bad weather. There's just bad clothing and bad preparation. So now I will say I'm saying that as it is driving rain outside. And that is why I didn't get up early this morning and head to Animal Kingdom before my meeting started, even though that was my plan. But there is that need to be able to kind of bounce around and adjust to what is actually going on, what Mother Nature has actually delivered on the day. And that is something for sure that having a travel advisor that is very familiar with what you are doing on your vacation can help tremendously. I've got rainy day plans upon. rainy day plans upon rainy day plans. Like there's there's a way to get it all done. No matter where you are, you don't have to stay in your hotel for the day when it rains, unless hurricane season. So that is another one that gets asked a lot. And I will say I think I have been at Walt Disney World more for more hurricanes than the average traveler. Now, if you add up how many days per year I spend down here, that could be part of it. But I have been at Walt Disney World for at least five hurricanes and that has closed the park at least twice. One of them was Hurricane Jeanne. And I remember that because Jean is my mother-in-law's name, honestly, and she's a beautiful human. So I thought it was funny that my mother-in-law's hurricane came and closed the entire an entirety of Walt Disney World. We were staying at Wilderness Lodge on that trip. And when I tell you it was just part of the adventure, I'm not even kidding. My husband and I were there. It was we did not have our daughter with us. She was a toddler. She had stayed home on that trip all by herself, you know, just hanging out. She was fine. Don't worry. But they closed the parks. They brought everybody into the hotels. They brought extra food and entertainment. And then at that storm was predicted to be really nasty. So we ended up being sent basically confined to our hotel rooms for a period of times during that storm. And they basically were keeping track and letting everybody know when it was safe to come out because these hotels have a lot of glass. Right. So all that to say, would I choose to go to Walt Disney World during a hurricane? No. In fact, I have had clients who are booked on their vacation. We end up with a hurricane that is scheduled to hit during their time that they're on vacation. And because almost all of my clients listen to me and get travel insurance, we have absolutely changed those plans, activated the travel insurance, rescheduled everything, because you don't want to be here during a hurricane. But if you are, they take very good care of you. The biggest reason I say you don't want to be here. is A, you've saved and this is like your big vacation week. You don't want to spend it confined to your hotel room. But B, Walt Disney World is actually used as a shelter, an area of refuge for Floridians that live along the coast. So a lot of people will need that to evacuate their homes and go to Walt Disney World. So we want to leave those rooms available to them. So there's twofold, one selfish and one in very generous way that we're just not going to come here if we know a hurricane is imminent. Now, with that said, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st through November 30th. OK, that's a long period. That's six months of time that you would just immediately just cross off your calendar to not go on a vacation. The busiest of that really tends to be mid August through mid October. So that some people will try to avoid that. But honestly, you're going to get some great deals if you're willing to travel during that time frame, especially cruising, because people have this big scary thought about what that's going to look like. And unlike being at. a land based resort like Universal or Disney, a cruise ship just change their changes, their itinerary when a hurricane is coming. Right. That so that's much easier even to manage, at least as a traveler, because you're not having to worry about the logistics. But it's important to realize that that time period is a long one. And it is not. it's not a situation where you can just just avoid it completely. So having again that travel insurance to say, oh, wow, something has been named. Now, what do we want to do? Or maybe the cruise line changes your Caribbean cruise to a Canada, New England cruise. And you're like, oh, that's not what I want. Travel insurance will help you with that, too. And also, we can't forget the fact that the Pacific side of the U.S. and Mexico has their own hurricane season. So there is there's there's things to work around depending on where you're going. So the reality is when you're booking your vacation, even if you book your vacation last minute, like 30 days out, I can't tell you what the weather is going to be. And you know that, right. You. know that. But you're looking for what are my chances of showing up at my vacation destination and having to deal with torrential downpours every day all day. And we can do a little bit of that. We can do a little bit of estimating, but we don't know. So the real magic happens when you're here and it starts to rain and you're like, oh, OK, now what do we need to do? All right. So to wrap it all up, my honest advice when people ask me this question is to pull back a little bit and have the conversation about. we just can't even predict what that looks like. And I'm going to recommend that you pick dates based on matter most to you, your budget, the crowds, school schedules, the temperature, like the general temperature range. Like if you don't want to be on the surface of the sun, Orlando is not where you want to be in the summer months and even into fall. Earlier in the week here, it was 98 degrees with 80 percent humidity while we were at Universal. So I can tell you that that wasn't really I mean, it was. fun. We had a great time, but you had to be prepared for that. My ideal temperature and what I kept saying as we were walking around just sweating, I was like, I really need to come back here in December. My personal favorite time to be in Orlando is in early to mid December and then early to mid. Well, actually all of January is nice because I like to be down here when I can wear jeans, sneakers and a lace, nice fluffy hoodie. That's like my way to go. So we'll check the forecast the week before you travel and then give advice on how to handle that. But that's really all you can do at that point. You have to just let go and decide you're going to enjoy your vacation. And don't forget that sometimes the biggest, the best memories, the things that you will never let go of happen in the unexpected. And I can tell you that way back in 2012 when my sister and I took a trip to Universal and it rained like torrential the entire trip, we laughed so hard. It has been a long time since then and we. still talk about it and how like we think we our feet might still be wet. We have brand new shoes since 2012. Of course, they're not still wet. But when our feet feel a little damp, we joke about that. So, all right, I got to run the big reveal of Disney's newest cruise ship, the Believe is waiting for me and Chalon's hanging out in the lobby. But I will see you right here next Thursday with another travel related question. So until then, I can't wait to hear you Talk Travel to Me over on the socials. See you real soon, traveler.

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