ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld, plan to reopen Friday after assessing the impact of the coronavirus. hurricane milton.
The public will be welcome again, although some Halloween special events will not take place and will not necessarily be fully operational on Friday, the park said in a statement.
as Milton landed Wednesday as a big storm, all three. Parks in Orlando are closedputting a damper on vacations for tens of thousands of tourists, many of whom were holed up in hotels. Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld were all closed for at least part of Wednesday and all of Thursday.
Orlando International Airport, Florida’s busiest airport, was scheduled to resume domestic arrivals on Thursday and departures on Friday after being largely closed on Wednesday.
Due to airport closures, Simon Foster, his wife and two children are unable to return to Scotland, and on Thursday they will be making an additional 2 of their two-week holiday on busy International Drive in Orlando’s tourist district. Enjoyed the days. Hurricanes have been chasing them ever since Hurricane Ian prevented them from returning to Scotland after a holiday in Orlando two years ago.
“It was pretty intense last night,” Forster said. “I was outside my hotel room watching the palm trees sway back and forth. How they didn’t fall over, I don’t know. It’s scary.”
There was a party atmosphere at their hotel at Universal Orlando Resort Wednesday night ahead of Milton’s arrival.
“The bar was a lot of fun,” he said. “Here we are for two more days, the worst place we could be.”
In Tampa, animals were safe at the Tampa Zoo and Florida Aquarium, two popular tourist attractions that were aiming to reopen Saturday.
The zoo’s 1,000 animals will remain in their nighthouse and hurricane shelter locations until debris is cleared from their habitat, a spokesperson said. The aquarium also confirmed that the animals are “fine.”
“Our building withstood the storm well, as did our animals,” Roger German, the aquarium’s president and CEO, said in a news release Thursday.
The zoo suffered some damage from strong winds and is without power, and a spokesperson said debris removal and restoration work, which has already begun, is expected to take several days.
In Orlando, miniature golf was one of the few activities available to tourists who were stuck in hotel rooms or rented condos with parks closed. There was a line to get into Congo River Golf on International Drive.
Craig Greig, who lives in Glasgow, Scotland, would have come to Magic Kingdom with his wife and 10-year-old child if theme parks had been open. Instead, he was clutching a putter and trying to putt a golf ball into a man-made lagoon filled with baby alligators.
“We just wanted to stretch our legs and get out of the hotel,” he said. “Especially with little kids.” He slept through the night as the first hurricane hit central Florida.
Attractions like Disney World and Universal have made Orlando the most visited tourist destination in the United States, with 74 million tourists visiting last year alone.
And Halloween-related celebrations make October one of the busiest and most lucrative months.
Hurricanes in the Orlando area are rare, but not unheard of. In 2004, three hurricanes, Charlie, Frances, and Jeanne, passed through the area, and in 2022, Hurricane Ian passed as a low-grade tropical storm, causing some flooding.
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Associated Press writers Andrew Dalton and Caitlin Fuamani contributed from Los Angeles.
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Follow Mike Schneider on social platform X: @MikeSchneider.
