The 2017 Vacation That Never Was

By Shendl Rewitszky

The 2017 Vacation that never was… 

I had planned and planned for this vacation and I had felt strangely unexcited about its arrival, which for me is very unusual, as I only get to WDW very rarely! I just had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was going to happen to affect this vacation…… and boy was I right…Enter HURRICANE IRMA!

The week before I was due to fly from South Africa to Orlando, a Hurricane named Irma made her appearance in the Atlantic Ocean on a path to Florida. I watched and watched the path all the time knowing that there was nothing I could do until I had the advisories from Disney and my airline.
I phoned Emirates twice on Thursday 7th September to find out if they were cancelling flights as by this time Irma was headed directly into Florida, they said they had not heard anything from Orlando International Airport so we accepted that we would be going. Thursday night at Midnight, I receive an email telling me that my flights have been cancelled and to call the booking office to find out more.  Early Friday Morning I phoned Emirates and they said we can definitely arrive on the 12th September instead of the 10th September as originally booked. (I still had a feeling in my stomach at this point).
We take our dogs to the kennels, arrange that the housesitter must still arrive and fly to Cape Town where my sister lives. Our first plan was to spend one night with her and then board our flight, but Irma forced all that to change. We had to spend 3 nights in Cape Town and find inexpensive things to occupy our time, All the time watching the facebook updates on Irma from the weather page I found to follow.
Sunday evening while I am packing our luggage and making sure I have everything, I get an email from Emirates, telling me that our flights have been cancelled again! At this point, I was just ready to go HOME! I could change my flights again but there was no assurance that we would get there on the 13th September, so we asked them for a refund and contacted my awesome Disney Travel Pixie to sort out our booking with Disney. 

We ended up rescheduling from Sept 2017 to Nov 2018. I was not taking the chance with Hurricane season again. I am very glad that we did not go this time though….we had a family bereavement on 17th Sept and I was just so thankful that we were not overseas when it happened. That would have been dreadful and would have ruined our vacation further.
I now get to plan for a different season and I get to show my Husband the Christmas Decorations for the first time.
I guess things always work out in the end and it just shows you that they Always Happen for a Reason!