I had heard reports about the damage that the three hurricanes had caused in the Central Florida area, but I had not really been able to see for myself what it looked like firsthand.

Recently my wife and I got a chance to see just what exactly happened to the Walt Disney World Resort after these hurricanes, and right off the bat I’m glad to say that the damage was minimal to all of the guest areas.

I say guest areas since there were many, many, many trees bent, pulled up from their roots or simply snapped in half in the many forested areas in the Resort. Luckily, these trees are not near any guest areas, yet can be seen from some of the access roads and the WDW Monorail traveling from the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC) to Epcot.

Of course, this kind of information didn’t come cheap...

You see, in our eagerness to go out and visit the Resort, we forgot almost all of the rules for spending a full day out there. By the end of the night when we got home we had signs of dehydration, sunburns, felt sore and were dead tired.

Out of haste, we had simply ignored every suggestion made for those visiting the Resort, including ones I’ve made myself before!

So, in infamous 20/20 hindsight, here’s what we should have done before we went out for a whole day:

1) Packed a bag

We spent the day having to hold various items either in my wallet or in our pockets. While we did travel light, we couldn’t really buy say a bottle of water and keep the bottle around for refills unless we wanted to hold it in our hands.

If you do decide to pack a bag, keep in mind that before you enter every park you’ll have to have it searched by WDW Security. To speed up the process, open up ALL of the compartments of the bag before you get to the Security officer, so that they won’t have to ask you to do it then.

Some items you may want to pack include:

• Spray bottles filled with ice water (they don’t have to have fans attached)
• Resealable plastic bottles (filled with ice water or empty to be filled inside the park)
• Sunscreen (at LEAST 15 SPF; should go with 30+ SPF though)
• Sweaters for cool nights (October through March)
• Ponchos (it will rain out of nowhere, and umbrellas are too clumsy)
• Camera with Extra Batteries & Film
• Hard plastic (single) baseball card protectors/holders (to keep tickets, hotel room keycards, and FastPasses dry and protected)

...in addition for the guys on the trip, you may want to buy a cheap wallet with a plastic-type exterior as opposed to a nice leather one. Here’s why:

Back when we were going very regularly, we were on Test Track at Epcot, still on the inside part of the course. As we were inside, it started raining outside (unbeknownst to us). As we entered the outside section (at a high rate of speed), it started to come down hard. Test Track is usually cancelled by this sort of weather, but the heavy rain came on so suddenly, we were traveling through it going around the first hair pin turns outside. Once almost to the straightaway, the car comes to a screeching halt on the last left bank and there we are at a 20 degree angle, in pouring rain, stuck in a Test Track vehicle. Did I mention they were convertibles?

Long story short, some engineers had to restart our car by hand on the bank and walked beside it as we went back into the show building slowly. Apparently, the vehicle had gone into an emergency stop or system fault from the rain, and caused it to shut down. In the end we were offered a free T-shirt to get us out of our soaked ones, but my leather wallet wasn’t so lucky: All of my non-plastic cards were ruined, and the brown from the leather had colored all of my cash with a light brown color. I’d rather not talk about how our paper tickets fared...

2) Applied, and reapplied, sunscreen

Sunburns aren’t fun, and even a “suntan” is really sun damage to your skin. Believe me, a theme park is not the place to get a tan anyway, unless you’re going for the collar and forearm-only farmer’s tan.

Make sure you use sunscreen of at least 15 SPF, which should really be 30 SPF. This is especially important for children and those with fair skin. What we’re really talking about here is time. The SPF refers to how much longer you can stay in the sun without burning. Let’s say for instance that an average person would burn in the current sunlight (really the UV Index) in ten minutes. Had that person put on a sunscreen with a SPF of 15, they would have been able to stay out 15 times longer in the sun without burning, or in that case two and a half hours. After that time, they will have to reapply or they will be at risk of sunburn. If they had used one with an SPF of 50, they could stay out for eight hours and twenty minutes without reapplying. What does that mean in our situation? If you use a sunscreen with an SPF of 50 in the morning before going out to the parks, you’ll never have to reapply because for most people it will last them from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. It doesn’t hurt to get a sweat proof one, either, as it will allow your skin to sweat and breathe naturally.

3) Taken a break at midday

There are many reasons for staying at a hotel on WDW property, but among my favorite is the ability to quickly take a midday nap in a relatively convenient time frame. You’re all excited in the morning, and there are a lot of events that happen at night, so why would you want to fight the hottest part of the day with energy you could be restoring for later that night?

Even if you’re not staying on property, taking a good hour or two out of the day to head back to the hotel and relax can make all the difference later on. If you’re not inclined to go back to your hotel or can’t for some reason, consider going somewhere else (maybe one of the many hotels or entertainment areas such as Downtown Disney) for a long laid back lunch. This also provides the perfect opportunity to switch parks, and as long as you have park hoppers, it won’t cost you a thing. Parking at one theme park covers parking at all of the theme parks for that day (as long as you have your parking placard). If you’re staying on property, your parking pass is also good for free parking at any Theme Park.

4) Drink, drink, drink, and drink some more

We knew we were getting thirsty during the day, but even the little breaks we would give ourselves at various water fountains was apparently not enough. When we got back in at night we felt a little sick, hot and had some mild abdominal pain. Double-checking on a medical web site, my hunches were right: we had a mild case of dehydration. The cure was simple, however: drink 32 to 64 ounces of fluids per person. We did, and the next morning felt fine.

In the end, all of this could have been avoided had we just taken some time and planned for our trip. Even though it only lasted a day, a little planning could have gone a long way.

Thanks for stopping on by, and I’ll see you next week!