ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida theme parks including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld planned to reopen Friday after evaluating the impacts of… Hurricane Milton.
The parks said in their statements that some Halloween events will not be offered, and will not necessarily be operating at full capacity on Friday, but the public is welcome back.
like Milton came ashore As a major storm Wednesday, all three Parks closed in OrlandoThis hinders the vacations of tens of thousands of tourists, many of whom resort to hotels. Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld were closed for at least part of Wednesday and all of Thursday.
Orlando International Airport, Florida’s busiest, is scheduled to resume domestic arrivals on Thursday and departures on Friday after mostly closing on Wednesday.
An airport closure prevented Simon Forster, his wife and their two children from returning to Scotland, so they enjoyed two more days of their two-week vacation on the bustling international route in Orlando’s tourist hotspot on Thursday. The hurricanes seemed to be following them from two years ago as Hurricane Ian prevented them from returning to Scotland after another vacation in Orlando.
“Last night, it was pretty intense,” Forrester said. “I was watching the palm trees swaying back and forth outside my hotel room. How they didn’t come down, I don’t know. Scary stuff.”
Their hotel at Universal Orlando Resort had a party atmosphere Wednesday night before Milton arrived.
“The bar was a lot of fun,” he said. “Two more days here, there are worse places we could be.”
In Tampa, animals were safe at popular tourist attractions the Tampa Zoo and Florida Aquarium, which had aimed to reopen on Saturday.
A zoo spokesman said the 1,000 animals will remain in their overnight homes and hurricane shelter sites while the habitats are cleared of debris. The aquarium also confirmed that their animals are “in good condition.”
“Our buildings weathered the storm well, and so did our animals,” Roger German, president and CEO of the aquarium, said in a news release Thursday.
The zoo suffered some damage due to strong winds and was without electricity, and the spokesperson expects the process of cleaning up and restoring the wreckage, which is already underway, to take a few days.
In Orlando, miniature golf was among the few activities available to tourists confined to their hotel rooms and rental apartments with parks closed. There was a line to get to the Congo River Golf Course on the international route.
Craig Greig of Glasgow, Scotland, would have been at the Magic Kingdom with his wife and 10-year-old if the theme parks were open. Instead, he held a golf club ready to putt golf balls over an artificial lake filled with baby alligators.
“We just wanted to stretch our legs and get out of the hotel,” he said. “Especially for a little one.” He slept through the night as the hurricane, his first, tore through central Florida.
Disney World, Universal and other attractions make Orlando the most visited destination in the United States, attracting 74 million tourists last year alone.
The celebrations associated with Halloween make October one of the busiest and most lucrative periods.
Tornadoes in the Orlando area are uncommon but not unheard of. Three of them crossed the area in 2004 – Charlie, Frances and Jane, and Hurricane Ian caused some flooding as it passed as a low-level tropical storm in 2022.
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Associated Press writers Andrew Dalton and Caitlin Huamani contributed from Los Angeles.
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Follow Mike Schneider on social media platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.
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