WDW with a recently injured dc

[CoffeeCueen]

We are heading on a family trip to WDW at Easter. We have travel insurance. Staying in an apart hotel and planning to do theme or water parks for probably 9 or ten of our days there (wdw only, not Universal).

My teen ds age 15 had a leg injury during football after Christmas which is still being analysed to understand what’s happening with ligaments etc (long waitlist for MRI) and will need physio for at least another 8 to ten weeks.

With all the walking and swimming and the long journey sitting confined on a plane, would you go on the holiday or push the medical team to give us some letter to help us cancel/postpone on insurance?

I really am so terrified about going to the US and dc getting re-injured, or jeopardising proper recovery by doing “too much too soon”.

In that case we’d still do the holiday another time, and we’d find something gentle to do at Easter instead.

You need to ask the doctor and the physio as it really depends on the exact injury. A lot of injuries encourage walking and when coming back from injury you can do non contact conditioning. Until you know more you can’t make a decision.

Wdw is very accessible for mobility aids (in fact it seems like about a third of people there seem to using them) would he be willing to use a little mobility scooter?

Depending on the type of injury, he at increased risk of a blood clot? If so, I'd be worried about the flight. DH had a knee injury and few days before we went on holiday and an OOH GP said he was fine to fly as we were due to go to Canary Islands. He developed a DVT on the plane over and spent our entire trip in hospital. We would never have gone if we had been told this was a possibility - the GP didn't even mention it and just said to DH to rest his leg whilst we were away 🤦🏻‍♀️. I'd maybe seek some medical advice in the next few weeks and see what they say.

I would talk to your insurers and ask them. Because there is one certainty - this will impac t on your insurance and the cost will go up. I am disabled and have enhanced medial insurance which costs me £300 a year. Last year just before my holiday I broke my finger. To be clear, although I wasn't yet discharged, and my disability is a bigger risk, the insurers charged me nearly £400 EXTRA (I had one month left on the annual policy). I wasn't going to cancel for a broken finger so I had to pay up.

Now with another insurerm who is probably no better, but like hell was I going to renew with a company that more than doubled my insurance in the last month for something that was a very minor injury.

@EauNeu I think a mobility scooter would be a hard no from ds! Good idea though.

@Noodlesnotstrudels this is a good point. I’ll ask when I’m asking about the trip.

@EmmaMaria that is daylight robbery. How can they bump up the price by that much mid policy? We will call the insurers once we have a better clue about the injury post MRI

It’s tough - other dc and ds will be SO disappointed if we can’t go. I’ve stopped talking about the holiday - trying to keep a lid on their excitement.

Honestly, postpone. Insurance will either not cover or will give you a hefty premium for a pre-existing condition.

Disney doesn’t give access passes for temporary conditions and certainly in Paris you aren’t allowed to take mobility aids with you in the regular queue. You could look at a telescopic stool for him to rest on?

Any chance you can pay for an MRI?

I don't think you are right about this, sorry. You're certainly not barred from queuing or accessing rides without a DAS pass and the systems in place for people with mobility aids are very good.

With respect to people saying that your insurance premium will go up, surely if you already had the insurance pre- injury, the insurance company either has to agree to cover it under the policy that you have or refund you for the holiday if they are not willing to do so. I'd get advice from his health professionals about whether it is likely to aggravate the injury.

Like I said, in Paris they don’t allow mobility aids in the main queue so OP would need to check.

We borrowed a wheelchair in the park when walking got too much for our DD.
She has CRMO and a hip bursitis, she managed until the last week without and then it got too much.

@TaggieO WDW is not DL Paris.
They are far better for accommodation.

Wheelchairs can go into queues where they can and they have other options if they can't. You don't need the DAS pass.

@countdown64 yes that’s what I was thinking - we already had insurance so how on earth can they charge us extra? The doctors are worried now there is an underlying medical issue but when we booked the insurance we didn’t know about it / slight suspicion from a problem years ago but nothing was diagnosed or investigated then, now we are having a bit of an “aha” moment.

DS does not have a wheelchair - crutches are enough for everyday life for now.

But you can’t crutch around WDW for 7 hours, it would be too exhausting. And I’m worried 7+ hours of walking in hot weather every day would be too much, and it’s such an expensive trip and the kids have made Big Plans, to have to curb the plans would make ds feel bad. We could possibly go next year, when he’s fit and I’m not freaking out about whether he’ll cope.

I don’t even know how you’d go about hiring a mobility scooter for a few weeks in Orlando. And we are not staying on the parks so how would we get the scooter to and from wdw? It’s too far for the other kids to walk.

I feel like I will be pushing to cancel the trip. Oh gawd the kids will hate me! 😂

You can hire them inside the parks at any point during your day. You leave it at the park at the end of the day and collect another one the next day. Same with wheelchairs. If you go park to park you only pay once during the day.

There are also numerous companies external that hire for cheaper and longer who will deliver a chair/scooter to your accommodation.

I literally never said it was the same. I said to double check because that is the situation at Disney in Paris.

Travel insurance doesn't work like that. It's in the terms and conditions that you have to notify them of any change no matter how small. If you don't and they find out, then you aren't insured for anything even if the claim is unconnected. They also don't cover you if you choose not to go, and you would need a medical confirmation that you are unfit to travel. That's quite a high bar - in my case even if I hadn't chosen to go, none of my doctors were telling me I was unfit to travel because I wasn't - a broken finger that had been mended and splinted did not make me unfit. Even if you get such a declaration the insurance company can refer it to a panel if they believe the injury doesn't amount to being unfit. As usual, the insurance company always wins.

Whilst I am not encouraging you one way or the other, the USA (and a few other places) hiring mobility aids for short periods is very easy. It's the second easiest place that I have travelled to - oddly Mexico is the best. There's a reason for that - lots of US vets travel to Mexico to escape bad weather!