Hoping the liner community can help me out here - I want to know what I need to do in the case of a medical emergency to be refunded for all or a portion of our trip. I will give the long story details below.
I arrived in Orlando on Saturday and our first park day was Sunday - we have 7 day park hoppers with Genie+ staying at Pop Century - and I bought the disney trip insurance as well as the trip insurance for my return flight on American Airlines (not sure what I did or didn’t get from Southwest Airlines) - scheduled to go home Sunday the 17th.
Anyway - short story I have been admitted to the hospital here and it looks like tomorrow I am likely being transferred to a different hospital. I am not sure if I will get out before my trip is over, or if I do if I will be well enough to continue with our plans. My husband is a lovely human but he is not good at negotiating or working out situations like this and I have struggled to get him to advocate on my behalf with the front desk - very proud of him for getting him and the kids free transport to see me here though!
Longer story - Basically I did have first signs of symptoms on Friday before I left, but didn’t consider them concerning until they continued into Sunday. Called my doc on Sunday he said go to ER - so I went to the First Aid at Animal Kingdown and they transferred me to the hospital. It is now Monday night and I am still here in the hospital. I have a slim chance of being discharged tomorrow and a larger chance of being transferred to another hospital for more tests. My husband and the kids did stay at the park yesterday (didn’t think I’d be gone for more than a few hours), and they did go to the park today (they aren’t allowed to visit me anyway) - so they are using their tickets - but certainly not to the level they would have been if I were with them (I am the planner and also they are scared and trying to put on brave face while mommy is in the hospital).
I am trying to figure out what we can do or should do - do I just wait until I am out? Is there a number I call while I am in here to get things in place? I feel like I will be better able to relax and focus on healing if I at least know I haven’t missed some silly step of red tape that is going to mess things up for me. My husband promised me he will go to guest services tomorrow to ask them (while he tries to navigate HS by himself with 2 kids). If anyone has been through this and can help me know what to do I would greatly appreciate it. And healing thoughts are appreciated also Thank you in advance!
Wow! What a scary thing to happen and a horrible way to spend a vacation. I hope you recover quickly. I don’t have anything to add, but maybe one of the lovely liner travel agents might have some info. @ninjasherrie@OBNurseNH@dboothsummers
Yes I bought the Disney travel insurance - thank you for the links - I had my sister help me navigate and spoke with someone this AM. Sharing this in case anyone needs to know in the future - there is a form that the attending physician needs to fill out and it doesn’t matter when you start your claim according to the lady I spoke with on the phone. She said I could wait until after or start it now and add to it as we learn more. She said there is no time limit.
Anyway - I am going to at least wait to find out if I am getting out today or transferring to another hospital and then I will go from there. I will keep this updated in case anyone in the future is looking for answers.
You have trip insurance and that is good. It can be a pain in the butt getting your claim processed. Here’s a thought that has worked for me in the past. CONTACT Disney first off. Many times in situations like this they will work with you to recover Disney losses or grant future stays instead. CONTACT your airline. They also might work with you for future credit on a flight. Disney was great to us when we had to cancel because wife’s brother was dying. Delta airlines didn’t even argue, they just gave us Ecredits for future travel. Always try work with both of these before insurance or in combination with. Just a thought. Good luck.
Update from me - I was finally discharged from the hospital on April 16th - which was our last planned park day so I essentially missed the entire trip. I left the hospital in stable condition but with no answers on the root cause - I will be following up with a doc at home to continue the investigation.
My husband did have success at Guest Services at the parks - they refunded my entire park ticket and are working with us on refunding any extra experiences I missed (still working on one of them). Hoping the trip insurance comes through with more reimbursement as the ticket alone really doesn’t represent what was lost. I will keep this updated re my reimbursement journey in case it helps others in future.
Hope you’re feeling better and I’m so glad you’ve been able to already have parts of the expenses returned to you. I hope trip insurance provides all the rest.
Glad you are out of the hospital and hopefully feeling better. But what an awful way for a trip to unfold! Wishing you the best in your reimbursement journey.
I am adding a little on here in case someone is searching in the future - the insurance settlement I ended up getting back all of my out of pocket medical expenses so that was good. For the trip itself (which was a seven day 4 people pop century trip) I got $800 (which was basically a little less than my portion of the hotel costs). This is in addition to the $600 of tickets that the park refunded. This came nowhere close to replacing what was lost If you consider it wasn’t the trip any of us planned - I did repeal and got the same answer. For my upcoming trip, I bought external trip insurance from Allianz which I hope I don’t even need but also hope will be better if I do.
Thank you for the update, and I’m glad you were able to recoup some of your losses. Your story reminded me to purchase insurance for my upcoming trip, so thank you for that!
Thank you in advance! 