It’s FL. You can basically do whatever you want. Morally you should quarantine for a few days and wear a mask when in public for several days after you leave quarantine.
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I will add, I know many people that have tested positive after trips to many places over the holidays. Covid can find you anywhere. It is not an Orlando problem.
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True. United States is hitting almost a million cases per day now.
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We went to DLR Jan 1-3, and 1 day at Universal on Dec. 31st. My husband and I are Moderna x3, my 6 year had just reached full vaccination as of the 23rd, but my 12 year old was vaccinated in June/July snd boosters for him had not been approved pre trip. Only after I got home did I do the research on vaccine protection again at Omicron. Turns out: at 6 months out, my 12 year old was only 10% protected.!! The rest of us were at 75% b/c we were still in those early high protection weeks post full vaccination or boost.
We are ardent maskers…snd still, while we were rope dropping Spidey in DCA, we just looked at each other and said: if this isn’t a super spreader moment I don’t know what is! You don’t have to wear masks outside (except at Universal) and only about 1/4 of folks do. 100% compliance indoors.
we arrived home on a Monday and sure enough on Thursday my 12 year old came down with classic covid systems and was pretty darn sick to boot. We had to keep him out of school and then find that elusive covid appt, which was a ridiculously hard exercise. Test results were in the 3-5 day expected range. Really? 5 days??!! And then On Saturday I got sick. Again, another scramble to get tested.
Faced with my 12 year old missing school merely b/c of delayed test results I got him tested again thru our children’s hospital which required a telehealth appt with his pediatrician and a referral (I’m on a high deductible plan so I will get a bill for both) but which had guaranteed 2 4 hour results.
And…both his tests came back negative on Sunday night, and mine too came back on Wednesday, also negative.
Were we healthy? No. Pretty sick actually. Obviously just a nasty cold virus.
Did my 12 year old dodge a bullet not having to miss school for a week? Absolutely.
Were we lucky that our school changed its policies and allowed our vaccinated 6 year old to attend school (as long as no symptoms) otherwise he too would have been out of school? Yes.
Was it a MAJOR pain to run down PCR testing (which our school requires)? yes. It took hours to figure out snd I ended up driving my son 1.5 hour round trip to a testing site as that was only reasonable slot available.
Was I feeling like a bad Mom for thinking I walked my 12 year old into Covid by taking him to Disney at the peak of the omicron wave? Yes.
Could it have been majorly disruptive to both my kid’s schooling? Yes.
If I could go back in time, would I have postponed our trip to avoid the omicron peak? Yes.
We had an amazing time. And obviously my kids could pick up covid anywhere.
But, Disney isn’t going anywhere so you have to do your own calculations on risk and impacts to other parts of your life (ie. can’t go to school or work (if you don’t work from home), can’t get on a plane (if you have a long trip and get it before you get home).
And timing is everything. A few weeks before snd a few weeks after would have put us either ahead of the wave or on the other side of the wave. We were right smack dab at the peak!!!
In the end, I feel very lucky, especially as I know so many people who got omicron and the covid fog was real, and the disruption to their lives wasn’t small.
You have to get on with your lives…and that was our thought when planning (when omicron was something in S Africa!).
Just map out the impacts to your life if you get it and as long as you are ok with those impacts, then go for it. Go with eyes wide open though.
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I’ve got it right now. I’m on day 8. I’ve had 3 shots. It’s been very similar to a bad cold / flu. (achy / stuffy head) Plus, I’m super tired all the time and some smells trigger an ammonia / vinegar scent. (especially ketchup / BBQ sauce)
If I had gotten while on a trip I probably could’ve pushed through it, if this were a “normal” cold, but with COVID I would’ve not gone into the parks to avoid more spread.
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Nope, this was just my husband and me, getting out of the MN cold! Mostly visiting with friends in the Fort Myers/Napes area but we squeezed in two days at Universal because the DH has never seen the Harry Potter stuff. We are actually going with the kids next week! They all got Covid about two weeks ago, oddly enough, while we were in Florida (breakthrough cases, likely from DIL’s work, all relatively mild) so my son figures they are in a relatively safe window, so we are going! (We don’t have under fives so it’s different for you. We would have made the same decision.)
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Have fun! When you get back, please report back on how the trip went with 3 generations. Our trip is rescheduled for October (second reschedule). It is to celebrate my in-laws 50th anniversary. They went to WDW for their honeymoon in 1971.
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Friends of my son (college kids) went begin of Dec 2021, 3 of the 6 of them came back and tested positive (asymptomatic and 2-dose vaxxed without booster) and spread to all of their friends/families, including my son.
We (3 people) were there for 7 days at the end of December. One tested positive upon arriving home, one tested positive 2 days later, 1 never tested positive.
My advice is to think through all the “what-if” scenarios, determine if you are willing to accept the risk of that thing happening (based on relative risk) and have a plan for if it happens.
It’s kind of like having a baby. Everybody puts a huge focus on birth plans and having the baby, but there is very little focus on preparing for what happens immediatley next. Plan for how you are going to take care of that baby.
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We went in December. We followed the indoor mask mandate as outlined by Disney and none of us got Covid! I have lived in fear of this disease (mainly because I work on the frontlines everyday) for two years and weirdly enough I felt completely safe in that Disney bubble~
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Sorry you had to cancel your trip, @sanstitre_has_left_the_building!
For anyone else that’s thinking of going, I figured some data would help. In the last week, about 4,000 people are testing positive for Covid every day (7-day average) in Orange County, Florida. The population is 1.393 million. That means that about 0.3% (4,000/1.393mil) of people are testing positive every day. If you are in Orange County for 7 days and you are behaving like an “average” person* (as far as interactions with other people, going in public, mask wearing, etc.), your risk of testing positive would be about 7 * 0.3% = 2.1%.
However, the positive test rate right now is over 40%. When test positivity is that high, it’s impossible to say what the case-to-infection ratio is, but it’s likely 10x or more. In that case, your 7-day risk would be more like 20%+ (2.1%*10).
As a point of reference, I’ve heard experts say that between 30-50% of Americans will get omicron in January (30 days). That implies about a 7.5% - 12.5% risk over a 7-day period. The risk at the apex of the bell curve is about 2x the average, so let’s say our range is 15%-25% if you were in Florida at this moment.
Playing with extremes, if literally 100% of people were expected to get omicron in a 30-day period, that would imply about a 25% chance over a 7-day period (50% at the height of the bell curve). I don’t think it’s likely that 100% of people will get omicron, so I think the 15-25% range is more reasonable.
By February, I think we’ll be on the back end of this curve and the risk will rapidly decline.
*Side note: I think attending WDW is about “average” for OC. You’d be wearing masks more than the average person, and spending less time hanging out with friends or at work/school where you tend to spend a lot of time mingling with people outside your household without masks, but also be in crowds more. Of course this is debatable, and the key assumption in my numbers here.
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All I can say is when I returned from WDW, I tested positive. I cannot definitively say I caught it in FL.
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The case numbers being reported (for FL) are just FL residents, I wonder what the infection rate would be if they included all the tourist’s test results?
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It shouldn’t matter if my assumption of WDW guests behaving like an “average” person are correct. You’d just be increasing both the numerator and the denominator by the same proportion.
ETA: If we knew the breakout, that would answer the question definitively about whether attending WDW is more or less risky than what the average person is doing right now.
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I parent other people’s kids too. I was raised by a teacher who was raised by a teacher. I get told by my hubby and daughter to butt out but I feel it takes a village to raise a child. Children are a part of society and it is all our responsibility to insure they fit in properly with the rest of us. Keep telling those boys. you won’t have to tell mine son but if you ever see my daughter without one please feel free. 
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This week’s numbers do help people leaving this week but I don’t think it helps people going 2,3,4 weeks from now?
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Will do! We did it back when they were 4 and it was magic! Hoping it goes as well this time.
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I know a group than went over Christmas thru marathon weekend - 10 day passes. All tested negative - but 1…and that one could have tested postive from previous infection or because they aldo went to Mexico after Florida (had to take PCR test to fly to Canada - no symptoms)…so I took it as good news that everyone else (that…did not go to Mexico) were negative, and still negative 5 days after returing home.
I go in 3 days, I’m hoping I test negative on Feb 3. Worst case, I’m in Orlando 8 more days than I planned.
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going on Friday, I’ll have to report back. Then again covid is rampant in my hospital among employees, hubby is a Medic, and DD7 is constantly a “close contact” at school, so I wouldn’t bet the farm that if we get it, we get it at Disney (although we don’t often participate in risky behavior at home).
This august my friends came down for the week while we were there and within a week of returning they all tested positive. Family of 5, two unvacinated kids. (no boosters at that time)
son -6 had fever and cough
daughter 7- asymptomatic
mom (moderna) had the sniffles
dad (pfizer) had fever, sweats and SOB and cough
Son 16 (pfizer) never got it.
And we never got it.
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It will only get better.
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