Where were you?
/Where were you when the Covid-19 pandemic news hit?
I am a tour organizer that had a trip to Florida by bus scheduled to leave on March 13, 2020 and about 2 days before departure, the news broke. I thought for sure my group would cancel so I reached out to everyone asking if they still wanted to go and every single group said YES!!! Except for one group of 6, but I still had enough people to send the bus and see what we could make of the trip.
Now from the border asking us why we are travelling, to stopping in West Virginia to find out that they were one of the last 2 states (Utah) to not have a recorded infection. Wondering if we would be able to do anything once we arrived to some of the best places in Florida. Businesses were shutting down, restaurants were doing take out only. Everything was happening right before our eyes. It was like the world was ending with every mile that we drove. We didn’t see 1 single bus the entire trip as we usually pass many from years past.
The upside to a Pandemic is the borders were empty as most people from Ontario stayed home. So we were able to get processed quickly, we faced no traffic going down which had us arriving in Florida about 11am. We usually get there around 3pm, so that was amazing and because of the Pandemic, all our rooms were ready because everyone was cancelling their reservations. The trip down could not have gone any smoother from the time we left till the time we walked into our rooms.
Now on our Journey down we find out that BOTH Disney and Universal Studios will be closing their doors on Monday. Good news is we left Toronto Friday morning and arrived in Florida Saturday morning. The bad news is the group would have to choose between either park as Sunday was the last day they would be open for business. They chose Disney hands down, in fact not one person chose Universal. Now I also sent Al Capone’s dinner theatre that we had pre paid for an email asking if their show was still on. They got back to me the same day and assured me that they would still be open for our booking. So at least we had things to do in Florida.
So while all ‘bleep’ is breaking loose, we are making our way down to Florida where it is 30 degrees Celsius all week with little to no resistance the entire way. While everything seems to be falling into place in terms of what activities we could do, we only missed one event by moving around some others to make everything fit in.
Now coming home was interesting because the day before we left (notice how the ‘bleep’ seems to hit the fan just before we leave…lol), Canada and the USA announced that they would be shutting down the land borders. Now we were getting messages while we were coming down to Florida that we need to turnaround and come home, the borders are closed and they are refusing entry, etc, etc. So you can imagine the messages we were getting when the official announcement came down that the land borders would be closed. However being Mr Calm that I am (I really am that calm, it is almost eerie to some) I refused to listen to the ramblings of others and put together my own info.
All week I was monitoring the situation in terms of the border and what the current restrictions were, but only from Canadian publications like Global News, National Post, CBC and of course the CBP website. The biggest misconception was people coming in by land and people coming in by air. If you were coming in by air and presented symptoms then you could be quarantined and stranded in the country you are in. However if you are presenting symptoms and arrive at the Canadian border by land they cannot refuse you entry but upon entry they can immediately quarantine you if they deem it necessary. Once I read that, that was all I needed to remain in Florida until WE as a group had to leave and not one second before…lol
So to answer my question above…we were on our way wondering what to do in Florida and ended up having a fantastic week. So what were you doing??? Your answer doesn’t have to be as long as mine just answer in the comments below where and what YOU were doing?
By the way, I got a great video of a male peacock on full display sending out his mating call…check it out!