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Hurricane Sandy Creates Some Scary Moments Aboard The Disney Fantasy

By all accounts the first 5 days of the most recent 7 day cruise on the Disney Fantasy were fantastic. Sure they had to skip Castaway Cay due to hurricane Sandy, but sometime you have to roll with the punches when you travel during Hurricane season. Well, the last night of the cruise the Fantasy did a lot of rolling. The ship and is passengers encountered 12 hours of 40-50 foot swells and 80 MPH winds as it sailed back to Port Canaveral overnight. It sounds like Captain Tom Forberg was at the helm, which means the ship was in capable hands, but still a frightening experience for any guest to endure.

The question being debated online is whether Disney intentionally sailed into rough weather hoping to keep to a tight turnover schedule for the ship or if they found the storm stronger than expected. The ship was within 200 miles of the storm, well within the tropical storm strength winds of the 1000 mile wide Hurricane Sandy. I tend to believe Disney Cruise Line thought the storm would weaken as it moved north, but instead it strengthened and slowed down capturing the Disney Fantasy in its impact zone. In the end, not an ideal scenario for Disney Cruise Line. They probably could have erred more on the side of caution, but it sounds like the close encounter with a hurricane wasn’t intentional.

A few videos have surfaced and things look like they got pretty severe. There were many reports of damage on the ship from broken doors to smashed furniture. Remy and Palo apparently were a mess with many dishes and glasses lost in the rough seas. Additionally, some rooms experienced slight flooding as pools overflowed and flooded those decks. Luckily there were no reports of injuries.

This iReport from CNN has some of the most dramatic footage.

More videos from onboard the Disney Fantasy below the jump:

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Tokyo Disneyland – New Video of Damage to Neighborhood, Performer

New video has just been uploaded that shows recent footage of damage to the neighborhood near Tokyo Disney Resort. This car is driving right by the resort, see the Cirque Du Soliel building go by on the right early in the clip. Then look to the side of the road and cracks in the road. Sometimes the ground has shifted by a couple of feet. That whole area will need new paving, new power lines, new street lights, bus stops, etc.

This, of course, is nothing compared to what the Tsunami ravaged sections of Japan have experienced. But it does shed some light on how soon we might expect any of the Tokyo Disney hotels or Tokyo Disneyland or Tokyo DisneySea to reopen.

There’s still quite a lot of clean up to do.

Here’s video of a local news station interviewing a Tokyo Disney performer upon her return to the US. There’s also a few shots of the damage done to her apartment and neighorhood:

Below the jump is new video from inside Tokyo Disney Sea taken just before and after the quake:

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Tokyo Disneyland Earthquake Damage Video

Surfing around for some of the most illustrative videos of the damage in and around Tokyo Disneyland I’ve found the following samples. Evidence of damage like this just outside the gates of the parks, makes you wonder what it looks like inside the parks. I’d love to see video of that.

This appears to be from the welcome plaza near a monorail station:

More damage from near Tokyo Disneyland Maihama-Station. The workers appear to be shoveling away the silt formed after liquefaction in the area. :

More below the jump, including a video inside Tokyo DisneySea moments after the quake:

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