Walt Disney World Horticultural Team Stays On Site

While Guests and staff at the Walt Disney World Resort are hunkering down in preparation for Hurricane Ian, Theme Park’s horticultural team is staying onsite.

The Walt Disney World Resort is hunkering down and getting ready as Hurricane Ian landed in southwest Florida. The Theme Park has officially closed for the predicted duration of the hurricane and is preparing for Guests to stay safe within their rooms as the hurricane hits.

Read More: Look Into a Disney Resort As Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall

 

Even though most people are either evacuating or finding ways to stay away from the impending danger of Hurricane Ian, one set of staff, among others, is getting set to keep a very important part of the Central Florida Disney Park safe.

The Disney World horticultural team is staying in the Magic Kingdom to make sure the Liberty Tree is protected.

Reddit user u/Stuck_in_a_depo took to the social media platform to share this little-known fact:

Stay Safe WDW Horticultural Team
byu/Stuck_in_a_depo inWaltDisneyWorld

In the thread, many fellow Redditors took a moment to mention that there are a fair amount of staff—ride-out crews—that stay around the Resort to take care of Guests who are staying onsite during the hurricane.

Redditor u/TellMe2GetOffReddit provided further insight on the qualifications and requirements for Cast Members who stay on during an emergency like this:

From my understanding they basically tell each department how many people they need. So you wouldn’t find a retail cast member doing animal support over at AK for example.

For general cleanup work it tends to be a lot of the college program staff. Many of those will be sent to different resorts and are given rooms there, they’ll then help out in a general capacity where needed at the resort.

For the park teams it’ll be dedicated people from the horticulctural department, maintenance teams, etc with a few college program staff there to assist with general cleanup work.

Basically anything highly specialist will only use staff who are experienced in that area.

u/modernloves added to this, “For what it’s worth, there are ride-out crews all throughout [the] property. Pretty much anything worth saving has teams who stay on site to watch the storm and then come out as soon as it’s safe to start dealing with the damage.”

Commenters who included ex-college program staff also mentioned that the teams who stay on during this time are well compensated for their time and effort for being at the Resort during a major hurricane.

We at Disney Fanatic will keep you updated on all the latest news regarding Hurricane Ian and the Walt Disney World Resort.