I had a dream...a bad one.

[cinnaminny]

Last night I had a dream that my August Disneyland trip was ruined by smoke from surrounding fires. I live in Oregon so I know exactly how bad the smoke can be when a forest fire gets going. We've had some pretty bad ones up here also. I also read yesterday that the shutdown was actually going to make the fire season worse this year because they are not doing controlled burns or training people like they (fed agencies) normally do. (reading this is probably why I woke up, from a dream about this)

Have you ever been to Disneyland during a smokey period during fire season?

 

[theluckyrabbit]

One of the fires got pretty close (comparatively, for Anaheim) last year. If you do a search on this forum, you'll find dramatic photos of DLR with the smoke in the sky. The photos look surreal. But, the smoke cleared fairly quickly and the air quality wasn't too bad. I have asthma, and we were able to visit the parks on our regular schedule wthout any serious problems. I had my meds with me, but didn't have to use them. The parks stayed open!
Here is a link to a thread with photos so you can see what I mean: GotG tower with smoke from fire covering sun. It looks bad, but the parks were open!

 

[monorailrabbit]

We got some very eerie looking pics during a trip in October! Sorry the pics are so big! The red dots in the bottom 2 is the sun.

 

[Niltiac]

My partner has asthma and smoke is trigger. Typically if there's a big fire in socal and the wind is blowing inland, air quality drops to "unhealthy for sensitive groups" and she has to stay indoors (we live in Las Vegas). We went once when there was smoke higher up in the sky. I didn't notice it much, and my partner was ok, but she felt iffy enough that she didn't ride any thrill rides that trip. Another time we cancelled a trip because we would have been driving near a fire to get there - an asthma attack in the middle of interstate traffic is not something we wanted to risk. I feel fairly safe in knowing that if a serious asthma attack were to happen at DLR medical help would arrive quickly, but it would also be a crummy addition to a vacation.

If no one in your party has asthma or other respiratory risk factors, I wouldn't worry about it too much. As far as I remember, people who went during the height of the smoke last year said it didn't affect them much if at all.

 

[chickapin parterre]

It is raining in California and may so for a long time....so maybe fire season will not be bad for the next summer.

 

[Kender]

Ugh, more reason for me to get off my butt and get my emergency bags together before we hit fire season again. Will give me more time to go around and gather important things that are normally on display if I have time should I ever be in an evacuation zone in the coming season.

I wasn't at the parks during the times the smoke was affecting them quite so badly (in fact the air quality was significantly better in SoCal than it was where I live in NorCal one trip during the fires... To the point we went a day early for our vacation just to get to better air). Not sure if my smoke sensitive lungs were just so happy to be in less damaging air or if it really wasn't that bad... But I definitely didn't notice too much trouble breathing.

One of those special masks might be worth investing in. The nice soft cloth ones that help filter the smoke. Friend of mine with sensitivities to all sorts of things uses one.

 

[beachdreamr1229]

Well, I live just a few miles from the huge fire we just had in November in southern California. While it was bad for a few days, it was not impossible to be outside most of the time. Unless you or someone in your group has asthma, try not to worry too much.

Fires happen every year in southern California, but in 32 years of living in this state, they've never ruined my trip to Disneyland. So, chances are good that everything will be okay.