To Fly or Not To Fly

Walt Disney World Planning -- Part 1

My husband and I have finally decided that it is time we take our family to Walt Disney World! We have been avoiding this topic of conversation for several years, but now that our oldest is 12 we just can’t put it off any longer. Where has the time gone?!

Traveling with multiple food allergies is quite the adventure in itself what with cooking/baking/packing enough food to feed an army for a week (seriously my youngest son has a bottomless pit kind of a stomach!), but when you add flying into the mix, I can’t help but wonder how will this possibly work? Granted, I have heard that WDW is very allergy aware and many of the restaurants will be able to accommodate my son’s food allergies as long as we communicate with them in advance. However, I still have no intention of eating out more than a couple of times while we are there. I just feel much more comfortable making my son’s food myself, especially being so far from home in case he did experience an allergic reaction from eating something a well-meaning WDW chef created for him. So for this reason we have decided to rent a house during our stay in Orlando. This way I will have the convenience of a full kitchen at my fingertips.

But back to the flying…The thought of being 30,000 feet in the air with my anaphylactic child while people all around us happily munch on their beloved peanut snacks terrifies me! Eek!!! So how do we know which airline will be the safest bet for our situation? I found this chart on AllergicLiving.com that shows what each airlines policies are regarding peanut allergies. I have to say it all makes my blood pressure rise a bit to realize that there really is no completely safe airline option to choose from, but I also know that allergic people fly everyday without incident. Still…maybe driving 20 hours with 2 super excited/anxious/crazed boys wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.