I know many travel writers not writing at the moment. They sit at home, moaning about the effects of the coronavirus on their wallets and travel activities and don’t know what to do with their time. I‘m not one of those people. I think some good travel stories can only unfold in certain situations, like a disaster. This is one of them.
At the moment, I’m driving down International Drive. To my left, in some distance, I see the famous Ferris wheel, the Orlando Icon. It‘s not rolling. It‘s not going anywhere. No one is here to welcome visitors to Orlando Florida.
Disney World is just down the street, Universal Studios are about fifteen minutes away, so is Sea World. I’m not going to visit any of these places. They’re closed, as is the world‘s tallest swing. All this happened since the coronavirus came to town. Nothing is spinning, rotating or twisting, nothing is moving.
I park in front of the world’s biggest Mc Donald’s. The last time I was here I saw playing children, more or less elegantly dressed teenagers and hundreds of tourists taking selfies in front of and inside the building. Today I see nobody. The restaurant is empty. There are stickers on the tables saying “No sitting down!” Come here, order, take away. Nothing else is allowed.
Along this road, numerous restaurants are 100% dependent on tourism. They all need customers, but there is nobody who could buy anything. In their desperation they try all kinds of things to get the few passing cars to stop.
At Applebee’s they’ve done a pullout attempt to get the attention of anybody that’s walking around or driving by for their business. You cannot go in and sit down, but they sell beer to go. Even during the promotion they’ll do gallon bags of cocktails that you can take away. That’s very courteous because you normally can’t do that, but it’s allowed now. The government helps these businesses make some money.
This Applebee’s here is not the only one. There’s a couple of more, but to survive, they have temporarily shut the others down. There’s no vehicular traffic at all, there’s nobody to come into here to buy anything and they rely on the two hotels I can see on the other side of the street. They’re also shut down, nobody is staying there. Like Applebee‘s, they’re struggling to survive.
The road takes me to three or four of the main entrances into City Walk, a shopping hub that both of Universal‘s theme parks are connected to. At the entrance to the right, they erected some blockades made of red plastic.
I see another blocked entrance. The walkway here is what everyone uses to get from the parking lots to City Walk before they go into the parks. You can usually see people riding the people movers but right now you don’t see anyone.
Even the little putt-putt golf, which is part of City Walk, has no visitors. This place right now feels empty just like a ghost town. Especially in the Universal-International Drive area of Orlando, retail businesses rely heavily on foot traffic in this area. They need visitors in their stores who purchase items. That’s what keeps them afloat. Down here in this area there’s neither. There are hardly any cars and there’s no walking traffic. It’s the middle of the day which would normally be full of cars packed full of people doing entertainment stuff.
I feel the effect of what’s happening right now while traveling down Interstate 4. The I-4 is the main blood vessel of the city and it is long overdue to be upgraded. I purposely have taken the middle lane driving the speed limit. This gives me a better idea of the traffic. As cars go by me there’s only one or two of them. No one pays attention to the speed limit.
In the downtown area, there is a construction site that has not stopped working because this project is the largest in Florida and one of the largest in the nation. Over 22 miles of road will be majorly widened by this construction. They’re working on it. Because of the virus, the flow of traffic has been reduced so much they’re hoping to gain some time. They’re a little bit behind.
Another big construction site is Universal‘s new theme park called Epic Universe. Construction seems to be the one thing that is not affected by this virus.
Another thing that’s suffering is the blood donor service. I saw one of their red and empty busses standing in a parking lot. People are not donating blood as much as they should because they’re scared. I understand the apprehension, but if you’re healthy, please go out and do it. We all should do and donate some blood.
I hope you guys have had a good time following me around and seeing nothing. A lot of what I did on this trip was seeing nothing and that was exactly the point of this article. To show you how the tourist area of Orlando is suffering badly and that they’re not the only ones that are suffering. Everybody in the general population who owns businesses or had a job and now doesn’t have a job is suffering.
Stay healthy. Maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll come out with a text that’s the opposite of this one and shows you that life still exists.