Yes, I know Travel Insurance isn’t your normal topic for Dad, and the story isn’t even a Disney World story, but I’m going to tell it anyway.

Anytime I read about Disney World vacation packages, someone is bound to say “you don’t need travel insurance”. When I read that the Big Ben in my head starts chiming (envision Wile E. Coyote) my whole body starts shaking.

Let me be perfectly clear. If you fly to Orlando, you should buy travel insurance. PERIOD.

Here’s what happened to Dad and Mrs. Mom get some kleenex handy, this is a tear jerker.

I was working the day shift out of Bunko when … (oops, wrong story)

Mrs. Mom and I were coming up on our 25th wedding anniversary (this was a few years ago). I was trying to find the perfect way to celebrate 25 years with the perfect woman (I probably shouldn’t insert any jokes here that reference Julia Roberts). We had a small window of opportunity to get a trip in due to the Man-Child’s baseball schedule and some other things going on in our lives.

I immediately ruled out Disney World. What? Stop the presses. Dad ruled out Disney World. Is the world going to end? I ruled out Disney World because we had just been there in December, and I was planning this in March. (Yes, we did talk about it later, but decided on something a little different.) Because Mrs. Mom is a big baseball fan, I looked at baseball schedules, and really didn’t want to spend a week in Kansas City or Houston.

So I decided to check out cruises. To make a long story reasonably short (I wrote over 100,000 words about it on Cruise Critic) Mrs. Mom and I had always talked about taking an Alaska cruise. So we did.

So what does all this have to do with Travel Insurance? Glad you asked.

We flew out of the beautiful Will Rogers WORLD Airport on our way to Vancouver via Houston. Everything was fine. We arrived in Vancouver just a little early and got off the plane. We proceeded to Customs and stood in line for an hour and a half. Finally, just as we were getting to the front of the Customs Line, I saw our baggage coming out on the baggage carousel. Then to my horror, I saw someone pick up our big bag. Yes, with my eagle eyes, I could tell that someone picked up our bag from 300 feet away.

Finally we cleared customs and went to retrieve our 1,700 pounds of luggage. Sure enough, the big bag was missing. Guess what? Dad had bought Travel Insurance, so no worries, right?

But, being me, I had to panic a bit. Let’s see what’s in that suitcase. My coat (Mrs. Mom’s coat was in there too, but who’s more important?), my blue jeans, my coat, the cords to recharge the batteries for the camera and the camcorder, my coat, and oh, yeah, our formal wear, did I say my coat was in there?

Now you might be saying to yourselves, why is he so worried about coats? Because we were going to Alaska, in May, when the average temperature is minus 40 or something. (Really it was beautiful. Sunny and 70 degrees every day.)

We went over to the little stand our cruise line (Princess) had set up for customers and told them our situation. They asked if we had insurance. We said yes. They said good don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.

Me worry? Of course I’m going to worry. That’s what I do. I worry. I worry about everything. But not having coats in Alaska, that worried me. So off to the ship we went. The nice man at the airport had told us to see the purser when we got on board and let them know about the suitcase.

Yes, I’m rambling, but the whole story boiled down to, we could spend up to $500.00 on clothes, (we bought cool jackets that we still wear all the time) they offered to provide us with formal wear for free (just go to the formal wear shop and they’ll take care of you). The only real problem was the cameras (and my jeans). We didn’t get the bag until the 4th day and the batteries in both cameras were dead by that time. And yes, some guy picked up the wrong bag in the Vancouver airport.

Every day hundreds of pieces of luggage get lost by airlines. Flight delays are common (it’s not the Air Traffic Controllers fault, no matter what the airlines say). People get sick. Things happen. Travel Insurance is a good way to protect you in case something unforeseen happens.

Disney’s offers insurance on their packages for $66.85 per adult. That’s cheap insurance.

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