Traveling with a child that has severe food allergies.

I love traveling with my family, it’s my favorite thing to do but traveling does present its unique challenges. My 14 year old son has severe food allergies, meaning he goes into anaphalaxis if he eats the wrong foods. Needless to say my son carries around his own Epipen, but his mother also carries one as well and when we travel abroad we carry around as many as we can.

It’s amazing all the stuff they sneak into our foods

Of course he’s not allergic to normal things. His allergies include tree nuts, beans, peas, carrots, legumes and all seeds like sesame and caraway. We also found out recently he’s allergic to the skins of all fruits and vegetables – however he only breaks out in hives for this allergy and his throat gets itchy Recently companies increasingly are putting sesame seeds in breads and I’m not talking about just the top of the bread either. It’s amazing all the stuff they sneak into our foods.

We love the way Disney handles food allergies

Our own story really starts and ends with Disney and how comfortable we are with the way they handle food allergies. As I’ve noted before we’ve been on a total of 6 Disney cruises, 5 with the kids and 1 without, and every time we always walk away very impressed. We’ve been to Disney World countless times over the course of time that we’ve had kids. The service is always impeccable and the food is incredible and they always make my son feel special. One time on a cruise for dessert they brought him out a humongous bowl of fresh fruit including the biggest strawberries I’ve ever seen. My wife had heard amazing things about the chef at the Fort Wilderness dinner buffet. They took such good care of him and when it came time for dessert hethe chef made him a special dessert just for my son. The dessert was so elaborate people were stopping by our table to find out where he got that. That’s why my wife and I primarily stick with Disney. It’s really a comfort factor.

On a cruise ship the Head Waiter is our best friend. He or she usually comes to personally take the order for the next day. We also take a sit-down breakfast and lunch that way his list of food allergies travels from kitchen to kitchen. The other option is buffets which we try to stay away from due to obvious cross-contamination issues. That’s not to say we never eat at a buffet on the ship but it’s taking a chance, and being in a foreign country or being in the middle of the ocean there’s no reason to take too many risks.

If you ever get the chance try a DVC cruise on Disney Cruise line

I remember when we did a DVC (Disney Vacation Club) cruise out of Port Canaveral, Florida one of the stops was Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay in the Bahamas. The only option for lunch for us once we got off the ship was a rather large BBQ buffet on the island. The Head Waiter, Joyce, was fantastic she had a special plate made up for him in advance. Joyce took very good care of my son on that cruise.

I thought it was impressive that they took all this food off the ship and set it up so that people would have a scrumptious meal right on the beach! We got off in the early morning to set out to find a shady spot, swam quite a while, relaxed a bit and then could walk to an awesome meal under a covered eating area. If you like the islands and find yourself wanting to book a Disney cruise (first call my wife, she is a travel agent) you have to go to Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay.

As I write this post we literally just finished a 10 day cruise to Northern Europe on Disney. My son had no problems on the cruise itself. We had some minor issues finding food in Copenhagen, Denmark which is the city/port from where we started the cruise. Copenhagen had a very healthy vibe to it at all of their restaurants. Everything was whole grain, which my son is also allergic to, organic and lots of nuts. But other than that we were again lucky and had a fantastic head waiter, George from Romania, who took good care of my son. It also helps to have a waiter/waitress that works well with the head waiter.

If you want to learn more about Disney Cruise line please contact my wife she can be reached at 1 (609) 618-1887. She is a travel agent and specializes in Disney.