The sky darkens as Hurricane Ian rolls in at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. Courtesy: Heather Dickson

A Thunder Bay woman and her family are safe after they hunkered down and experienced Hurricane Ian up close, while on vacation at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Heather Dickson, her husband, eldest daughter and her partner and grandchildren are staying at the Animal Kingdom  Lodge. She says what she heard and saw was something to behold. “There was this whistling….a manic whistling of the hurricane. The trees were almost horizontal…and the clouds were moving in every single direction.”

But despite all that Dickson says they weren’t scared. She believes the storm didn’t damage the hotel, which staff say is built like a fortress with windows that are both hurricane proof and bulletproof.

“Right now its considerably quieter than it was yesterday, and most definitely since last night. Last night was crazy. But right now its just like you know Thunder Bay in the aftermath of a storm. It’s kinda quiet, little bit of a wind its really warm and humid, lots of branches on the ground.”

This isn’t the first time Dickson has had dealings with a Florida hurricane. In September of 2017 while on vacation at Disney, she narrowly missed Hurricane Irma, which blew through the same area.

Storm trackers currently show Ian off the Eastern coast of Florida, and are predicting it to curve back and make landfall again, this time in South Carolina.