Little Luca’s Disney dream dashed
CHARITY AXES TRIP DUE TO IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
A BOY who battled a brain tumour will miss out on a charity trip of a lifetime to Disney World in Florida.
Little Luca Feno-McBride this week ended nine months of chemotherapy at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.
The five-year-old has also had surgery and a year ago travelled to Germany with his mum, Carla, for NHS-funded proton-beam therapy.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted brave Luca a ‘wish of a lifetime’ trip to Disney World with his parents and younger brother, Rocco, two.
To thank the charity, Luca drew rainbows as his family raised £6,614 to help make the dreams of other children come true.
But now Luca’s trip has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Luca’s family now face having to raise the money themselves to finance the trip. Carla, 40, is determined to keep her promise to take him to the Orlando resort which is due to start a phased re-opening from July 11.
She said: “Luca was granted the trip to Florida but we were so grateful we wanted to help the charity help others.
“Friends, family and strangers were so generous and we raised more than £6,500 for Make A Wish. We were due to go to Disney in November. When the charity called to say the trip was off it was not a surprise due to coronavirus.
“But then they said it was off for good. I asked if they could not just postpone it but they said no, and they could not create waiting lists. To be fair they did offer an alternative wish, but it has to be UK-based and ideally deliverable to our door. I have declined that.”
She added: “I am their biggest fan, and what they were going to do for us was amazing. I don’t want to say to them you must give back the money. But I have promised Luca we will get him to Disney and we will.”
Carla has set up an appeal on Go Fund Me and has so far raised more than £2,200 towards the cost of the family financing the trip.
Luca, from Ashton-under-Lyne, was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour last year. His parents took him to Tameside Hospital after noticing he was ‘a little off balance.’
Make-A-Wish chief executive Jason Suckley said: “We’re simply unable to hold a waiting list for Florida, with all the uncertainty that surrounds travel and costs. We understand this is heartbreaking news and we are in contact with his family directly. “Make-A-Wish UK has been hit badly by the coronavirus because people haven’t been able to fundraise for us in the ways they usually would. We’ve been bowled over by the ongoing generosity of those who are supporting us, but the reality is that by the end of this financial year, we will have lost around £2.7m. “Our mission is to grant wishes to children who are seriously ill and nearly 2,000 children are waiting for their wish as a result of Covid-19 so we are having to make robust decisions in order to reach as many of those children as possible.”
I have promised Luca we will get him to Disney and we will Luca Feno-McBride’s mum, Carla