‘So much more than a vacation’
Make-A-Wish, Give Kids the World fight to come back amid COVID-19
After spending most of his life in the hospital, 5-yearold Pryce Redmon couldn’t wait for a break from his cancer treatments to visit Cinderella Castle, where he presumed Mickey Mouse lived, and eat ice cream for breakfast at Give Kids The World Village. Instead, the unthinkable happened. The pandemic shut down Disney World and all the other theme parks. “This is so much more than just a vacation,” said Pryce’s mother, Katie Redmon. “We didn’t know how much longer we would have with him. We really needed that trip.”
The coronavirus pandemic was a cruel canceler of plans. It postponed family reunions, froze weddings and honeymoons and upended millions of vacations.
But the most heartbreaking of all the ruined trips were those of families with critically sick children. Some children died
before they could see their dreams fulfilled.
Give Kids the World closed its doors for 10 months, delaying 6,000 trips until it reopened this January. The local MakeA-Wish Foundation office has indefinitely suspended trips to the theme parks and any others that required air travel.
But Pryce never doubted his trip was in jeopardy.
He matter-of-factly planned his list of things to do. Pryce proclaimed he would pack his Mickey Mouse slip-on shoes for that day he finally got to meet The Mouse. He wanted a Mickey Mouse-shaped balloon as a souvenir, he told his family.
“I think the rest of us were like, oh my goodness. I hope this it happens,” his mother said.
There was a maturity to Pryce, the youngest in the family, that came from being diagnosed at age 3 with stage 4 neuroblastoma that kept creeping back when his family thought it was in remission. He wanted to understand what was happening to him. His parents tried to explain the best they could why he was sick.
Pryce quietly built more than 500 Lego sets to pass the time in hospitals with his
mom, far from his home in Michigan and apart from his father and his four older siblings, who adored him and missed him.
Getting through the pandemic
Give Kids the World, a resort built to host critically sick children and their families, shut down March 18, 2020, as the first wave of the pandemic struck. The longest it had ever closed before was two weeks for a renovation.
The next months were hard.
The nonprofit received a $1.75 million federal loan from last year’s stimulus package to pay staff through June, but when the money ran out, it laid off 84% of its workforce, said CEO Pamela Landwirth. Make-A-Wish also received $199,000 in a PPP loan but did not have any layoffs, said Kelsea Hauck, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit that has a Maitland office.
This summer Landwirth moved into the resort, which was empty, except for two security guards, to watch over the place. It was quiet. No children laughing. Just stillness. It felt lonely.
The Kissimmee resort stayed closed for the rest of 2020, except for a Christmas lights show fundraiser that brought in more than $2 million.
Behind the scenes, Give Kids was making plans to reopen.
“We worked with three pediatric infectious disease doctors ... We want to make sure that we are completely safe, so families don’t have any qualms at all about coming here. So what does that look like?” Landwirth said.
Masks are required, just like at the major theme parks. A temperature checker stood guard before cars even pulled into the parking lot. No more dinner buffets.
Around the 89-acre resort with 166 villas, Give Kids opened with limited capacity and only invited four families that first week in mid-January. Pre-COVID, a normal week meant 166 families arriving. By March 7, the week of its 35th anniversary, the resort expects to have hosted more than 80 families since the reopening.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central and Northern Florida, another nonprofit with a similar purpose of fulfilling dreams for sick children, handled the pandemic with a different approach.
Since last spring, the trips to the theme parks and far-off vacations have been indefinitely postponed because many children it serves have compromised immune systems, Hauck said.
The work of granting wishes hasn’t stopped, however. It’s just “reimagined,” she said.
One child who hadn’t seen snow before went on a road trip to Tennessee this winter. Another met a major Hollywood celebrity through Zoom in a meetand-greet.
Outside Tallahassee, as movie theaters shut down during the pandemic, 4-year-old Paisley-Rae Weber watched her favorite Disney movies, “Frozen” and “Moana,” in a family room that had been converted into a custombuilt home movie theater complete with comfy leather seats and a popcorn machine. Her special wish was granted in August.
“It was a little ray of sunshine,” said her mother, Crystal Weber, about the gift for her daughter who was born with a genetic disorder that affects her developmentally and her vision.
A Fantasyland
There was no other child in sight at Give Kids the World on Feb. 4 which made 6-year-old Leonardo “Leo” Resto the center of attention.
Leo was a boy’s boy. Back home in Fort Myers, he was always climbing, running, shooting hoops, fishing, riding bikes.
“When I say he’s very active, he wakes up and doesn’t stop until he goes to bed,” said his mother, Ainalez López.
Leo’s fearlessness didn’t waver after doctors diagnosed him with a rare, aggressive cancer that started growing tumors in his abdomen. He was too young to know what the word cancer meant, his mother said, as Leo finished chemotherapy in October. The tumors came back. Give Kids moved his wish trip to early February so he could visit Orlando before he started new treatments.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! No breaks!” Leo insisted as he hurried his grandmother and mother through the parks. At Universal Orlando, he posed for pictures with Spiderman and rode Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure four times in a row.
López, a single mother who quit her speech pathology job to be at Leo’s side, was preoccupied with ice cream and roller coasters as they stayed at the resort still decorated with millions of Christmas lights, even though the holidays were long over. She could forget, at least for now, what lay ahead.
“It’s like you’re living in Fantasyland,” López said. “That’s great for him because that’s what he needs before starting the hospital.”
She needed it, too.
A wish comes true
On the way to the airport this year, Katie Redmon and her husband, Ben, “We just looked at each other, we’re like, ‘This is happening. This is actually happening, and I can’t believe it,’ ” she said.
Pryce and the rest of the family were en route to Orlando.
It seemed almost unbelievable that Pryce had a week off from chemotherapy and recovery before his upcoming brain surgery. They were going to be among the first families returning since Give Kids reopened.
“It almost felt like living someone else’s life for a week because we didn’t have to think about cancer,” Pryce’s mother said.
Just like he planned, Pryce ate ice cream for breakfast every single day at the resort.
The family felt like celebrities. Each park gave them a special pass, which often let them skip the lines. Strangers noticed their wish trip insignia and stopped to say hello, some surprised that Give Kids was open again.
The Redmon family’s itinerary was packed. Buying wands at Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Seeing the orcas at SeaWorld and the reptiles at Gatorland.
Pryce rode roller coasters for the first time in his life.
His mother convinced him to try Space Mountain, forgetting it was a bumpy ride in the dark. To her surprise, Pryce loved it.
By the end, full of junk food and feeling exhausted but happy, the Redmon family returned home to their frigid Michigan home an hour from Detroit.
The next day, Pryce and his mother were off to New York City for his second brain surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
As he underwent more treatments, he asked the nurse to draw a Mickey Mouse on his bandages.
How to help
A Go Fund Me account “Help Leo Fight Cancer” was started by Ainalez López. A Go Fund Me account “Prayers for Pryce” was started by Team Pryce. Give Kids The World and the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central and Northern Florida both accept donations on their websites.