Last month, a number of guests experienced flooded cars from a sudden Orlando downpour.
A number of unlucky park guests returned to the SeaWorld parking lot after their visit in July only to find that they had an auto insurance struggle on their hands. Part of the lot had flooded, damaging their cars and the contents of those vehicles. Only now are they discovering what insurers will provide.
The vehicle owners have been informed that they need substantial evidence to prove the cause of the damage.
The vehicle owners who saw their flooded vehicles with their own eyes will receive auto insurance coverage for the damage. Alternately, those with pictures or video to prove that their vehicles were involved in the flooding will also be covered.
However, car owners who were staying in the park and didn’t realize the SeaWorld parking lot had flooded until days later face an entirely different challenge with their auto insurance companies. People staying in the park often leave their cars in the lot for a number of days without using it since their accommodations and the attraction are all in one place.
Unfortunately, those individuals are far less likely to have seen the flooded vehicles or to have taken pictures to show the vehicle in the water. Those are the park guests facing the biggest struggle to receive any coverage at all for damage from the flooding.
Many guests affected by the SeaWorld parking lot didn’t realize there was damage until days passed.
Tennessee resident Lisa Sykes was visiting SeaWorld with her three children at the time of the flooding. She had no idea the waist-high waters had flooded around her vehicle.
“By the time we got back, the water was gone,” she explained. They had been in the park the whole time. That said, despite the fact that the car had initially seemed fine, problems started later on.
“As a day or two went on, the car started going haywire. On Tuesday, I had to have the car towed and I didn’t find out until around Thursday what had happened to the car when I saw the news coverage,” she explained in a WFTV report. By that point, she’d already sent her vehicle to a mechanic to find out what was wrong, instead of first filing a claim.
Attempting to repair the problem first and then filing an auto insurance claim can make things far more complicated. This becomes more complex for Florida residents due to the flooding regulations there.
In most similar circumstances, Sykes would have had to pay for all the damage from the SeaWorld parking lot flooding out of pocket. However, a video of the flooding happened to include her car and, as it turns out, was worth 
several thousand dollars in an insurance claim said the report. The park itself has been working with all affected guests who have submitted claims.
