We’ve visited all four Walt Disney World theme parks since they began a phased reopening on July 11th and wanted to put together a list of what Disney is doing right and what they can improve upon during their initial phased reopening.
Crowds
We’ll start with the obvious – crowds, or lack thereof. Part of Disney’s strategy when reopening the parks was to limit the amount of guests that can enter the theme parks on a daily basis to encourage social distancing. While the Disney Park Pass is definitely a headache when it comes to trying to plan a typical vacation, this isn’t a typical time to visit Disney World. The crowds are low enough to ensure that throughout an average day at the park, physical distancing is a breeze. There are some situations where you have to be your own advocate, but we’ll talk about that in a bit.
The crowds are so low (and the process of planning a Disney World vacation so tedious), that we think there is a lack of demand for a Disney World vacation right now and that we’re in for a slow summer.
Advent Health
We love the fact that Disney is using Advent Health, a local health company, to perform the temperature screenings. There isn’t anything inherently difficult about performing a temperature check, but the fact that Disney is utilizing health professionals adds a layer of confidence to the process.
Also, if you have to have the difficult discussion about you and your family not entering the parks due to a high temperature, it’s best to have that discussion with a health professional on hand that can answer any questions or concerns you might have.
Eliminating Rope Drop
Perhaps the most crowded part of a typical day is rope drop. Going back to the beginning of the year and we can find images like the one below of a rope drop for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge – Disney’s most popular land since the parks reopened.
We’ve written at length about how Disney has effectively killed off the rope drop process as we know it, and we think it’s one of the greatest things Disney has done. Now, instead of waiting in a crowd like the one above, Disney makes guests wait in their cars at the parking plaza until the parks are ready to open, eliminating the chance for a situation like the one above. Now, walking into a theme park first thing in the morning is a breeze, although you might need to walk briskly to get a completely empty photo of the new Cinderella Castle paint job like the one below.
Social Distancing Markers
One of the things you’ll notice right away is the prevalence of social distancing markers. Disney has gone above and beyond when it comes to marking just about every situation throughout your day with social distancing signs. From transportation to restaurants, attractions to PhotoPass spots, there are social distancing markers everywhere.
This is a critical step in ensuring the safety of guests. If there is one thing we’ve observed at other theme parks, it’s that physical distancing breaks down when there aren’t markers to remind guests of the new normal. Of course, there are still guests who might ignore or not notice the stickers as they go throughout their day, but when we’ve asked a group behind us in line to observe physical distancing, being able to point to a literal sticker on the ground telling them where to stand is a huge help.
Physically Distanced Entertainment
With meet and greets and parades unavailable for the time being, Disney has injected some Disney World magic in the form of cavalcades and physically distanced character interactions. These are fun periods throughout the day where you can see Tinker Bell on Main Street USA, or Elsa walking around EPCOT’s World Showcase in parade-like processionals. Characters will also show up on balconies above the Country Bear Jamboree, or in physically distanced spaces around EPCOT, so make sure you keep your eyes peeled!
Evolving Mask Policy
If Disney is going to be successful in keeping guests safe, they will need to evolve not only with new health and safety measures as it relates to health professional guidance, but they will also need to be able to quickly evolve in reaction to guest behavior. Two points of policy clarification have taken place since they opened the theme parks.
The first is the explicit banning of neck gaiters. When we first wrote about the mask policy, it was obvious to a layman’s reading of the policy that neck gaiters were not allowed. That said, some guests still wore them, leading to Disney to explicitly list them as a banned form of face covering.
More recently, Disney has explicitly stated that walking around with your mask off while you eat or drink is not allowed. This is in response to some guests taking advantage of the policy that said you didn’t have to wear a mask when you were eating or drinking. Of course, common courtesy would require you to be physically distanced from people when you take your mask off, but many guests were strolling through World Showcase with their masks off as they nursed a beer or other Festival food item. Disney has since clarified their policy and added signage around the parks to remind guests that they cannot walk and eat or drink.
Cast Enforcement of Policies
Perhaps the most unexpected change that we’ve noticed since returning to the theme parks is how empowered the Cast Members are. We generally have had phenomenal interactions with Cast Members who have been extremely welcoming and happy to see guests return.
Beyond that, Cast Members are seemingly empowered from leadership to enforce face mask and safety policies to ensure a safe environment. Before the closures, it wasn’t uncommon to see a “guest is always right” type of interaction with Cast Members in a variety of situations that left us uncertain about enforcement when the parks would reopen. That said, Cast Members have been wonderful in enforcing lapses in safety compliance by guests and Disney has even created a team of Cast Members to stroll the parks and ensure a safe environment.
Relaxation Stations
With the parks opening during a particularly hot summer here in Central Florida, many guests will have a difficult time with the “feels like” temperatures passing 100 degrees on the daily.
Between warm temperatures and the mask requirement, many guests will need to take a break during their day. To assist with that, Disney has created a few Relaxation Stations throughout the theme parks where guests can take off their masks while remaining physically distanced from other guests. Some Relaxation Stations are inside, while others are outdoors. To find a Relaxation Station, check out the new park maps that debuted when the parks reopened.
While Disney is doing a lot of things right when it comes to a responsible and safe reopening, there are some areas that could use improvement.
Procedures for Attraction Downtimes
Perhaps the most unsafe situation that we’ve faced while at the Disney World theme parks was in the Rise of the Resistance queue when the attraction broke down. With Rise of the Resistance, the procedure to get the attraction running again can be a lengthy one, leading to many guests to relax social distancing and even some guests to reduce mask compliance while we were stuck in a narrow hallway for over 30 minutes. Ultimately, we decided to leave and were offered a “re-add” pass to return later and skip the line.
We think that Disney can do a much better job during attraction downtimes, perhaps even dumping the queue in an orderly fashion when they think the downtime will exceed 15-20 minutes.
Communication While Cleaning Attractions
Another area where we can see Disney improving is in their communication during attraction cleaning periods. Disney cleans their attractions once every 2 hours, which means you’ll very likely encounter a situation where the line inexplicably stops moving, possibly signaling a cleaning period (or attraction downtime, who knows?). While the attractions have gotten a lot better when it comes to notifying guests that cleaning is underway, we would like to see them indicate how much longer it’ll be until the line starts moving again. With a week of operations under their belts, Cast know how long it’ll take to clean an attraction. For example, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway clocks in at roughly 11 minutes to clean all of their vehicles.
Without any indication as to how long it’ll take, we’ve seen more than a few parties of guests leave the line, causing a breakdown in physical distancing when they do. The cleaning period isn’t very long, and with an estimated time of “5 minutes to go”, guests are more likely to wait it out. We also would like to hear a spiel where Cast Members tell guests that they must stay in line except for an emergency. Guests leaving lines is the number one area where we’ve seen a breakdown of physical distancing at the theme parks.
Overall, Disney is doing a wonderful job of creating a safe environment at the theme parks considering that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Disney World is truly safer than our local grocery store and they have demonstrated that they are able to operate in the “new normal” in a responsible manner while still maintaining their business.
At BlogMickey.com, we’ll continue to bring you reporting from the theme parks on a daily basis as we watch how the Disney World experience adopts to the world around it.
Safer than your grocery store. Who knew Mike was able to get statistics about infections from his grocery store so he could compare it to Disney.
He has sat down and did the studies. Calculating pages of data and concluding what preventive measures work and what dont.
I mean… id hate to see him gsthering info from the media and basing such a gisnt assumption on the writing of a liberal arts major who has zero medical knowledge and a questionable ability to read statistics.
I didn’t see any statistics about infections from grocery stores quoted in the article. The author gave his impression about the differences, which is an opinion. Since the coronavirus can take anywhere from five to up to 13 days to cause symptoms*, the difference between the parks and grocery stores may not be known for a while.
But Disney is a nonessential service, and any infections that arise from the parks, no matter how few, could have been prevented by keeping the parks closed. Visits to grocery stores can’t easily be prevented because people need food.
* source: health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-basics
This whole article is an opinion
Every Disney blogger I read reports extremely light crowds, excellent safety measures enforced by Disney, and near-universal compliance with those measures by WDW guests. These same bloggers report that at grocery stores in the Orlando-Kissimmee area there is near-zero use of masks or observation of social distancing. (Something that is also true of most grocery stores where I live.) Unfortunately, I’m a liberal-arts major, so I am completely unqualified to use my brain to draw any conclusions from these starkly contrasting behavioral sets. Perhaps the data will show that the behavior of those grocery-store customers, while violating the strong recommendations of every reputable virologist and epidemioligist of whom I am aware, actually is resulting in fewer infections, illnesses and deaths than will the behavior apparent at WDW that is in high compliance with those recommendations. And all the anti-maskers can then laugh in triumph, their unimpeded breath spewing freely and harmlessly into their grocery-store aisles. (I’m also not the Mike who writes this blog.)
I agree that the Disney safety measures appear to be robust and likely to be effective. But here’s a safety measure that would be even *more* effective: Stay closed until effective vaccines and treatments emerge. Essential businesses need to be open; Disney doesn’t.
For the moment at least, Disney visitors seem happy to comply with mask and distancing requirements. Perhaps this is because they have a strong emotional investment in Disney and want to see the parks succeed. And the parks are aggressively disinfecting and enforcing mask rules right now because they know the world is watching.
But will that last? Eventually, Disney will start seeing the kind of guests like those grocery shoppers; they’ll wear masks at the entrance and then get sloppy once inside. Or they’ll stage an anti-mask argument just to get it on video.
And the extra cleaning and sanitizing? That has to be eating into Disney’s profits, so we shouldn’t expect it to continue at the same level we’re seeing right now.
Meanwhile, crowd levels will increase, because Disney and supportive blogs like this one are making the case that the parks are safe to visit. This of course will make the parks *less* safe, because the potential for transmission increases with crowd size.
I agree with Disney probably being safer than the local grocery store due to constant cleaning, I have yet to see any of my local grocery stores cleaning anywhere in the store including the shopping carts being wiped down, Walmart is a perfect example, no wipes to wipe the cart, no one cleaning the carts as they are brought in from outside, nothing but a person sitting on a stool and using the counter to count the people entering and leaving the store. I see people enter the store with a mask on and upon entry pull their mask down and continue shopping, employees of Walmart do not ask the customer to put their mask on for protection.