Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[only hope]

If they were on the ground then you at least have the comfort of knowing gravity probably helped keep you safe. As I understand it the particles expel out and then naturally start to fall unless something forces the droplets in another direction. While I dont agree with snacking in line (D should probably ban this) if you have someone that just has to eat while in line, making that person sit on the ground is probably the safest position.

And theme parks or other places that are having families/ groups queue up together probably should be using 8 foot or more markers to allow for spread!

Universals markers are generally spaced out more than six feet apart for this reason.

 

[Epcot242]

It seems that it isn't necessary to arrive right at rope drop anymore, from what I'm reading here. While we're still on the fence, we're excited at the possibility of a trip where we don't have to get up super early every single morning and for the chance of staying at the resort a little more (scored a great deal on the BCV).

Are people who have been finding that if you get there later, maybe half-hour/hour after park open, that wait times are fine? We'd love to avoid the crush of rope drop guests if possible.

 

[Mamiamjo]

It seems that it isn't necessary to arrive right at rope drop anymore, from what I'm reading here. While we're still on the fence, we're excited at the possibility of a trip where we don't have to get up super early every single morning and for the chance of staying at the resort a little more (scored a great deal on the BCV).
Are people who have been finding that if you get there later, maybe half-hour/hour after park open, that wait times are fine? We'd love to avoid the crush of rope drop guests if possible.

I'd like to know that as well. It appears that certain ride waits may be shorter at park open and certain ones longer later on. Need to see if a pattern forms

 

[dorospin]

I'd like to know that as well. It appears that certain ride waits may be shorter at park open and certain ones longer later on. Need to see if a pattern forms

Our experience on Saturday at the Magic Kingdom was that the wait times definitely dropped as the day went on - part of this is probably due to the crushing heat. Walking around at 2-3pm was brutal.

 

[Chisoxcollector]

It seems that it isn't necessary to arrive right at rope drop anymore, from what I'm reading here. While we're still on the fence, we're excited at the possibility of a trip where we don't have to get up super early every single morning and for the chance of staying at the resort a little more (scored a great deal on the BCV).

Are people who have been finding that if you get there later, maybe half-hour/hour after park open, that wait times are fine? We'd love to avoid the crush of rope drop guests if possible.

I'd like to know that as well. It appears that certain ride waits may be shorter at park open and certain ones longer later on. Need to see if a pattern forms

I can only speak to how AK was on Sunday. We arrived at 9am, 1 hour after rope drop. We went straight to Flight of Passage, and it was almost a walk-on. We then did Na'vi River Journey, and had about a 30 minute wait. Then we did Kilimanjaro Safaris and it was a walk on. When we got of KS, Expedition Everest was showing a 20 minute wait. By the time we got to it after seeing the bird show EE was down. We then did Dinosaur which was a walk on. After our lunch at Tiffins, Flight of Passage and Na'vi River Journey were both near walk-ons. Kilimanjaro Safaris was showing a 5 minute wait.

So, assuming Disney doesn't increase capacity, I think it's fair to say that rope drop is much less important than it used to be.

 

[yulilin3]

Are they just holding cars until the designated time they allow parking or are they turning you away and you have to drive aimlessly or hideout somewhere else parked? (This question also applies to all parks, if it is a different answer per park)

Before 9 they were having us go around. No where to hide, you either keep driving or park somewhere and wait

 

[Chrisinroch]

So what are the daily admissions this first week?

 

[westie55]

How crowded do the restaurants feel, both quick service and table service?

 

[scrappinginontario]

So what are the daily admissions this first week?

Disney doesn’t release numbers.

 

[GBRforWDW]

Disney doesn’t release numbers.

Need to find someone willing to stand out front with their own little clicker counter

 

[OSUZorba]

So what are the daily admissions this first week?

USA Today estimated 16,000 on Saturday, no idea how they did that estimate.

 

[GBRforWDW]

If they were on the ground then you at least have the comfort of knowing gravity probably helped keep you safe. As I understand it the particles expel out and then naturally start to fall unless something forces the droplets in another direction. While I dont agree with snacking in line (D should probably ban this) if you have someone that just has to eat while in line, making that person sit on the ground is probably the safest position.

And theme parks or other places that are having families/ groups queue up together probably should be using 8 foot or more markers to allow for spread!

I get the sentiment behind banning eating in lines, however, there are times where it becomes unavoidable. People should get the needs taken care of before entering a line, but if you get into a line that is unexpectedly longer, or stops moving for a long period of time and you have no way to exit, and a snack item is necessary, either hanger sets in, someone with diabetes needs a bite, kids getting upset, etc, theres many reasons not to ban food. Just keep your own mask on when near someone that is eating and you'll remain protected.

 

[wilkydelts]

Before 9 they were having us go around. No where to hide, you either keep driving or park somewhere and wait

I don’t think I said it clearly can you get there say 8:15 and just sit in car in line at toll booth or they make you go somewhere else?

 

[yulilin3]

I don’t think I said it clearly can you get there say 8:15 and just sit in car in line at toll booth or they make you go somewhere else?

Before 9 you have to drive around, you can't stop at the toll and wait

 

[gatordude99]

I don’t think I said it clearly can you get there say 8:15 and just sit in car in line at toll booth or they make you go somewhere else?

For the AP preview on 7/10, they stopped making people drive through the booth at 8:13 and on that day at least, they did allow a line to form. Then they had people start driving up to the parking rows at around 8:30. They had the line of cars wait right at the turn-in to the the rows of parking until 8:45 or so. Disabled / preferred parking was allowed through the booth at 8:30, but then were pulled to the right and made to wait just past the booth until 8:45 before driving over to the parking rows. Everyone was allowed to park at around 8:45-8:50 or so, go through security, and line up for the monorails / ferry. We got on the 3rd or 4th monorail to depart, and we got through the gate and into the park at 9:18AM. It all seemed to be timed so that the earliest anyone could get into the park was 9AM.

This was all for the AP preview. It may have changed for the actual opening, which would kind of suck, since if they aren't even letting people into the parking lot until 9AM it would mean that nobody would be able to drive from the booth to the parking lot, park, unload the car, walk to the T&T center, go through security, wait through the monorail / ferry line, sit through the monorail / ferry trip, and get through the ticket check, until something like 9:30AM or later. It wouldn't really matter for the length of the lines, but it would suck losing like 5-10% of your park day because they didn't want to open the lot early.

Buses weren't available for the AP preview, but they are now. Also, I don't know when the resort monorails started on the AP preview days, but I didn't notice that any monorails were running when we got on ours. It looked like there were like 3 of them lined up on the tracks waiting to head to MK, with no new ones coming down the line from Poly. Also, I do not know what time they started allowing Contemporary guests to begin walking across the street to MK. However, if the buses, resort monorails, and the walkway from Contemporary are all currently opened at 9AM, and as Yuli says, the parking lot isn't letting anyone in before 9AM now, then you might be able to buy yourself a pretty good chunk of extra park time from using one of those options.

 

[MusicalAstronaut]

I had a wonderful time in MK on Friday! Skipper Canteen & BOG were taking walk-ups (I tried & failed to make an ADR so this made me happy) so I had lunch at Skipper Canteen. Saw some snakes & the ducks were almost aggressive, haha. One tried to eat my toes and they had no issue coming up to people & nibbling on them, begging for food. [friendly reminder to not feed the ducks!] The park music was almost weirdly loud, probably because the parks had so few people in them. You could hear things a lot better on rides too. Water rides like Splash & Small World seemed more backed up than usual (big line of boats all bumping into each other much earlier in the ride than normal), probably due to the extra time it took to spray the boats down. This wasn't a big deal, but just something I noticed. Wearing a mask was fine. It wasn't too warm on Friday - it rained in the morning and I think the high was 88 degrees with a heat index of 100. The day absolutely flew by and I can't wait to do all 4 parks this weekend. I'm going to scroll back through this thread and read it again, but if there are any questions or picture requests let me know! I thought the castle looked very nice, but it was weird to see it with such different colors! By the end of the day I was used to it.

 

[Epcot242]

I had a wonderful time in MK on Friday! Skipper Canteen & BOG were taking walk-ups (I tried & failed to make an ADR so this made me happy) so I had lunch at Skipper Canteen. Saw some snakes & the ducks were almost aggressive, haha. One tried to eat my toes and they had no issue coming up to people & nibbling on them, begging for food. [friendly reminder to not feed the ducks!] The park music was almost weirdly loud, probably because the parks had so few people in them. You could hear things a lot better on rides too. Water rides like Splash & Small World seemed more backed up than usual (big line of boats all bumping into each other much earlier in the ride than normal), probably due to the extra time it took to spray the boats down. This wasn't a big deal, but just something I noticed. Wearing a mask was fine. It wasn't too warm on Friday - it rained in the morning and I think the high was 88 degrees with a heat index of 100. The day absolutely flew by and I can't wait to do all 4 parks this weekend. I'm going to scroll back through this thread and read it again, but if there are any questions or picture requests let me know! I thought the castle looked very nice, but it was weird to see it with such different colors! By the end of the day I was used to it.

Thanks for the info. What did you think of eating indoors? Aside from the other obvious things that are putting us off somewhat (namely people potentially not wearing masks), indoor dining is our biggest worry. Was it crowded? I assume no one was wearing masks since that's one of few times it's allowed but I'm curious of your experience. Thanks!

 

[oceanmarina]

We're at Wilderness Lodge and will be heading to MK later today. We did previews on Thursday so not in a rush to get in early. Hoping the main gate rush will have slowed when we arrive. I'm seeing a few boats in the lake but unclear if they're running guests, we're on the Boulder Ridge side so can't see the docks. Have a great day everyone!!!

Thanks for the update!! Are both pools open at WL. (Both quiet and main pools) How crowded are the pools?

 

[Sunnywho]

For the most part, people did follow the social distance markers in the queues. There would be certain people that always went 2 steps past their marker, every single time. That was annoying. And occasionally people would absent mindedly go past their marker, not realizing the line had stopped ahead of them. Usually they would then scamper back to their marker, but sometimes the next party would have already reached that marker, meaning they were now only 3 feet from the parties around them. But overall I do believe almost everyone was trying to follow the markers.

In that specific Navi queue, the party ahead of us went to their correct marker. But when they sat down, they spread out behind their marker, bringing the closest person to within about 3 feet of us. Part of the problem is that Disney measured exactly 6 feet between most of the markers, which means that groups with more than 1-2 people will typically be much closer than 6 feet away from the next party.

My husband and I discussed that, as a family of five including grown kids, we would split into a group of 3 and a group of 2, because a group of 5 takes up too much space for the socially distanced markers to work right.

 

[MusicalAstronaut]

Thanks for the info. What did you think of eating indoors? Aside from the other obvious things that are putting us off somewhat (namely people potentially not wearing masks), indoor dining is our biggest worry. Was it crowded? I assume no one was wearing masks since that's one of few times it's allowed but I'm curious of your experience. Thanks!

Guests did not have masks on in Skipper Canteen because they were dining, but all of the Cast Members did. They had the tables spaced out or used every other table. I will say that the table closest to me was probably right at 6 feet away, but I was at a small window table & this was one of the ones in the "middle" of the room. I would've preferred that they tried to stagger it so the table next to me wasn't occupied. I feel like almost every other table was fine, too. But the person in the far left was at the table next to mine, and the table was full so there was someone to *their* left who was closest to me. Again, it was probably about 6', but they did feel a smidge close when all of the other tables were so spread out. I blacked out everyone's faces so it's not too creepy haha, but in the restaurant most people took their mask off once they were seated.