We just returned from 4 days and overall, we enjoyed our trip. Biggest bummer was the restaurants and bars that we love that remain closed. A few takeaways:
They need more for people to do at night and more venues for adults after 9. No hotel bars open (and adult beverages have a high profit margin), Disney Springs closes too early for a late dinner, and the feature pools close at 9. At the Polynesian the only place to get a drink is the pool bar. Would it kill them to open up one of those makeshift lobby bars? I mean, I'm willing to pay $14 for your Pina Colava, so.... please do something other than roll up the sidewalks which just pushes people to Disney Springs. For our next trip I made sure to make the latest dinner reservations I can just to make sure we have something to do at night with no kids. Normally we would go to Top of the World, Trader Sams, Jellyrolls.. all of which are closed.
I expected dead parks from everything I have been reading on these boards. That was not reality. MK was BUSY on Thursday. The only ride we walked on was Little Mermaid. DHS sure seemed plugged on Friday too. We got lucky because we were staying at Boardwalk so we walked to the park and arrived in line around 9 am. They started letting us in before people were even allowed into the parking lot. So, we were 8th in line for MMRR and were off the ride by 9:40ish then knocked out SDD and TSMM. I'm so glad we stayed at BWV for that reason. However, ROTR broke down twice while we were in line. After waiting for more than 2 hours to ride, I am done with that attraction until they figure out the issues. It was just ridiculous. We were there in December on the second day it was open. Broke down twice on us that day as well.
Mask compliance was great. We aren't terrified of getting sick, so that made our trip a lot easier, but two masks situations that annoyed me. When entering DHS the party in front of me was a family of 5 (2 kids were older and walking with masks on) one was in the stroller. I didn't see the baby's face, but what I did see was a CM and what appeared to be her boss look at the stroller. One CM approached the family and said "do you have a mask for her?" pointing at the baby in the stroller. The mother said, no she is 1. The CM walked back to her boss and said, "they said she is only 1" and then the boss lady walked up to the family, halted their stroller, and stared at the baby from like 3 feet away just examining her alleged age. It was so strange because she stared for a while and said nothing to the parents. Then she walked back to the other CM and said "Yes, that is definitely a small baby." It was so awkward. Another instance was when we were in hour # 2 of waiting for Rise to work again, I was sitting on the floor and said something to my BF. He was standing and couldn't understand/hear me because of the mask, and bent down to hear me and then laughed at what I said. When he laughed his mask slipped (for a hot second) ever so slightly under his nose. This CM was just waiting to pounce on him and as he was fixing it (immediately after noticing it had slipped) then she yelled at him in front of the whole room of people. It was super unnecessary. She could have said something in a normal tone of voice as she was literally standing right next to him anyways. It was as if she was grandstanding to say "Look at me everyone- I/Disney am enforcing rules." Which, yes it is your job to enforce rules, and I am glad you're doing it, but not in that manner. It was rude. He wasn't some jerk walking around with his mask under his nose or trying to skirt the rules. Mine slide down under my nose when I screamed on the Splash Mountain drop, so it just happens and you fix it. Which he did -immediately.
This trip was really a test to see if we wanted to shorten our 9 night September trip. At this point, we are planning to go and not shave off any days. However, I really hope that they have a bit more in terms of food and beverage offerings. That being said, I am really happy that there is still some magic to be had while we are still going through this situation. We are happy to return and give our money to the mouse so that WDW can rebound from this.