Here Now & Just Back WDW Reopening Experiences Including Park Hopping

[oceanmarina]

I am currently here at Kidani with my 17 year old daughter. We arrived from Boston yesterday. Went to MK today. We arrived around 10:30. We drove our rental car to the park. Easy. Was able to park close and had maybe 4 other families on the ferry boat with us. We felt waits were overall very good. The longest line we had was probably Mine Train, which ended up being around 30 minutes all in. It was HOT! We did struggle with the masks a bit when we were outdoors in the sun. The lack of available quick service was a drag. We ended up doing a mobile order at Pinocchio Village House. Our margarita flatbreads weren’t good today, I’m sorry to report. They tasked like cracker pizza lol. Like someone took a saltine cracker and added ketchup and a little fake cheese. Oh well. Not the end of the world. Social distancing while walking around the park was pretty good. No real issues there. The biggest concern we had all day was the mask compliance and other guests. I hate to be negative, and maybe we were just unlucky, but we saw so many chin strap mask and noses. I mean everywhere. Plenty of exposed faces on kids over 2. We did have several instances where other guests didn’t observe social distancing in lines, and crowded right up behind us. Ugh. While the majority were compliant (probably 65-70%), we saw did see a lot guests walking past CMs while improperly wearing their masks. In one case, we passed a guy who was wearing his paper mask like a mustache, while actively talking to a CM. Weird. We only saw one occasion where the CM asked a guest to cover their nose, and this was on Mine Train after the ride was over. For example, on HM, a group of ladies promptly removed their masks as soon as they sat down. Same thing for the group behind us on Space. Another example was a boy around 9 or 10 complaining to his mom about his mask while in line for LM. She said, just take it off when you sit down. Yikes! The CMs seemed to have just given up. They are in a no-win situation I guess, and I feel for them. They don’t want to confront guests. I get it. I went into this trip telling myself that I can only control what I do for myself and my daughter, and I won’t let other guests behavior negatively impact our trip. I’m non confrontational by nature. I didn’t expect perfect compliance. But today rattled me. I’m hoping things improve tomorrow. We are headed to HS. LMK if anyone has any questions.

Thanks for the update. We go every August so I know that heat - once you leave the air conditioning of the resort, the humidity is ROUGH in FL in the summer. I can’t even imagine walking around in that heat with a mask. That was a main reason DH wanted to cancel our 8/27 trip.

I hear you about Pinocchio’s Village Hause, the Margeruita flatbread we had 2 summers ago there was no better than a frozen Celeste pizza you could get at home. Roaring Fork quick service over at Wilderness Lodge used to have the most amazing flatbreads, they would even have a cool flatbread of the day choice. Then they refurbished it and thief new flatbreads were terrible. Like kids meal flatbreads... sigh...

Hope you enjoy the rest of your trip & the mask compliance situation gets better. Keep us posted!!

 

[Obliviate]

In case you are as oblivious as I was, the 30% AP discount can be used at Droid Depot. According to the CM, the discount will only work there (or only for certain items) until Friday. Interestingly, I also bought some stuff at Tatooine Traders and the CM said that I did not need to show my AP card because "pretty much everyone who is here now is an AP".

 

[Princess2R]

the bus situation looks truly awful. I hope and ask everyone who came back or maybe are still there to email Disney so they know what's happening
wdw.guest.communications@disneyworld.com

Where can I see the pictures of the bus situation at pop?

 

[yulilin3]

Where can I see the pictures of the bus situation at pop?

Someone posted a few pages back

 

[yulilin3]

Please stay on topic. This is not the place to discuss why people are coming to Disney or why they aren't going somewhere else

 

[nkereina]

Rent a car...even when there is no COVID that's what we always do....makes life sooooo much easier

We may consider it if Disney were not charging parking fees, but unfortunately they are. Its hard to justify the cost of the car and parking charges, especially when we really don't want to rent one. Driving in Orlando traffic is anxiety inducing for us small towners and plus we like to have some drinks where we can. So it seems like Uber/Lyft or deal with Pop buses are our options.

On a related note, has the bus situation been noticeably bad at other resorts? Or is Pop the resort that's most full right now, resulting in the poor bus experiences?

 

[koquinn]

The bus stop for Pop from DS was the only one with (way) more than a handful of people Sunday night.

Yesterday at MK I even saw a guy walking through Tomorrowland smoking with no mask anywhere. I said something to my DH loud enough for the guy to hear but he didn't care. I agree the mask compliance and enforcement seems to get a little worse each day. I even saw a CM pull her mask down to talk to another CM on Thunder Mountain twice. Lots of walking while eating and drinking, and lots of eating and drinking in line (which we've done too out of desperation but only while still outside and with our masks up between sips of water and while staying extra far from people). Wearing the masks in the heat hasn't bothered us more than the heat in general I don't think. It's just really freaking hot. But people definitely aren't as compliant as I'd hoped. I think it's easy to get a false sense of security in the happiest place on earth.

 

[sjrec]

We may consider it if Disney were not charging parking fees, but unfortunately they are. Its hard to justify the cost of the car and parking charges, especially when we really don't want to rent one. Driving in Orlando traffic is anxiety inducing for us small towners and plus we like to have some drinks where we can. So it seems like Uber/Lyft or deal with Pop buses are our options.

On a related note, has the bus situation been noticeably bad at other resorts? Or is Pop the resort that's most full right now, resulting in the poor bus experiences?

My daughter and her family have been there the past 10 days and other than a 35 minute wait for a DS bus from BCV they haven’t had any bus or transportation issues. They were at CBR 4 days and rode the gondolas with only only one night closed because of weather and then got right on a bus. Many times they were one of two families on a bus. So even though you’re hearing from people that had issues (and emailing is absolutely the right thing to do) it’s possible you won’t.

 

[PrincessV]

Random question for those who've been on POTC with social distancing in place - are the boats still flooding? Or has that issue been solved by less load in the boats? If the're staying dry I may actually ride again lol!

 

[Kimpossible1]

The CMs seemed to have just given up. They are in a no-win situation I guess, and I feel for them. They don’t want to confront guests. I get it.

They haven't given up but guests do not listen or care... and yes the CM's don't want to be confrontational. They have no back up. There is definitely an increase in improper mask wearing.

 

[Alli1988]

For those at Disney now (week of August 10th) and the last couple of days. Is it still very short lines, etc. ?

 

[Lumpy1106]

The bus stop for Pop from DS was the only one with (way) more than a handful of people Sunday night.

Yesterday at MK I even saw a guy walking through Tomorrowland smoking with no mask anywhere. I said something to my DH loud enough for the guy to hear but he didn't care. I agree the mask compliance and enforcement seems to get a little worse each day. I even saw a CM pull her mask down to talk to another CM on Thunder Mountain twice. Lots of walking while eating and drinking, and lots of eating and drinking in line (which we've done too out of desperation but only while still outside and with our masks up between sips of water and while staying extra far from people). Wearing the masks in the heat hasn't bothered us more than the heat in general I don't think. It's just really freaking hot. But people definitely aren't as compliant as I'd hoped. I think it's easy to get a false sense of security in the happiest place on earth.

We saw pretty decent mask compliance - this is the extreme minority from our observations last week - record heat on Friday for reference. We saw one guy who had his mask down, walking while drinking - he was confronted by a security CM and he argued with him a bit. The CM was awesome and handled it well. We saw the guy at other times and he was struggling - I don't think he really thought it through. His family was having no problems though.

The worst example was the one we could not stop laughing about all week. There was a family of about 7 people who did not have a properly affixed mask among them. One kid had a pair of goggles hanging off the side of his head, the Mom had her mask off so she could take pictures (yeah, no idea how that helps), they were blocking the Buzz Lightyear cue to take selfies at multiple points. The family member that came closest to wearing the mask was the baby they were carrying, and even his nose was exposed (yes, I know babies do not need masks - I was not going to get close enough to tell them that). The funniest thing was there was a CM that saw them as they were leaving the gift shop and he made a motion like he was going to go talk to them, then sort of threw up his hands and shrugged - that would have been a DEEP dive to fix all the problems they were having. We did not see them the rest of the day, but referred to them as "the Buzz Lightyear family" the rest of the week.

Like I said though - we saw these two examples for a full week of being in the parks and DS - everyone else was following the rules to a T, including using the hand sanitizers at all entrances and exits. BRAVO to the guests for taking it so seriously! Gotta say - masks were really the least of our worries all week - just do it, not a big deal.

 

[DisneyPB]

Just got back yesterday from a long weekend stay (8/6-8/10) and have a few thoughts and experiences to share:

We are from South Florida and drove up on Thursday afternoon. I noticed something that I usually see around the school holidays (Memorial Day/Labor Day/etc) which is there were a lot of cars headed north with AP or other Disney magnets. I really think this impacted crowd levels this weekend and why they were so much higher than they have been since opening. Almost everyone we know has a silver pass and is planning a trip in the next few weeks now that we are out of blackout dates. We stayed at Pop to get around the 3 day limit for passholders as we have another trip planned for Labor Day and I booked the park reservations from that "bucket" when they were first released and I believe many people are doing this as well. When we were at Homecomin' on Thursday night the hostess remarked "Whats going on? The last 10 people who have checked in have all been from South Florida."

Masks - Compliance was pretty good for the most part but in our experience no where near the 95-99% number that I see reported by others in this thread. Our first interaction with another guest was a man with no mask asking if we wanted to get on the elevator with him. Many other guests walking around the resort without a mask or having it hanging off one ear. Most would put it back on quickly when they saw you, but many didn't seem to care so we just avoided them. Lots of noses peeking out or people walking and drinking.

Transportation - Oh boy. It's bad. Like really bad. The Pop Skyliner line was down pretty much the whole time we were there. Saturday morning we walked over around 10:45 to take it to Epcot to find out it was closed. Walked up front to a line for the Epcot bus that looked similar to other pictures posted here and decided to take an Uber. It ended up costing me around $30 because our driver and us sat in a 40 minute line just to get into the parking lot and I felt like I had to tip big because were taking away his opportunity to make money off other riders as we sat. For some reason they only had one person working both sides of the line even though it was opening and they had to know they would be busy. We received messages each morning on our room phone that the Skyliner was experiencing "a delayed opening" so it got to the point that we didn't even head back there. With the exception of one day where we had a bus to ourselves returning to MK around 4:30 the buses were constantly full, and few and far between. We planned our park days to avoid the buses as much as possible so the Skyliner being down was a real bummer. If you are someone like me who hated Disney transportation pre-pandemic, really pack your patience now.

Disney Springs - It's night and day difference than the parks. No social distancing and people just walking around without masks. If you're someone who is uncomfortable at all when you experiences those things do not even bother.

Crowds - I think from here on out if you want to experience lower crowd levels, go during the week. We went to Animal Kingdom yesterday until around 4 and it was what I was expecting based on the crowds thus far. Walked onto FoP twice and had short waits for Everest and the safari. It was a night and day difference between Monday and the weekend. The heat does not help the feeling of crowding either. We are used to this heat and I've walked around outside with a mask on for months, but this weekend was brutally hot. Everyone was trying to stay out of the heat as much as possible so this just made the stores and inside attractions feel even more busy than they normally would.

With all that said we still really enjoyed ourselves and just the feeling of being back and returning to a small semblance of normalcy for us felt good. Disney trips are always about setting expectations to get the most out of them and that is even more true now. If you go in knowing this will be unlike any trip you've had before and roll with the changes and closures you will have a great time and relish in even the diminished experience just because you are there. I also recognize that is easy for me to say when we live so close, have multiple trips planned this year and don't need to see everything every trip.

I've been living vicariously through everyone's experiences on this thread so I wanted to give a little of my insight as a thank you. I hope everyone who has a trip upcoming enjoys themselves in this strange reality that we are living and gets a little bit of that magic fix we all need right about now.

 

[Geomom]

Random question for those who've been on POTC with social distancing in place - are the boats still flooding? Or has that issue been solved by less load in the boats? If the're staying dry I may actually ride again lol!

No flooding of the boats. They are seating parties with 2 empty rows between them on the boats. But wow, we really got splashed by the cannons when we were seated in the front!

 

[mickey0624]

We may consider it if Disney were not charging parking fees, but unfortunately they are. Its hard to justify the cost of the car and parking charges, especially when we really don't want to rent one. Driving in Orlando traffic is anxiety inducing for us small towners and plus we like to have some drinks where we can. So it seems like Uber/Lyft or deal with Pop buses are our options.

On a related note, has the bus situation been noticeably bad at other resorts? Or is Pop the resort that's most full right now, resulting in the poor bus experiences?

If you are a resort guest you do not pay for parking at the parks

 

[yulilin3]

just got back from my MK stream. rope drop to around 11:30
crowds are slowly but surely increasing, still managed to get on Pooh and Buzz walk on, 7DMT was 20 min at 9:30am. Line for BTMR and SM at around 30 with the queue spilling out, this is due to social distancing
saw one instance of improper mask use inside the park and one outside
the Emporium was pretty empty around 11am which surprised me

 

[CarolynFH]

If you are a resort guest you do not pay for parking at the parks

Correct, but you do pay for parking at the resort, $15-$25/night depending on whether value, moderate or deluxe resort.

 

[mirandag819]

For those at Disney now (week of August 10th) and the last couple of days. Is it still very short lines, etc. ?

Magic kingdom was shortish yesterday if you had good timing on rides, on average we waited 20 mins, but really realized how much I missed FP when we waited 45 in seven dwarfs mine train line in the hot sun with a mask on...today at Hollywood studios everything is 45 mins or so and stretched out into the sun, rise of the resistance has been down all day so those with boarding groups aren’t leaving and the wait times haven’t started to drop like they have most days.

 

[ReginaMBK]

just got back from my MK stream. rope drop to around 11:30
crowds are slowly but surely increasing, still managed to get on Pooh and Buzz walk on, 7DMT was 20 min at 9:30am. Line for BTMR and SM at around 30 with the queue spilling out, this is due to social distancing
saw one instance of improper mask use inside the park and one outside
the Emporium was pretty empty around 11am which surprised me

Do you think the crowd increase will be sustained for a little while? Especially when school starts back up (whenever that is that for FL)?

 

[yulilin3]

Do you think the crowd increase will be sustained for a little while? Especially when school starts back up (whenever that is that for FL)?

I don't know the makeup of the crowds. Sept tends to be less busy than Aug normally so I'm expecting it'll be the same, Disney is offering 60% off rooms for september to CM so that should indicate less demand