WDW COVID-19 Operational Changes- Reservation System-Rope Drop Procedures

[Crazyhorse]

We will find out tomorrow or Monday and then we can all argue about how thre decision made is bad or good

You're right...and actually, Disney will be damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

[yulilin3]

You're right...and actually, Disney will be damned if they do, damned if they don't.

100 % and I've made this plea several time
Please respect everyone's decision on coming whenever they decide to do so. It's a personal decision and none of us have the right to criticize or worse, use ugly language, to those who decide to come right away

 

[wilkydelts]

@yulilin3 and @Crazyhorse Actually if Disney does not do it my way and exactly how I want it done, they are wrong. Without this, I will never visit them again.

 

[tinkerhon]

July is still 10 weeks away. If WDW is not open in July, I'm confident in saying that the Disney Co. itself will become insolvent and the State of Florida will go bankrupt. And no, I'm not exaggerating. So many people still don't understand that the current economic 'strategy' in dealing with this problem (i.e. lockdowns of undetermined time) are simply not sustainable. The estimate I read a few days ago is that Disney is bleeding $20-30 million per day because of park closures, the lack of movie production, and the pro sports shutdowns.

They'll open shortly after they get the green light from the State of Florida, which probably will come sometime next month, especially if the re-openings in neighboring states of Georgia and South Carolina goes smoothly. Florida will give them the green light privately, Disney will come up with a plan to re-open as safe as possible and announce that plan publicly sometime in the first couple of weeks of May, and spend the second half of May starting to hire back the folks they furloughed. The fact that they are taking reservations for June 1 and later is not an accident...I think June 1 is the target date for a re-opening on a large scale. Maybe they hold back some attendance in hotels and the parks to help with crowd control, but simply put, they have to be open. By the 4th of July, they're up and running 100% in terms of attendance in the parks and hotels. That's my hypothesis on how this will all play out.

I will say that, whenever WDW does reopen, the PR folks at Disney need to have a major spine to stay the course. Because the pushback from the lockdown-until-the-end-of-time crowd will be in full throat. And folks who were thinking/planning on going to WDW this summer/fall need to follow through and go, as long as they can economically do it as I realize lots of folks lives have been turned upside down with job losses.

Great post ! Yea- pumped for the trip, but since the FP date is 60 days prior , think that's the really for the "blah" feeling

 

[aladdin94]

The Disney Co. is more than just the parks. The parks are the biggest stream of their revenue, but right now the company really has nothing going on other than their streaming stuff. The parks themselves wouldnt account for the total losses on a daily basis. But the fact remains is that, because the parks are still Disney's top moneymaker, they have to get them open ASAP in order to stay solvent.

Completely agree. At this point, WDW is focused on getting its parks open as soon as it is safely possible to get their cast members back on their payroll. They are definitely not thinking about profits at this point, but want to stop bleeding cash and get their people back and safely to work

 

[lanejudy]

I have a ticket question. I bought date specific tickets through Sams Club for a late July trip and linked them in MDE already. We are most likely canceling that trip and moving it to July 2021. I just wanted to make sure we will still be able to use the value of our unused tickets to put towards the cost of new tickets next summer or is that only if the parks are closed due to the virus?

Yes, your tickets will retain their value for use as a credit towards an upgrade (new tickets) for 2021. This is always true, even prior to the pandemic and closures.

Enjoy your vacation!

 

[dagored]

LOL! Yes, I meant WHEN we have the freedom to go to WDW. Hopefully that and the restocking of toilet paper will happen soon!

Where do you people live? We have been on the beach, going to the store, Lowes, Home Depot, liquor store (a little too much) , everywhere but the attractions. Most restaurants are open for carry out, but we hope by next week things start getting back to normal and by the end of May this is all a bad dream.

We have toilet paper, Walmart doesn’t but other stores do. That is a running joke here.

 

[tinkerhon]

I hope your right!!!

Ditto !

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

So I suppose we need to start a new thread about how quickly Disney is going to close back down after reopening since everyone here is certain of a June reopening?

If the recent studies are correct that show that the vast majority of people who are seriously affected by this virus have hypertension, diabetes, and/or obesity (and often at least two of these at once), and if the people with those underlying conditions continue to shelter at home and avoid places like theme parks and sporting events, then it would seem logical that opening theme parks and sporting events will not have a huge impact on the the number of hospitalizations as a result of this virus. There are always outliers and exceptions- people who get very sick but have no underlying conditions- but not enough to make a huge difference in hospitalizations.

So if Disney were to open in June and people with those conditions that we know cause them to be vulnerable to the virus stay home, recent studies support the idea that the number of serious infections should not rise dramatically.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

In actual park update news, as expected Disney just updated their park calendar to be closed Sunday 5/10 - Saturday 5/16. Of course the actual posted park calendar doesn't really mean much/if anything in this whole thing. They seem to have settled on a pattern of nudging it up a week at a time each Thursday.

Date Calendar Changed		"Closed" Through
Tuesday, March 31, 2020		Saturday, April 18, 2020
Thursday, April 2, 2020		Thursday, April 30, 2020
Tuesday, April 7, 2020		Saturday, May 2, 2020
Thursday, April 16, 2020		Saturday, May 9, 2020
Thursday, April 23, 2020		Saturday, May 16, 2020

 

[lvloopingbag]

It seems like Disney was doing a pretty good job in the weeks leading up to the closing with the hand wash stations, hand sanitizer, etc. It has been over a month since the crowds in the parks gathered to say "Good Bye" to each other. I am not aware of any large outbreak due to that and am confident Disney will find a way to open sooner rather than later. Here is hoping to June!

 

[CrabbyPatty]

As far as Disney staying in business, their stock price has been pretty steady. On March 11th, it was around $115 a share and now it's $112 a share, so the "Street" isn't worried too much about Disney staying afloat.

RE: Opening up anytime soon .... my personal take on this is that Disney is going to wait to be very sure that they can open safely. Georgia may be opening up (against current guidelines saying that the number of cases should have a downward pattern for 14 days) and Florida as a state may be opening up beaches, etc., but let's see what their number of cases look like in about 2 weeks or so. Sadly, I can imagine people suing Disney if they believe they got the virus during a trip.

 

[GADisneyDad14]

A friendly reminder, please take virus specific discussion, what is going on in your community, herd immunity, etc, to the Community Board. This thread is for WDW theme park closure information and resulting planning implications.

Thank you.

 

[leeniewdw]

For those of you ready to head back in June, just a word of caution from someone who was there on 3/12-13. The experience is very different. And everyone in your party may feel differently about the experience. The night before we left, I was very panicked about the trip and my DH was dumbfounded that I felt that way. Now that we went (though we shaved off one day of the trip) and we didn't get the virus, I'm glad we went I guess. However I felt very irresponsible about having done so for the 14 days following. I'm healthy (that I know of) but mid 50s. I often think how wonderful the trip would have been without that hanging over our head.

I just hope everyone is prepared for it to feel very different. That you'll be constantly thinking about what you've touched, did you gel/wipe/wash after, etc. We modified our plans (rented a car instead of Magical Express), decided to do no Rope Droping and ultimately decided to cancel our last day/night (thank you for making flight change easy SouthWest and to WDW for the day's refund!).

 

[brockash]

We will find out tomorrow or Monday and then we can all argue about how thre decision made is bad or good

You think they'll actually give us dates by Monday? I would love it, but I really doubt we'll get any real info. tomorrow or Monday.

 

[Pnflkc3]

Yes, but the more people that had the virus now, the fewer that can get it in the future. That's the point. Even if this virus "comes back" in the fall, there's going to be a large segment of the population immune to it. And a virus can only live and spread via a host, and there are fewer and fewer hosts. Even if some people do get sick, there will be no risk to the hospital system being overwhelmed....which is the point people need to remember. The whole reason we did the "lockdowns" was to not have a large spike hit hospitals all at once and overwhelm them. It was never about preventing sickness and death...that's always going to happen. Even after lockdowns end, people will still get sick, and people will unfortunately still die from this. But by finding out what we are right now, even with the amount of people who get this virus and don't even really get sick, its all net positives.

I'll use Wisconsin, since that's where I live. We have right now about 5,000 positive cases of this virus, with a hospitalization rate of somewhere around 15% and about 250 deaths total. Using that data, the 'death rate' is a staggering 5%. The state population is just under 6 million. If you extrapolate the New York state numbers of 14% with antibodies, that means 840,000 people in Wisconsin have had the virus. But, of course, deaths are the same. That makes the death rate for this virus here in Wisconsin 0.00029%. Now, New York and Wisconsin are different with regards to population density and such, but it shows the example of how the numbers are much less scary when you get the denominator right with regards to how many are infected.

The more of these antibody tests come back with double digits testing positive, the better.

great post.

 

[yulilin3]

You think they'll actually give us dates by Monday? I would love it, but I really doubt we'll get any real info. tomorrow or Monday.

Thr governor said he's waiting for the task force to give a report with suggestions on reopening Florida and he will announce tomorrow or Monday.

 

[brockash]

Thr governor said he's waiting for the task force to give a report with suggestions on reopening Florida and he will announce tomorrow or Monday.

I know that, but I just really doubt they'll give us actual opening dates. It'd be great if they do, but everything for the last month has just been we don't know, wait and see etc. I guess I was thinking it'd be more of a general this is how we're thinking of reopening stuff.

 

[yulilin3]

Nor sure if this wad already posted, Disney just changed hours for the week from 10 through the 16 to closed

 

[yulilin3]

I know that, but I just really doubt they'll give us actual opening dates. It'd be great if they do, but everything for the last month has just been we don't know, wait and see etc. I guess I was thinking it'd be more of a general this is how we're thinking of reopening stuff.

Once the governor says stores and restaurants can open Disney springs will open pretty quickly