So sorry to hear so many people have been sick! I hope everyone recovers well.
We finished in the parks on Thursday and flew home yesterday so it’s too early to declare ourselves successful at avoiding illness, but so far so good. There were a LOT of folks coughing and sneezing in the parks and on the plane, for sure. I was a bit taken aback at the crowding in places like the stretching room, too—I know that’s how it always was before and we’re mostly “back to normal”, but it was a lot.
We found it crowded (Thursday especially, I gather there was a magic key gift distribution in DCA, so lots of folks there for that?), but the wait times were mostly manageable, at least with my son’s
DAS. The ride breakdowns really need to be addressed, if everything were online most of the time I don’t think waits would be a major problem for most rides. I do hate when it’s so crowded it’s hard to move around without bumping into people who stop in the middle of paths.
Tuesday casey Junior got stuck for 20 minutes while we were on board. (CMs were on top of it, checking on all passengers to make sure everyone was ok and then handing out MEPs at the exit.) Wednesday we started in DCA with a plan to knock out Pixar pier quickly, but I think only 2 rides over there were running at park open! We managed to catch stuff as they opened (walked on to incredicoaster twice back to back) so we still got most stuff done. Thursday my son really wanted a re-ride on TSMM but it was down until about an hour after we had to leave for San Diego. We did benefit from a few MEPs as a result of rides going down, so it wasn’t a total loss for us, but for a lot of guests that wouldn’t be the case.
We ended up skipping all the nighttime entertainment, even though we’d been in CA for 4 days before we went to the parks we were all too tired to stay in the parks until 10 pm. I know when we’ve done WDW in the past there were often earlier show times in the winter, I wish DL offered that as we would all have enjoyed seeing some shows. We at least made it back after an afternoon break to see Carsland at night, and caught the fireworks reflected in the windows behind our hotel one night.
My son has mobility issues so we did get a red tag for his stroller, he was able to walk most lines (and he prefers that independence) but being able to take that break when needed was nice. One thing I wish I had researched better was which lines were “better” to walk the queue if possible vs ones where the accessible line was more necessary. At Pirates we ended up in the wheelchair line (without his stroller, but the cast members sent us that way before we had parked it) and it was astonishing how slowly that moved, given that everyone there was using a return time. Eventually a CM spotted us and took us around front to speed things up a bit. Usually when we entered with DAS and no stroller the CMs would still ask if stairs were ok, so that was helpful. Once or twice we got caught off guard but generally they were happy to let him use an elevator where one was available, even if we had parked the stroller outside.
All in all it felt like there was still a lot of magic in the parks, although I can also see lots of room for improvement too. We will be in FL in March and haven’t completely written off a few days of Disney then, when originally I had figured we wouldn’t bother so soon after this trip. We’ll see!
