Cruise and Theme Park Operational Updates due to Coronavirus

[Perdita&Pongo]

FP Planning Cards were put on MDE accounts (on request) that had expiring APs that were to be extended so that you could still book FPS back before they ended them. The FPPCs were for length of stay and good for 4 days each. IOW, an 8 night stay got 2 cards, a 9 night stay (ours) got 3 cards, etc. Cards expired with check out day. Hope this hepls!

 

[bastraker]

Oh my....speaking of cruises. I’ve been so wrapped up in this stuff, I had completely forgotten about a little thing called a Disney cruise I have planned for October 12. DCL extended the cancellation for the Magic today to Oct 2. Anyone want to guess what the first cruise for the Magic is after that date? Yup....October 12.

I swear, if they cancel that too...

Sorry, off topic I know, but I just now saw the cancellation notices for DCL and was like wait...I have a cruise scheduled.

Has anyone from upstate NY (Buffalo) flown into MCO over the past couple weeks? Were you made to quarantine? I’m hearing rumors that they aren’t even enforcing the quarantine order. We aren’t part of the “Tri-State” area anyways.

We flew home Monday from Orlando to Newark. We were there for 5 nights.

They do make you fill out paperwork on board the plane, which they collect when you arrive in Orlando. However, we had no problems.

 

[Tbella]

FP Planning Cards were put on MDE accounts (on request) that had expiring APs that were to be extended so that you could still book FPS back before they ended them. The FPPCs were for length of stay and good for 4 days each. IOW, an 8 night stay got 2 cards, a 9 night stay (ours) got 3 cards, etc. Cards expired with check out day. Hope this hepls!

Thank you for explaining!

 

[Alana20]

Have an early August reservation. Just received a new survey. Interesting question about digital queues that I have not seen before.

 

[Tinkerbella1111]

I don’t know...the Halloween party without Boo To You Parade, the special fireworks, the castle show and the unique character greetings? IMHO I would see absolutely no value in that.

Neither do I. In this case the only big benefit of attending would be low crowds and short ride lines but with park capacity restrictions etc. it’s likely that this would be your experience during the day anyway.

 

[Perdita&Pongo]

Have an early August reservation. Just received a new survey. Interesting question about digital queues that I have not seen before.

Screen shots?

 

[yulilin3]

I’d love to hear others thoughts.

This entire thread is thoughts

 

[chasgoose]

Hoppers is another issue. People paid extra expecting to be allowed to hop. It could be argued that many people wouldn’t have bought their passes at all if they couldn’t hop. Refunding the difference or days of nonentry isn’t really good enough if a vacation is completely ruined. I’m not a lawyer but this sounds like a legal issue to me. And not everyone can simply travel in a few months so holding their money isn’t a good policy either.

I'm pretty sure Disney wouldn't have a legal issue if they refunded the difference between park hoppers and regular tickets for those that use them when park hopping isn't allowed. I haven't looked at the legalese in a ticket in a hot second but I'm sure there is language in there that the tickets don't guarantee you entry into any park or that any attraction will be open and that Disney reserves the right to change any privileges that come with the ticket for any reason (particularly with the APs where park hopping is explicitly a perk that they can take away). Also given the fairly generous refund policies Disney is offering for people who booked trips and bought tickets before closing, it would be hard for someone to go to the parks and then argue that their vacation was ruined by the lack of park hopping.

Finally regarding the refunds on deposits, unless people cancel themselves, Disney doesn't have the CM capacity to cancel everyone's trips that quickly unless they just cancelled everyone's reservations and forced people to start from scratch (which would lead to an even bigger mess). Disney is going through every existing reservation in order of date and confirming whether those guests are cancelling/modifying or are still planning on coming, which takes time, especially given the more limited CM resources they have. The only way to get your deposit back sooner is to cancel yourself. I could be wrong, but I haven't heard anyone who cancelled not receiving their deposit or any payments they made back within more than a few days.

 

[SwirlTheCitrus]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1270796719647842311

 

[chasgoose]

Neither do I. In this case the only big benefit of attending would be low crowds and short ride lines but with park capacity restrictions etc. it’s likely that this would be your experience during the day anyway.

I imagine attraction lines aren't going to be as short as people think. Even with the capacity restrictions, there are going to be fewer CMs and along with cleaning/social distancing on attractions and in queues that will likely result in a corresponding reduction in attraction capacity.

I think the biggest benefit of attending would be if they were still prohibiting park hopping but they allowed you to make a free reservation for one park for most of the day and then attend an after hours event at a different park in the evening.

 

[Snowysmom]

One question about only DVC and Ft, Widerness open for the rest of the year. The NBA will be using CSR for about 3 months. Therefore CSR is operating for "guests" and maybe it will stay open once they leave? Just speculating. Plus I have a res at GDT in Nov so am very interested in this.

 

[Alana20]

Sorry, I didn’t think to take screen shots. It asked if I had been informed of new park operating procedures and they were all listed out. Each one is something already posted on the Disney site except one that said “digital sign up for virtual lines and a digital response advising when its your turn to return. No waiting in a physical line.” It was stated as a fact along with wearing masks, etc. The other new question was “how likely are you to use a Disney bus to get from your resort to:” and then each park and Disney springs was listed to check yes or no.

 

[Anthony Vito]

Please move me to Jambo from YC if SAB and Hurricane Hannas are going to be closed.

We actually have two reservations for the last full week of August. We have a BC that was a Free Dining Bounceback. Before reopening announcements were made and you could still make reservations, we made a YC room-only reservation - in case the announcements made the dining plan not worth it - ironic huh? The BC room portion of the reservation is $390 cheaper than YC, but we don't need the package any more without free dining since we have APs. So, all else being equal, we might choose YC over BC. So, at this point, we don't know which one we'd keep, if any.

That being said, if Stormalong Bay is closed, we will most likely cancel. However, if our YC were to get switched to Jambo House, then that might be a different story - considering the reduced park time, we'd consider staying at AKL for this trip. We'd also consider it if they switched us to Riviera. I'm not really sure we'd still go if they moved us anywhere else.

 

[Devil13]

I'm pretty sure Disney wouldn't have a legal issue if they refunded the difference between park hoppers and regular tickets for those that use them when park hopping isn't allowed.

Is there an AP that doesn't include park hopping outside the Epcot After 4? If so that's about a $1K difference between that and the out of state Platinum Plus Pass.

 

[pclvnmcky88]

One question about only DVC and Ft, Widerness open for the rest of the year. The NBA will be using CSR for about 3 months. Therefore CSR is operating for "guests" and maybe it will stay open once they leave? Just speculating. Plus I have a res at GDT in Nov so am very interested in this.

has it been confirmed somewhere that only DVC and cabins will be open for the rest of the year?

 

[SaintsManiac]

has it been confirmed somewhere that only DVC and cabins will be open for the rest of the year?

No

 

[Eric Smith]

So aside from those that have DVC they need to redeem or APs they need to use I am interested to know if you are still going what is the motivation? Blind faith in Disney? Being so frustrated from Covid lockdown you are looking for any outlet you can get? It seems completely unreasonable to me to ask people to revise resort plans with no explanation of Park admittance/reservation procedure

We still want to go on a vacation. We don't really care about M&Gs or parades and we could take or leave fireworks. This might be a good opportunity to be in Disney parks with incredibly low crowd levels.

 

[one_cat]

I'm pretty sure Disney wouldn't have a legal issue if they refunded the difference between park hoppers and regular tickets for those that use them when park hopping isn't allowed. I haven't looked at the legalese in a ticket in a hot second but I'm sure there is language in there that the tickets don't guarantee you entry into any park or that any attraction will be open and that Disney reserves the right to change any privileges that come with the ticket for any reason (particularly with the APs where park hopping is explicitly a perk that they can take away). Also given the fairly generous refund policies Disney is offering for people who booked trips and bought tickets before closing, it would be hard for someone to go to the parks and then argue that their vacation was ruined by the lack of park hopping.

Finally regarding the refunds on deposits, unless people cancel themselves, Disney doesn't have the CM capacity to cancel everyone's trips that quickly unless they just cancelled everyone's reservations and forced people to start from scratch (which would lead to an even bigger mess). Disney is going through every existing reservation in order of date and confirming whether those guests are cancelling/modifying or are still planning on coming, which takes time, especially given the more limited CM resources they have. The only way to get your deposit back sooner is to cancel yourself. I could be wrong, but I haven't heard anyone who cancelled not receiving their deposit or any payments they made back within more than a few days.

Perhaps but I still wonder if the reason they haven’t provided information that everyone is craving and actually information people need is because they simply don’t know how to do it? Their business model compared to other theme parks is much more complex.

 

[SaintsManiac]

We still want to go on a vacation. We don't really care about M&Gs or parades and we could take or leave fireworks. This might be a good opportunity to be in Disney parks with incredibly low crowd levels.

It's definitely going to be a unique and HOPEFULLY once in a lifetime experience. If I lived closer I would go.

 

[Jiminy76]

So I have seen no communication from Disney since their sudden announcement to cancel all ADRs. I don’t count that silly communication drop this morning: thanks Disney, you are going to clean my room before I check in.

It makes me wonder if it wasn’t for the DVC points debacle if they would even be thinking of opening in July? Would they wait til end of year or even later to see what the second wave looked like and to get their ducks in a row.

But opening even to DVC resorts causes an awful lot of questions around annual passes, park hopping etc. Before the complete blackout we saw them make several announcements then walk them back or even just delete them without explanation. It really makes me think: maybe the news blackout isn’t planned, maybe they actually can’t figure out the logistics of opening.

Annual passes: do you extend all annual passes and essentially give those that are lucky enough to get a reservation free days in the park? If you don’t then those that can’t get reservations have been impacted negatively. And if you do those that don’t get the freebies will be mad. I know a Pass isn’t a guaranteed admission but the expectation we all bought with was that denial of park privileges was under extraordinary circumstances like on Christmas Day when the park was literally full. Even then you could go to another park. It wasn’t bought with the expectation that it merely gave you a chance of entering a lottery to maybe get into a park on a particular day.

Hoppers is another issue. People paid extra expecting to be allowed to hop. It could be argued that many people wouldn’t have bought their passes at all if they couldn’t hop. Refunding the difference or days of nonentry isn’t really good enough if a vacation is completely ruined. I’m not a lawyer but this sounds like a legal issue to me. And not everyone can simply travel in a few months so holding their money isn’t a good policy either.

Another thought I have is: Perhaps they they do know how to do it but can’t get the software to work. It would make sense to push off a launch day announcement if the software isn’t working. But at what point do they push out their start date if they have to keep banging away at the software?

I’d love to hear others thoughts.

I have been thinking about this as well as my AP's expire on 7/18 and we check in on 7/18. We have renewal certificates but they cannot be applied until the original AP expires. With the AP being frozen it does bring up a valid point as to when they will unfreeze all AP's. There are more than likely many more AP's out there than people with reservations in the upcoming few months. So unfreezing when the parks open on 7/11 or 7/15 will cause a lot of issues and complaints from AP holders who are unable to get into the parks as they do not have reservations in the upcoming few months.

So you do bring up a valid point if the people who have AP's either current or expired but within the time frame for extension and Disney decides to not unfreeze annual passes for the limited capacity period they will essentially be getting free days in the park.

So they will either have to manage the AP extensions on a one off basis and base it upon when the person wishes to stop the freeze and extend the expiration date(I.E. check in date during reduced capacity time frame). This would be more difficult for them to manage but seems to be the most equitable solution. The other possible option is to treat all AP's the same and unfreeze them all at the same time based upon when the reduced capacity period ends. This would more than likely result in Disney offering the AP's wit reservations the option to purchase dated tickets for the days during their stay in the reduced period. This would not go over well, so in my opinion they will have to treat the AP extensions on a case by case basis. This is the more fair way to go about it and would ruffle the least amount of feathers.

I suspect the lack of news recently has more to do with the development and migration of information perhaps not going well. I can only imagine this is a very complicated and heavy lift for any IT team to handle in such a short turn around.

As far as park hopping goes.I think we may be stuck not being able to do this for awhile. I'm not sure if there would be any legal issues taking this away would present to Disney. We'll have to wait and see what is in store as Disney hopefully releases more information on the reservation process.