Cruise and Theme Park Operational Updates due to Coronavirus

[MichelinMan]

Possibly still flights trying to get people home from where ever they have been stuck?

Believe it or not, some key workers need to do so for work. I work in the oil and gas industry, and a number of workers who work offshore in the North Sea live overseas, and travel to the UK before going offshore for their 2 or 3 week trip. Those workers have been finding it increasingly difficult to travel to and from their workplace.

 

[xuxa777]

The State of Florida website only lists countries whose residents are banned from entry - not many on that list. Currently just : China, Iran, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City, United Kingdom & Ireland

Then there is this statement which would seem to apply to all other countries:

If you traveled internationally in the last 14 days:

• Stay home, monitor your health, and practice social distancing for 14 days after you return from travel. Social distancing means staying out of crowded places, avoiding group gatherings, and maintaining distance (approximately 6 feet or 2 meters) from others when possible.

That stops short of telling people to quarantine for 14 days - not sure if the OP just misused words - but quarantine implies something tougher than social distancing. I was just wondering if there were tougher measures being put in place for some other countries, short of a total ban on entry, because I haven't seen that yet. Brazil for example, where numbers are starting to creep up.

Looking at the State of Florida website, I have spotted a flaw in their guidance - Isle of Man is not part of United Kingdom, which consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So are they technically still allowed to enter the US! I suspect this speaks more about the knowledge of US government officials about the geography of the rest of the world.

I added the link to the state of Florida info to a more recent post.

You and others highlight the difficulty in these types of advisements and bans etc. They will never catch anything and will always be a workaround, like flying in from Isle of Man, Philadelphia etc. These rules and advisements are being enacted and set in place quickly and will have errors and unintended consequences. The government doesn't usually operate in this speed which is immediate in these this. Nothing will be perfect under these conditions. The situation is extremely fluid, you will find many flaws right now but over time things will be dialed in and in most cases lifted.

 

[MichelinMan]

I flew from NYC to London in October 2001, and in fact the flight was on 10/11/2001. I was scared of flying but somehow managed to overcome it and go. London was empty. There were almost no other American tourists there and very few tourists from anywhere.

However, there's a gigantic difference between 9/11 and covid-19, and although I hardly need to point this out, there's no comparison between a terrorist attack and a contagious disease.

Yes, people, including me, were afraid of more terrorists attacks after 9/11, but they weren't a certainty. The novel coronavirus is a certainty. It exists, it's incredibly contagious, people are dying, and there's no treatment known to be effective. And no vaccine. Yet.

People were hesitant to travel after 9/11 but there's no way of knowing if people are going to be hesitant to travel a couple of months from now. For one thing, people's idea of "facts" are widely divergent, so what seems like a risk to some might seem like nothing at all to someone else.

Disney, though, isn't going to base its decisions on concepts unsubstantiated by science and empirical evidence. If they do, they're going to be exposing themselves to way worse problems than merely losing income. Because if they open too soon--whenever that will turn out to be, and I have no crystal ball--and there are clusters of infections that can be traced back to the parks, trust in the Disney organization will plummet. Trust is an essential part of their brand. I doubt they want to destroy that.

Agree with virtually everything you say here. Apart from the clusters of infections part. I think it would be very difficult to identify whether there are any clusters resulting from Disney opening. For example, we are finding it very hard to even identify that there is transmission going on in the workforce working offshore at the moment, and that is in a totally contained environment with lots of testing going on. Trying to identify clusters from Disney with so much movement in and out will be nigh on impossible, IMO.

 

[Jroceagles]

You can find all this info on the State of Florida site. This has been in place for weeks, nothing new. It is the same when driving in as well, they have "checkpoints" on the interstates at the state line, with people doing the same thing as yulilin3 is doing at the airport.

All persons traveling to Florida from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut are required upon entry to Florida to self-isolate or quarantine for 14 days, or for the duration of their presence in the state, whichever is shorter. Click here for more information.

https://www.visitflorida.com/en-us/current-travel-safety-information.html

hope that gets lifted!

 

[mshanson3121]

we were discussing the admin lag of actual data reporting by the government , and how it is delayed overall the weekends and holidays, not the virus results

Ahhhh, gotcha.

 

[juice0358]

Not sure how WDW can open if guests from NY area, CA and presumably soon IL are effectively banned. International visitors are also effectively banned. The Jul;y date suggested by some posters may wind up being the earliest.

POTUS wants to start opening things up in weeks. The governor of FL will follow. FL already made "exceptions" to suggested policy for spring breakers and WWE. I think DS will be opening earlier then some of us think. I'll speculate the goal date is still May 1.

If they were opening May 1st, they would be calling employees back to start preparing things and retrain. You honestly think an amusement park is going to open on May 1st? That would undo all the progress made by the quarantine.

 

[xuxa777]

If they were opening May 1st, they would be calling employees back to start preparing things and retrain. You honestly think an amusement park is going to open on May 1st? That would undo all the progress made by the quarantine.

I think they mean Disney Springs (DS) May 1st not the parks

 

[Lewisc]

Well... kinda. UFC did find a place to host events, the Tachi casino. 100% a go as far as that was concerned. It was DISNEY that stopped the UFC. Again, events that were to be put on without fans.

And you’re correct that the governor of Florida was an idiot and allowed spring break to continue. But do you know who wasn’t that stupid? Disney. They shut Disney World down even before Florida was on “lock down”.

My point...Evidence suggests the governor of FL may be one of the earlier states to relax restrictions. That suggests FL may be one of the first states to relax rules allowing malls to open. I'll speculate Disney will open DS within a week of other malls in the Orlando area opening. I think the May 1 date is still a goal.

I can't see the resorts and theme park opening if guests from areas like NY and CA are restricted from entering FL.

FWIW--If without fans was the only issue TV shows and movies, without live audiences, would be shooting.

 

[xuxa777]

My point...Evidence suggests the governor of FL may be one of the earlier states to relax restrictions. That suggests FL may be one of the first states to relax rules allowing malls to open. I'll speculate Disney will open DS within a week of other malls in the Orlando area opening. I think the May 1 date is still a goal.

I can't see the resorts and theme park opening if guests from areas like NY and CA are restricted from entering FL.

FWIW--If without fans was the only issue TV shows and movies, without live audiences, would be shooting.

At this time Florida's "restriction" is just an advisory and notification to self quarantine, that is all. It would still hinder Disney opening for sure though.

and you are correct, TV shows will start shooting in the next few weeks, movies might take a bit longer with logistics due to the amount of travel to locations

 

[kelly7adria]

There is an animal rescue group in China that I follow on Instagram. I first heard about COVID from them back in December. They just posted that China is getting their 2nd wave and everything is shutting down again. Looks like this is going to take a lot longer than we think

 

[mhautz]

I think one distinction needs to be made that it will likely be at different times that Disney World will be "allowed" to start bringing back cast members and when they are "allowed" to open up. For instance, if we start "opening up the economy" at the beginning of May and there's a sense that Disney World could be open for relatively normal business at the beginning of June, a lot of the necessary ramp up work could be done in May under loosening rules that allow more employees but not mass gatherings. My time frames are purely hypothetical (likely both too soon and too short), I just think that once it becomes "clear" that Disney can open at a certain point, there will be time and a path to get to that point.

 

[Jacq7414]

hope that gets lifted!

I wonder when it’ll get lifted. When the cases in NY go down? We have a July trip so if WDW is open, I hope it’s lifted by then

 

[JPM4]

I’m curious what is going to happen with APs? They have said they’ll extend them for days that the park is closed but say you’re coming from NY or NJ and realistically can’t go or you will have to quarantine so what’s the point? I could see them extending all through the end of the calendar year at this point. It’s one thing for the parks to open it’s another for out of state aps to actually get there

 

[rteetz]

I’m curious what is going to happen with APs? They have said they’ll extend them for days that the park is closed but say you’re coming from NY or NJ and realistically can’t go or you will have to quarantine so what’s the point? I could see them extending all through the end of the calendar year at this point. It’s one thing for the parks to open it’s another for out of state aps to actually get there

Disney has announced what is happening with APs already. There are options for those who paid in full and those who live in Florida and pay monthly.

 

[lovethesun12]

I tried using a 3 day, and even 4 day trend, but found that the weekend effect was too big. I have found you need to use a 7 day average to really get a true trend - but then the data you get out of that lags a lot. But if you do use a 7 day trend, and the curve peaks, you can be pretty certain that a region has peaked. USA hasn't yet peaked by that measure, but my feeling is that it probably has peaked in the last couple of days.

The 7 day trend for number of new cases in Florida is now coming down - which is really good news. The 7 day trend for deaths is up still - not surprising, as there is a lag between cases and deaths. But the fact number of new cases is coming down in Florida is what has led me to believe that Florida might just be peaking, and the IHME prediction of another 21 days until the peak in Florida is massively pessimistic.

I've been doing similar to you; I was running exponential regressions since mid March to predict future numbers (of cases/deaths) and in the beginning the predictions were easy and I was incredibly close to the actual values when you extrapolate the data (first two weeks of shut down). After the shut downs, the % growth dropped significantly so the regressions don't work for predicting as the curves start to flatten unless you toss the previous week from the data but I find just a % increase day to day gives a good prediction at this point because it has lowered so much. The % increases in the states has lowered substantially across the board. I find it interesting to look at how different measures affect different places in both cases and deaths. Of course everyone that has it isn't tested, but the % growth from those that are tested are likely representative of the % growth of the entire population that has it.

Hopefully trends continue, this is over soon and we all get to have our Dole Whip

 

[Jacq7414]

I've been doing similar to you; I was running exponential regressions since mid March to predict future numbers (of cases/deaths) and in the beginning the predictions were easy and I was incredibly close to the actual values when you extrapolate the data (first two weeks of shut down). After the shut downs, the % growth dropped significantly so the regressions don't work for predicting as the curves start to flatten unless you toss the previous week from the data but I find just a % increase day to day gives a good prediction at this point because it has lowered so much. The % increases in the states has lowered substantially across the board. I find it interesting to look at how different measures affect different places in both cases and deaths. Of course everyone that has it isn't tested, but the % growth from those that are tested are likely representative of the % growth of the entire population that has it.

Hopefully trends continue, this is over soon and we all get to have our Dole Whip

The cases should actually follow a logistic regression.

 

[Searc]

Lol im so tempted to go live right now . Thank you for your kind words, they give us the masks, gloves ans hand sanitizer so we're pretty safe and the airport is so empty anyways

MCO has said their passenger traffic is down 97%.

 

[Leigh L]

Lol im so tempted to go live right now . Thank you for your kind words, they give us the masks, gloves ans hand sanitizer so we're pretty safe and the airport is so empty anyways

Interesting information about what you're doing. Thank you for sharing
So glad they have enough PPE. Stay safe .

 

[JPM4]

Disney has announced what is happening with APs already. There are options for those who paid in full and those who live in Florida and pay monthly.

I know about that I’m just saying let’s say the parks are closed for 80 days and your pass gets extended those 80 days and your pass expired on May 1. That would give you access til mid July but you from a hot zone that can’t realistically get down there to use it. Will they extend them further is what I’m asking.

 

[mhautz]

hope that gets lifted!

Pure speculation (but I'd put a lot of money on it): Any domestic quarantine requirement by the state of Florida will be lifted well before Disney World is open to the public.