Cruise and Theme Park Operational Updates due to Coronavirus

[karen4546]

@karen4546 Yes GDT is the new tower at Coronado Springs. The AK cancellation along with a few others were ones I saw on a disney fans FB page I belong to so I’m not sure if it’s the same one in the thread I linked to in another post.

Got it. I am a member of so many Disney groups that I had to "unfollow" a couple. Just trying to keep the "pixie dust" flying.

 

[e_yerger]

Nothing to do with "class" but maybe for some event or group?

Hmmm. Still odd to me if they’re cancelling values & moderates but not deluxe. And if they’re trying not to accommodate the value & moderate reservations by moving them.

 

[HuskieJohn]

I can’t imagine disney cancelling some resorts and not others. That seems very.... classist? to me. That they would keep deluxe (dvc aside) open and close values without trying to move the people in value resorts into another resort. If that’s really the case I would expect a PR nightmare.

Edit: grammar

One of the things I am wondering about is if WDW is canceling all the non-DVC resorts before any of the DVC ones.

To me WDW needs to open the DVC resorts before any of the others just so the points are spent rather than to be used later from a pool that is already full. So if the DVC resorts are open they might as well have the people with cash rooms who have not canceled go ahead and come in too...as long as capacity is not too high.

 

[OnceUponATime15]

Got it. I am a member of so many Disney groups that I had to "unfollow" a couple. Just trying to keep the "pixie dust" flying.

Crossing my fingers for you! WL is my favorite resort
We had to cancel our June reservation and it was heartbreaking. Hoping that things somehow get to a place that feels comfortable and safe by December. that’s our back up plan if all is better.

 

[rteetz]

https://blogmickey.com/2020/04/flor...-were-doing-a-lot-of-stuff-behind-the-scenes/

 

[OnceUponATime15]

I saw @rteetz had posted & thought it might be time for our nightly lockdown! lol

No offense Ryan.. just having a little fun.

 

[andyman8]

While Disneyland (and WDW) will most likely still be closed May 11, Disneyland's original inspiration in Copenhagen will be operating!

https://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/samfund/tivoli-aabner-11.-maj/8096572#fnTalkContainer
("Tivoli opens May 11")

Of course, we can't extrapolate too much from this opening date, given that it's a different country with a different curve, a very different park than WDW/DL, a different medical system, and unique regulations, but Tivoli might give us a clue of what other protocols we might see implemented in the parks to enforce social distancing. In sort of a circle of life moment, perhaps Tivoli will inspire/guide what Disney does to maintain social distancing in their parks.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I can’t imagine disney cancelling some resorts and not others. That seems very.... classist? to me. That they would keep deluxe (dvc aside) open and close values without trying to move the people in value resorts into another resort. If that’s really the case I would expect a PR nightmare.

Edit: grammar

It really isn’t a great PR look- unless they’re gambling nobody will care enough to make an issue of it?

 

[bebec22]

I can’t imagine disney cancelling some resorts and not others. That seems very.... classist? to me. That they would keep deluxe (dvc aside) open and close values without trying to move the people in value resorts into another resort. If that’s really the case I would expect a PR nightmare.

Edit: grammar

Let’s not forget about the “secure circuit” rumor that just happens to include only deluxe resorts.

 

[e_yerger]

I’m okay with them doing deluxe only......... if they comp my Pop room up to deluxe

 

[only hope]

The fairest way would be to cut capacity in each hotel group (deluxe, moderate, value) by the same percentage.

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

Very interesting that while Disney has offered refunds to everyone else they've kept conventions locked in.

They haven't offered refunds to anyone for June yet. Not for conventions, not for sports tournaments, and not for personal reservations.

They are waiting to the last minute for everything.

They are, however, still telling people who get their May reservations cancelled that they can book free dining staring June 1st. So strange that they are still doing this if they don't actually plan to open June 1st.

 

[Sandiz08]

Just an FYI, Summit cheer event is supposed to know this Friday the 24th if their competition goes on in late June. Not sure if it’s based on them cancelling or Disney notifying them if it can still go on.
They are a very large travel group with a large amount of room blocks at the mods and values. Will be very interesting to know if the event gets cancelled.

 

[jlwhitney]

Just an FYI, Summit cheer event is supposed to know this Friday the 24th if their competition goes on in late June. Not sure if it’s based on them cancelling or Disney notifying them if it can still go on.
They are a very large travel group with a large amount of room blocks at the mods and values. Will be very interesting to know if the event gets cancelled.

Part of me will be shocked if they have it. I am in NE FL and a handful of gyms here have ended their season even ones with summit bids.

 

[Sandiz08]

Yeah I don’t think it will happen, but if it does, those gyms will be scrambling to practice as I know my daughters gym hasn’t been practicing. Very weird that they haven’t cancelled and left hope out there for this to still happen.

 

[LSUmiss]

All the cruise ships didn't help New Orleans either

Guess everyone I know has just been lucky. We all went to Mardi Gras & DS, DH & I then went to Disney World the week after.

 

[LSUmiss]

I'm in one of the COVID ICUs (a redeployed provider). Census is down for new admits but I manage just as many patients as always and they are extremely sick. And they still aren't allowing me to return to my usual job and see my usual patients. My hospital is weird about social media rules so I will decline to say but I'm sure you can guess. Anyway, I want to get back to practicing my specialty. The idea of a second spike makes me want to take early retirement. We got hit hard this time because we are a travel destination and people hang in crowds. People visiting a travel destination like Orlando and hanging out in crowds? Orlando and New Orleans aren't *that* different. And I will say one more thing and then shut my fingers for the day because I know I am bringing everyone down: people will not do social distancing once they are "released" unless they are absolutely forced to. They are tired of it and it is considered rude in this country. All the models that allow for reopening are assuming social distancing and tracking that will not happen unless part of very strict policy. I'm not against working towards reopening. But I do think they should keep it local for a while. Limit travel in and out of the state. See what happens after a month. Then take another baby step. I actually think the water parks can open earlier as long as they utilize virtual lines and people stay in designated spots otherwise. Ok rant over!

Hmm I get you can’t discuss but my sister has friends & drs at many other hospitals around town & most have said things have calmed down dramatically so I’m curious where you are still seeing it that bad. At umc, they had converted trauma icu to a Covid icu & now there are no more Covid patients there. Can you give me a hint ?What area of the city are you in?

 

[gottalovepluto]

They haven't offered refunds to anyone for June yet. Not for conventions, not for sports tournaments, and not for personal reservations.

They are waiting to the last minute for everything.

They are, however, still telling people who get their May reservations cancelled that they can book free dining staring June 1st. So strange that they are still doing this if they don't actually plan to open June 1st.

Wrong. For personal reservations through June 30 there are no cancellation fees. (Tickets outside of packages are a separate issue.) That was literally my point in contrasting how personal reservations are being dealt with differently than conventions.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Just an FYI, Summit cheer event is supposed to know this Friday the 24th if their competition goes on in late June. Not sure if it’s based on them cancelling or Disney notifying them if it can still go on.
They are a very large travel group with a large amount of room blocks at the mods and values. Will be very interesting to know if the event gets cancelled.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the event is still technically on simply because Disney allows it, leaving everyone on the hook for the costs even if the teams decide not to attend for safety

 

[andyman8]

For what it’s worth, with all the talk of MK and the MK Resorts being open, I ran some numbers.

If we keep things within the monorail loop (even though the monorail would supposedly not operate in a “secure circuit” scenario), we’re talking about about 2,104 rooms in circulation. If you include the DVC units, they have 2,969 rooms in circulation. Now, let’s expand that out to WL since MK resorts would be supposedly operating with boat transportation. Excluding DVC from all four resorts, that’s a total of 2,833 rooms in circulation. With DVC units, including BRV and CCV, that’s 4,064 rooms in circulation. Given that FW seems ideal for social distancing, let’s throw the campgrounds and cabins in there. That’s a total of 5,273 “rooms” in circulation (I’m counting every campsite and cabin as its own separate “room”). To put that in perspective, that’s just under the total amount of rooms between all three All Star Resorts.

Now, WDW generally maintains an average room occupancy of 3.1 guests per room. Since that number is generally dragged down by a number of the smaller rooms at the Values and Mods that can only accommodate 4 or 3 guests, let’s up that to an average of 4 guests per room, especially given the weight DVC units (some of which acocomdoating up to 12 guests) would potentially add. If every resort was 100% full, here’s how many resort guests would have access (we assume guaranteed access) to MK. Again, in this scenario, we’re assuming MK is the only park operating initially.

100% Occupancy Scenario:

A) GF, PV, and CR - 8,416 guests
B) GF, PV, and CR plus DVC - 11,876 guests
C) GF, PV, CR, and WL - 11,332 guests
D) GF, PV, CR, and WL plus DVC - 16,256 guests
E) GF, PV, CR, WL, and FW plus DVC - 21,092 guests

Of course, given social distancing guidelines, it’s extremely unlikely Disney would allow resorts to operate at 100% occupancy even if they could fill every room. To provide for space in resort restaurants, shops, lounges, and at the Front Desk, they probably would operate with no more than 75% occupancy. Here are some other scenarios and what those numbers look like.

75% Occupancy Scenario:

A) GF, PV, and CR - 6,312 guests
B) GF, PV, and CR plus DVC - 8,907 guests
C) GF, PV, CR, and WL - 8,499 guests
D) GF, PV, CR, and WL plus DVC - 12,192 guests
E) GF, PV, CR, WL, and FW plus DVC - 15,819 guests

50% Occupancy Scenario:

A) GF, PV, and CR - 4,208 guests
B) GF, PV, and CR plus DVC - 5,938 guests
C) GF, PV, CR, and WL - 5,666 guests
D) GF, PV, CR, and WL plus DVC - 8,128 guests
E) GF, PV, CR, WL, and FW plus DVC - 10,546 guests

25% Occupancy Scenario:

A) GF, PV, and CR - 2,104 guests
B) GF, PV, and CR plus DVC - 2,969 guests
C) GF, PV, CR, and WL - 2,833 guests
D) GF, PV, CR, and WL plus DVC - 4,064 guests
E) GF, PV, CR, WL, and FW plus DVC - 5,273 guests

Of course, it wouldn’t make financial sense to operate the WDW Resorts at 25% occupancy or less for multiple nights (they’d be spending way more money than they’d be making, unless they raised the prices tremendously and forced any existing reservations to be charged at the new rate, which they wouldn’t do). So that leaves the 75 and 50 Scenarios.

Touring Plans did a calculation to see how many guests would fit into MK if each needed about 6 square feet for social distancing (Len Testa explains this in a recent edition of the Disney Dish), and they estimated that Disney would have to limit MK to about 15,000 guests for those social distancing protocols to be strictly enacted. Let’s assume they’re correct and that Disney caps MK at 15,000 guests. That assumedly eliminates Scenario 75E.

If they only opened the park to Resort Guests, that would leave Scenarios 75A, 75B, 75C, 75D, 50A, 50B, 50C, 50D, and 50E. That would put the number of guests onsite anywhere from 4,208 to 12,192 guests. Disney still wants as many people on property as they can safely have, so I’d guess 75D and 50E would be the most optimal scenarios for them. Both scenarios would give them some wiggle room to potentially bring non-Resort guests into the park, though if they were determined to keep MK resort-guests-only, they’d probably go with something closest to 75D.

If they were to open up a park reservation system (similar to the one DLR uses for its FlexPass passholders) for APs or FL Residents, then I could see them going with something closer to 50E at some point, given that scenario would give them just under 5,000 “reservations” to distribute each day. My guess is they start with one baseline and slowly start tinkering and expanding it.

I want to emphasize though that these numbers are not predictions or meant to reflect precisely what Disney will do. There’s a lot of assumptions and loose math involved here to simplify things. Disney could operate different combinations of these resorts or could operate at another level of occupancy than the ones listed here. Heck, they could operate each hotel at different occupancies. And who knows what they’ll do with existing reservations or DVC for that matter. I’m sure they want to get at least a few DVC wings open to do anything to alleviate the pending inventory problems. It could be a situation where they have the DVC resorts operate at 100% capacity in exchange for only operating the cash-side of the resorts at 50 or 60%. It could also be that they just decide to pause on DVC resorts for a bit longer for staffing reasons. Nobody knows. The purpose of this math is just to give a ballpark of the kind of numbers we can expect in terms of how many guests the WDW resorts rumored to open first could accommodate and what that might look like. These are just my opinions, so take it with a grain of salt.