Cruise and Theme Park Operational Updates due to Coronavirus

[sullivan.kscott]

More crowds will result in making it harder to police resulting in a lot more variability so they all factor in

Exactly. Until the demand then allows/causes WDW to increase staffing, allowing for more policing. It will be a cycle for some time.

 

[yulilin3]

More crowds will result in making it harder to police resulting in a lot more variability so they all factor in

and that's exactly the issue. I was recording a video on the hub for 15 min so got to see one CM around the Partners statue basically patrol the area for people taking their masks off to take pics. He got to every single one he saw but I saw people breaking the rules while his back was turned to them, so who do we blame? First I blame the people, obviously and blatantly breaking the rules, next is the lack of CM doing this job, on a regular day one CM would've probably been enough but this weekend will be very different

 

[Krandor]

Very confusing. All parks were sold out for all 3 buckets the next 2 days. So moving Allocation from one bucket to another wouldn’t make sense if they didn’t add capacity. Unless enough people cancelled their vacations to allow them to reallocate availability.

They had to have added. Likely say resort reservattions increase so increased buckets. We will find out if that was a good idea or not.

 

[Krandor]

and that's exactly the issue. I was recording a video on the hub for 15 min so got to see one CM around the Partners statue basically patrol the area for people taking their masks off to take pics. He got to every single one he saw but I saw people breaking the rules while his back was turned to them, so who do we blame? First I blame the people, obviously and blatantly breaking the rules, next is the lack of CM doing this job, on a regular day one CM would've probably been enough but this weekend will be very different

I don't envy the CMs this weekend. Going to be hard to poilice but maybe disney can notice areas like that where they need more CMs on a day like today so they can plan for thanksgiving/christmas/new years.

 

[Mit88]

They had to have added. Likely say resort reservattions increase so increased buckets. We will find out if that was a good idea or not.

Had to happen eventually. Gotta take the training wheels off. Whether it’s low crowds like July or busier like they are now, the rulesdon’t change. Circumstances that got us here are still very relevant. While it has been comfortable tin WDW in terms of safety, it’s still not impenetrable. Walking into any park with any amount of people during these times bring a level of risk that guests need to be aware of. Just like with every other hiccup since the reopening, Disney has been rather quick to address it, and I imagine that will stay the same this weekend, and going forward, expanded capacity or not

 

[yulilin3]

I don't envy the CMs this weekend. Going to be hard to poilice but maybe disney can notice areas like that where they need more CMs on a day like today so they can plan for thanksgiving/christmas/new years.

yeah and they can't recall just for the weekend as that would mean those CM would loose their unemployment benefits. SO definitely a good test weekend for Disney, I'm sure they will learn a lot. Saw a lot of managers out as well, taking notes and furiously typing into phones

 

[hereforthechurros]

Unless reservations aren’t returned to the system without IT putting them back in?

An IT cancellation dump could be. But I thought the system was pretty close to real time. Who knows though!

 

[Dentam]

Very confusing. All parks were sold out for all 3 buckets the next 2 days. So moving Allocation from one bucket to another wouldn’t make sense if they didn’t add capacity. Unless enough people cancelled their vacations to allow them to reallocate availability.

They were showing as all full again the next two days when I last checked this morning.

 

[MinnieMSue]

You can’t compare today to this weekend except for studios. Last I saw it was the only sold out park at all today. All other parks had availability for all ticket types. Last I looked Saturday and Sunday are sold out for everyone in every park. So anyone at MK today is getting a better experience than tomorrow for example. Hopefully they staffed accordingly skewing staff to this weekend which could help but there probably won’t be any increase in ride capacity so lines will be longer unless they can load more ride vehicles where able. I know if I was a scheduler that’s what I would do. We have seen for some time that reservations are higher for the weekend than all other days. They should have staffed accordingly. That is the only hope I have that things will be ok. That being said we are doing Epcot tomorrow on arrival day so not that many rides to worry about even with long lines. We will just have to wait for everything we want to do. Should be ok especially since there is lots of space to spread out. MK on Sunday will hopefully be ok since there are so many rides for people to spread out too. We have given up all hope of riding everything but with our dinner at 6:45 we should have most of the day to do as much as we can. I am honestly most hopeful for AK on Wednesday - we have always wanted low enough crowds to meander through the paths and see the animals without people crowding us (preCOVID I didn’t like being crowded in lol). We haven’t been to this park in awhile and it is the one I really hope to have the least crowded day at. We have expected studios to be sold out for awhile so that isn’t anything worth worrying about. Plus we did RotR in February and it won’t be the end of the world to not get to ride it.

 

[Vern60]

Given all the changes from the pandemic, what would be your preferred park for Christmas day? I feel pretty confident they won't have the holiday party, but it still might be the most festive of all the parks ... ? Or, might it be the most crowded and thus better to avoid?

 

[rteetz]

Given all the changes from the pandemic, what would be your preferred park for Christmas day? I feel pretty confident they won't have the holiday party, but it still might be the most festive of all the parks ... ? Or, might it be the most crowded and thus better to avoid?

My choice would be MK. It probably would be theoretically the most crowded but it likely will be the most festive too.

 

[KBoopaloo]

Very confusing. All parks were sold out for all 3 buckets the next 2 days. So moving Allocation from one bucket to another wouldn’t make sense if they didn’t add capacity. Unless enough people cancelled their vacations to allow them to reallocate availability.

The other possibility may be that they are constantly re-evaluating what percentage of reservations end up as no-shows and adjust the buckets accordingly. It may be that they played it safe to start and did not account for very many people to make a reservation and then not use it but now with more than a month of data under their belt they have a better sense of how many reservations go unused and they have been adjusting. Did we ever get an answer as to if there is a penalty if you don't show up for your reservation? I imagine the percentage of no-shows is much higher among APs than resort guests or general ticket holders and if there is no penalty, I'd bet the number is not insignificant. At my job we have a good number of events with free tickets that require an advance reservation and we do a lot of adjusting on capacity limits trying to guess about no-shows.

 

[rteetz]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1301994042016886791

 

[20yBWDW]

I am not sure we should take that post as gospel. According to MDE waits haven't been bad today at DHS. The waits for the most parts have been pretty similar to yesterday a few rides were five to ten minutes longer than yesterday for about an hour earlier today, but it doesn't look all that bad at all at least on MDE.

The original post was mine. You are correct that overall, posted waits were not that much worse. They were definitely worse by our experiences. Most of the posted 10-30 minute waits the rest of the week were walk-on to 10 minutes, unless there was a cleaning cycle (we suspected waits were highly inflated to account for cleaning cycles).

But today, waits were closer to the posted times more often than not, walkways were more congested, and the snowball effect of longer waits, more congested walkways, areas for stationary eating and drinking being full, was that people were more inclined to break the rules, to be impatient. The cast members seemed far more overwhelmed, and were not correcting people eating and drinking in line. It may not have been a huge difference in wait times (our wait times on average were still better than a typical week in Disney for riding without Fastpasses). But the wait times alone are only part of the story when you also factor in masks and social distancing and Florida heat. We lost places in line from people reading our 6 ft spacing as end of line, because queues stretched out past the usual entrance and crowds were thick. We could not get into line at food carts because crowds, lines extending into walkways. Add the RotR experience, with a family that spent the hour stuck with their masks partly orally the way off, coughing, spreading out to fill the space between us.

And to top it off, the Epcot resorts don't typically have buses running, so when it started to storm, they put up a bus stop on the board, but it was apparently wrong. So dozens of us waited at that bus stop for 40 minutes while empty buses hung around. They told us we were at wrong stop, but we were at the one posted on the board.

Overall, I think they increased capacity without increasing staff to accommodate. The difference between today and Wednesday was night and day. The wait times are only a small part of it.

 

[20yBWDW]

I don't envy the CMs this weekend. Going to be hard to poilice but maybe disney can notice areas like that where they need more CMs on a day like today so they can plan for thanksgiving/christmas/new years.

I agree with this. The CMs who are working have a tough weekend ahead.

 

[Brianstl]

The original post was mine. You are correct that overall, posted waits were not that much worse. They were definitely worse by our experiences. Most of the posted 10-30 minute waits the rest of the week were walk-on to 10 minutes, unless there was a cleaning cycle (we suspected waits were highly inflated to account for cleaning cycles).

But today, waits were closer to the posted times more often than not, walkways were more congested, and the snowball effect of longer waits, more congested walkways, areas for stationary eating and drinking being full, was that people were more inclined to break the rules, to be impatient. The cast members seemed far more overwhelmed, and were not correcting people eating and drinking in line. It may not have been a huge difference in wait times (our wait times on average were still better than a typical week in Disney for riding without Fastpasses). But the wait times alone are only part of the story when you also factor in masks and social distancing and Florida heat. We lost places in line from people reading our 6 ft spacing as end of line, because queues stretched out past the usual entrance and crowds were thick. We could not get into line at food carts because crowds, lines extending into walkways. Add the RotR experience, with a family that spent the hour stuck with their masks partly orally the way off, coughing, spreading out to fill the space between us.

And to top it off, the Epcot resorts don't typically have buses running, so when it started to storm, they put up a bus stop on the board, but it was apparently wrong. So dozens of us waited at that bus stop for 40 minutes while empty buses hung around. They told us we were at wrong stop, but we were at the one posted on the board.

Overall, I think they increased capacity without increasing staff to accommodate. The difference between today and Wednesday was night and day. The wait times are only a small part of it.

Thank you for the detailed report. I definitely see how that can be a frustrating day especially with a 114 degree heat index.

 

[Dentam]

ResortTV1 stream just started in Epcot. Jenna mentioned crowds are up already for the holiday weekend but the wait for Soarin' was still only 10 minutes. I'm sure tomorrow and Sunday will be more but still, not too bad.

 

[princesscinderella]

We just arrived at WDW I was wondering what the giant mound of dirt in the Magic Kingdom parking lot was for? I was driving so I couldn’t attach a picture but you can’t miss it. The blue walls are still up at the GF and you can see a temp building that says NBA Barbershop . I was nice seeing more cars around than when we were here over the 4th of July weekend.

 

[20yBWDW]

Thank you for the detailed report. I definitely see how that can be a frustrating day especially with a 114 degree heat index.

That is a big factor. The inability to drink in line is no problem at all when you're walking onto rides, or waiting 5-10 minutes. Once you get up over 30 minutes, you really feel it more. And the more times you need to stop and drink out of the way, the more you notice it. So the combined effect of increased crowds and high temperatures has a much bigger impact than you may realize until you're in it.

And the poor CMs who are stuck in masks and heavy costumes all day, with all of these other factors....

 

[Eric Smith]

My 2 cents on that one is that the problem is more for the CMs inside the Lunchbox. From what I remember it seems really small in there.

It’s small and the flow of people is kinda horshoe shaped so distancing would be difficult. There’s also really not much space for people to eat outside.