WDW COVID-19 Operational Changes- Reservation System-Rope Drop Procedures

[brockash]

A bit off topic but i see there's an interest in these
The orange county task force is meeting today and mayor demmings has another press conference tomorrow. On his press conference yesterday he did say he was assuming he would have got info on reopening already ftom the governor and the task force, so it wasn't just me expecting an answer yesterday, they are taking their time with an answer. Our stay at home ends Thursday night with businesses around my neighborhood preparing to open, hopeful to get a clear plan before the 30th

Thank you for the info. I'll be looking to see if there's anything new later today I've never stalked the Orlando news so much lol.

 

[leeniewdw]

Desantis is going to be with Trump at the WH any minute and they will take questions. Perhaps someone will ask about FL's themeparks.

 

[pangyal]

Yes!

https://blogmickey.com/2020/04/key-...-park-capacity-mandatory-face-masks-and-more/

 

[yulilin3]

Yes!

https://blogmickey.com/2020/04/key-...-park-capacity-mandatory-face-masks-and-more/

all very reasonable.

 

[leeniewdw]

Yes!

https://blogmickey.com/2020/04/key-...-park-capacity-mandatory-face-masks-and-more/

Having been there on 3/12-13, I was shocked this was not already in place:

• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ticketing entry and turnstile
• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ride/attraction entry and exit

There were nowhere near "at each" anything and in many cases just big pumps sitting on a table that you had to manually operate. This would have made a HUGE impact on my sanity during that trip.

 

[pangyal]

all very reasonable.

I agree!

I would like to think about what the capacity percentages would mean in real terms, though. Like, 50% of MK's full capacity would still make for a crowded experience. Not like that will stop us from going, but I wonder how much work they will do for guests to keep them separated so to speak versus placing the onus on guests to weave around each other and maintain some distance. Just out of curiousity!

 

[dmband]

Ok sounds good but I can see hand sanitizer being out more often than not. Someone is going to have a busy day keeping tabs on that.

my “concern” is capacity.
what is 50/75% capacity and how do they select who gets in? Is it anyone with a tickets period, guests staying on site, ??
Would that capacity co exist with resort stays? I would not want to pay thousands to be turned away due to capacity and/or afraid to hop only to find out it was at capacity.
i know there is a plan for busy days like July 4th and Christmas in place. I also know that being there when the park was close to capacity that there were spots you could hardly walk, so 50% could still be a lotttt of people. I don’t know numbers or what a typical attendance number is.

 

[yulilin3]

Ok sounds good but I can see hand sanitizer being out more often than not. Someone is going to have a busy day keeping tabs on that.

my “concern” is capacity.
what is 50/75% capacity and how do they select who gets in? Is it anyone with a tickets period, guests staying on site, ??
Would that capacity co exist with resort stays? I would not want to pay thousands to be turned away due to capacity and/or afraid to hop only to find out it was at capacity.
i know there is a plan for busy days like July 4th and Christmas in place. I also know that being there when the park was close to capacity that there were spots you could hardly walk, so 50% could still be a lotttt of people. I don’t know numbers or what a typical attendance number is.

if they limit entrance to only onsite guests and local ap they could easily control capacity by lowering capacity at the resorts. So let's say GF has 200 rooms (I don't know how many rooms just a hypothetical) they can only make 59 of those rooms bookable and then they will know exactly how many people are on property at any given day, local ap are not that many that would mess up the 50/75%
These phases will be in place for probably 3 weeks at a time and then they will see if there are infection peaks or not and then they will move to the next phase

 

[GirlDreamer]

I'd like to know if they'll have rules for who gets into the parks as well. We're travelling from the UK, so I'd hate to pay all that money and travel so far just to be turned away due to capacity having been reached.

 

[elle21]

So glad to see a re-opening coming! I didn’t see any start dates in the article. Is it still June 1st or would it be earlier?

 

[yulilin3]

Having been there on 3/12-13, I was shocked this was not already in place:

• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ticketing entry and turnstile
• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ride/attraction entry and exit

There were nowhere near "at each" anything and in many cases just big pumps sitting on a table that you had to manually operate. This would have made a HUGE impact on my sanity during that trip.

this was in place at Universal

 

[imjustafatkid]

Having been there on 3/12-13, I was shocked this was not already in place:

• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ticketing entry and turnstile
• Touchless hand sanitizer at each ride/attraction entry and exit

There were nowhere near "at each" anything and in many cases just big pumps sitting on a table that you had to manually operate. This would have made a HUGE impact on my sanity during that trip.

That hand sanitizer requirement may be a killer for reopening. I haven't seen hand sanitizer in a store in weeks. We're fortunate that we had just bought bulk hand sanitizer before we started shutting everything down and everyone lost their minds.

 

[yulilin3]

So glad to see a re-opening coming! I didn’t see any start dates in the article. Is it still June 1st or would it be earlier?

Universal has given a date of June 1st, WDW has not changed their "closed until further notice"
The Gov will give his outline tomorrow for reopening the state, I assume the theme parks will follow with guidelines next week

 

[gatorlisa]

That hand sanitizer requirement may be a killer for reopening. I haven't seen hand sanitizer in a store in weeks. We're fortunate that we had just bought bulk hand sanitizer before we started shutting everything down and everyone lost their minds.

Disney would be going through commercial suppliers for hand sanitizer and dispensers. Granted, they'll be competing with every other business that is being encouraged or required to provide it, but it's a different supply chain to how we as consumers get ours.

 

[andyman8]

Yes!

https://blogmickey.com/2020/04/key-...-park-capacity-mandatory-face-masks-and-more/

It's worth noting that this is just a starting point for WDW. I am confident that when they reopen, we'll see additional health and safety measures well beyond what's listed here, but this is a good starting point. I think some of what they end up doing will be a bit more controversial for some guests (no character greetings, no parades/fireworks, temperature checks for guests, face masks for guests).

if they limit entrance to only onsite guests and local ap they could easily control capacity by lowering capacity at the resorts. So let's say GF has 200 rooms (I don't know how many rooms just a hypothetical) they can only make 59 of those rooms bookable and then they will know exactly how many people are on property at any given day, local ap are not that many that would mess up the 50/75%
These phases will be in place for probably 3 weeks at a time and then they will see if there are infection peaks or not and then they will move to the next phase

I don't think we'll see MK operating at 75% capacity for quite some time. I don't think MK will open at even 50% capacity (45K guests). These seem to be baselines for all parks. Keep in mind, there are many days of the year when MK doesn't normally operate at 75% capacity. MK's capacity is just below 90,000 guests (so high 80s), so 75% of that would be about 67K guests. That's generally the amount of guests MK expects on Memorial Day, for example. The "average" occupancy for the park is around 55K guests. If they're going to be reducing actual capacity of attractions and then further reducing them by interrupting operations for cleaning (and still wanting to avoid bottlenecks and over-crowded public spaces), they'll have to limit capacity to somewhere between 20k to 30k guests (i.e. a MVMCP or MNSSHP) , and initially, it might be even lower. Touring Plans did a calculation to see what the capacity would need to be for everyone to get 6 square feet. The official acreage they used included backstage areas but they argued that the factor of members of the same household not needing to social distance cancels this out. Not necessarily endorsing this estimate, but they came up with an initial reopening capacity estimate for MK of about 15k to 20k guests.

In addition to what you talked about resorts (I put up a detailed post on the N&R forum with different resort occupancy scenarios) , I could easily see WDW asking APholders to "reserve" their spot in the park similar to what Disneyland does with their FlexPass APs. This way they can cap how many people are showing up to be in the park.

 

[pangyal]

Universal has given a date of June 1st, WDW has not changed their "closed until further notice"
The Gov will give his outline tomorrow for reopening the state, I assume the theme parks will follow with guidelines next week

Did I miss this somewhere, please ?

 

[elle21]

It's worth noting that this is just a starting point for WDW. I am confident that when they reopen, we'll see additional health and safety measures well beyond what's listed here, but this is a good starting point. I think some of what they end up doing will be a bit more controversial for some guests (no character greetings, no parades/fireworks, temperature checks for guests, face masks for guests).

Really? What makes you think that? I thought that this outline was all they plan to do. I was ready to go ahead with our trip.

 

[yulilin3]

Did I miss this somewhere, please ?

https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us

 

[pangyal]

https://www.universalorlando.com/web/en/us

Thank you! Ah, it still says “at least through May 31”. I was hoping for progress, lol. Sorry to derail the topic, I’ll behave!

 

[yulilin3]

just a reminder to bring back the conversation to announced things. Obviously the guidelines were announced by the task force, now we wait for official announcement from the theme parks.
Any further discussion on what they might do should be done in the news and rumors thread