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

[Nick6300]

That makes sense to me. I can't imagine that the water parks are huge money makers for Disney like the parks--people probably aren't spending the same amount of money on food, souvenirs, etc.

No table service restaurants... mainly only lunch, towels and such for purchases, but a lot of people aren't buying as much of the usual merch. like stuffed animals, toys.

 

[Skippyboo]

How the heck is the Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group going to work? Especially with a 10am DHS opening, you don’t want all those people lined up waiting to get into the park and in crowded into holding zones for opening and then in 30 secs all the boarding groups are gone. Then you have a bunch of people who didn’t get one who now can’t get into another park if park hopping is restricted by the reservation system.

They need to put some FAQ out ASAP. The people already had their ADRs, FPs and now is all up in the air.

 

[Sandiz08]

They made a very brief/slight reference to soft openings in the presentation yesterday, no specifics.

The wording the Disney guy used was cast member previews and "Affinity" soft openings, whatever that means. I read something about it possibly being corporate partnership.

 

[Violetspider]

How the heck is the Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group going to work? Especially with a 10am DHS opening, you don’t want all those people lined up waiting to get into the park and in crowded into holding zones for opening and then in 30 secs all the boarding groups are gone. Then you have a bunch of people who didn’t get one who now can’t get into another park if park hopping is restricted by the reservation system.

They need to put some FAQ out ASAP. The people already had their ADRs, FPs and now is all up in the air.

Absolutely! We've decided to hold onto our revised reservation until about mid-June. If we don't hear any clarifications on ride/experience availability (you currently can't make/transfer reservations at Savi's, DD, Oga's, BOG for instance) we are going to cancel.

 

[kdupre]

Cancel the trip. Your money will be returned in a few days (as long as it takes your credit card to refund you.) If you paid with gift cards, you'll get the money back on Disney gift cards. If you paid cash via a debit card, it'll take about 10 days to clear. If you bought tickets separate from a package, you'll have to keep those and use them at another time.

Thats the thing. you can't cancel right now. they're not letting you. I just wanted to postpone it, but they're not letting anyone make ANY changes.

 

[jsand99]

We're DVC and are booked at the end of September. We haven't purchased tickets yet so I'm wondering how the ticket purchase process is going to work when it resumes and where we will fall on the park reservation priority list. If every resort on property was 100% booked, would that be over capacity with all those people spread across the four parks?

 

[cakebaker]

Wait, what?
I just cancelled my flights last night because we were checking out 7/11 and the cut off to cancel is 5/31.
Now I have over 5k in tickets that I can’t use for at like two years but at least I was able to get the plane money back. Would have preferred to go though.
So irritated by Disney lack of plan announcements from the beginning till ongoing

It's nothing written in stone, but I think it was mentioned during the presentation. No details. But yes, if that would've changed my decision, I'd be plenty irked about it.

 

[Plaid Sabbath]

Looking for some green shoots in this situation.

Moving beyond the shorter hours, restrictions, etc, it does seem to me that park touring/crowd conditions in the near to mid term are going to be very favorable, generally speaking. There are so many segments of WDW's typical demand base that can't/won't be traveling when until things settle down (and by settle down, I mean that in a broad sense - economic, virus, WDW operations, masks).

For those that go frequently and don't need that 'perfect' experience and perhaps those of the mindset that the parks have grown too crowded over the last few years, this could possibly be a great time to go.

Disney speaks of pent-up demand, of which I'm sure there is some. Looking past the initial "first" crowd and some of us committed fans, I'm curious to see just what kind of 'demand' is actually out there.

Good points. My wife and I were discussing some of these things last night. It should be interesting to see how this is all going to work.

We're booked at OKW from 7-13 to 7-18. Only 2 park days scheduled on our itinerary. Cancelled our flights and planning on driving down from northwest Indiana.

Still not 100% sure if we should go through with the trip. The overall vibe is going to be very weird at WDW. Lower crowd levels would be good. Fewer attractions and no water parks, eh...not so good. Masks? Non-issue for us. A bit uncomfortable maybe, but it's just a piece of cloth. Florida is hot in July no matter what. A mask isn't a deal breaker. In fact, I hope Disney is pretty rigid as far as masks are concerned. No need for the civil liberty and personal rights warriors to spout their nonsense.

It's actually reassuring that Disney is being cautious about the re-opening process. They can control crowd sizes by limiting access. They'll be able to refine their operational practices as needed. The last thing Disney needs is throngs of people coming to the parks and resorts only to be turned away.

Our first trip was in January of 1998. That was the tail end of the Birthday Cake Castle in MK. It might be interesting to add a Magical PPE vacation to our list of Disney memories.

Still have a couple weeks to make our final decision. We're waiting for more official announcements and changes being put into place. The pre-Covid Disney bubble was a safe place. Will a smaller, highly regulated Disney bubble be worth the time and effort? We shall see.

 

[Sandiz08]

Resort consolidation is already happening, I went to check to see what is available on my back up reservation in August and only about half of the resorts are available to book, most are DVC resorts. Everything was available yesterday, not today.

 

[Craig Larson]

How the heck is the Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group going to work? Especially with a 10am DHS opening, you don’t want all those people lined up waiting to get into the park and in crowded into holding zones for opening and then in 30 secs all the boarding groups are gone. Then you have a bunch of people who didn’t get one who now can’t get into another park if park hopping is restricted by the reservation system.

They need to put some FAQ out ASAP. The people already had their ADRs, FPs and now is all up in the air.

If capacity is reduced low enough, especially at the start, perhaps they can just give everyone who reserves a spot in HS for the day a time to go to ROTR. Just eliminate the need to get their early and give them the option to reserve your spot before hand.

 

[cakebaker]

Resort consolidation is already happening, I went to check to see what is available on my back up reservation in August and only about half of the resorts are available to book, most are DVC resorts. Everything was available yesterday, not today.

You're actually seeing availability at non-DVC resorts? I can see where it looks like there's availability when I try to modify, but when you click, nothing is actually available except FW and DVC and the DVC are limited availability now where before the lockdown, I could pick any of them. I cannot see anything available if I just go to make a new reservation- just in modify. Not sure why I'm messing with it, we've decided not to go, but still...lol

 

[Skippyboo]

If capacity is reduced low enough, especially at the start, perhaps they can just give everyone who reserves a spot in HS for the day a time to go to ROTR. Just eliminate the need to get their early and give them the option to reserve your spot before hand.

Or just allow you to do the boarding process without having to physically be in park just need to have a reservation.

 

[MIChessGuy]

One of the new guidelines encourages "contactless" payments, to avoid all the dangers associated with handling cash. I found out that my Android phone cannot do the Google Pay thing. However, I noticed that a card I have does display the contactless-payment symbol on it. Does contactless payment with a card, and not a mobile phone, work at WDW? Does this normally have to be set up in advance somehow, or does it just work as a built-in feature of the card?

 

[rdaky]

I was just joking about this folks ... I certainly wouldn't do this or recommend it.

I get that you were joking. But there WILL be people who medicine themselves up to get into Disney. They already do. They give their kids medication to make it through a flight, through a vacation. People are selfish.

 

[Sandiz08]

You're actually seeing availability at non-DVC resorts? I can see where it looks like there's availability when I try to modify, but when you click, nothing is actually available except FW and DVC and the DVC are limited availability now where before the lockdown, I could pick any of them. I cannot see anything available if I just go to make a new reservation- just in modify. Not sure why I'm messing with it, we've decided not to go, but still...lol

I didn't go past the modification page, just tried to see what showed up. It shows as though the Contemporary, Yacht, Carribean beach, AOA, and one other are available, nothing else besides DVC, I was trying to see dates for August.

 

[Leigh L]

One of the new guidelines encourages "contactless" payments, to avoid all the dangers associated with handling cash. I found out that my Android phone cannot do the Google Wallet thing. However, I noticed that a card I have does display the contactless-payment symbol on it. Does contactless payment with a card, and not a mobile phone, work at WDW? Does this normally have to be set up in advance somehow, or does it just work as a built-in feature of the card?

I imagine this should work (although the details I have no idea how )
I can't remember where but "contactless' I believe will also includes credit and gift cards. Wish I could remember where I read that! This is what we'll be relying upon, or maybe dip into the magic band waters LOL

 

[Skippyboo]

One of the new guidelines encourages "contactless" payments, to avoid all the dangers associated with handling cash. I found out that my Android phone cannot do the Google Wallet thing. However, I noticed that a card I have does display the contactless-payment symbol on it. Does contactless payment with a card, and not a mobile phone, work at WDW? Does this normally have to be set up in advance somehow, or does it just work as a built-in feature of the card?

The card machine at WDW didn’t even use the insert chip here portion of the reader still had to swipe card. Probably does not have the card tapping ability. You can charge stuff to your magic band if onsite

 

[cakebaker]

I didn't go past the modification page, just tried to see what showed up. It shows as though the Contemporary, Yacht, Carribean beach, AOA, and one other are available, nothing else besides DVC, I was trying to see dates for August.

I saw that too, but when I clicked through only DVC and FW actually had availability. Just checked again and I'm back to only DVC and FW. I checked late June, mid July and into August. Clearly, I'm bored.

 

[Jason_79]

How the heck is the Rise of the Resistance Boarding Group going to work? Especially with a 10am DHS opening, you don’t want all those people lined up waiting to get into the park and in crowded into holding zones for opening and then in 30 secs all the boarding groups are gone. Then you have a bunch of people who didn’t get one who now can’t get into another park if park hopping is restricted by the reservation system.

They need to put some FAQ out ASAP. The people already had their ADRs, FPs and now is all up in the air.

It goes without saying (and don't need a Disney press release to confirm this) that the old way of gathering outside of Hollywood Studios isn't going to happen anymore.

Any outstanding FP will be cancelled, it's only a matter of time. Upon reopening, based on reservations being required to first enter the parks, then factoring in capacities will be limited, Disney undoubtedly switch back to the old paper fastpass system, but using the magicbands instead.

See I have figured it all out for everyone, . Obviously just my opinion, let's see what happens.

 

[TomorrowlandKD]

I hate to ask this, but what is the word on water parks? Through reading some threads it appears that they will remain closed, but on the MDE app it’s showing both parks opened on July 11th. Anything official from Disney?

I mean this in the nicest way.....why would you want to go to a water park with this pandemic going on?