Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[Lilofan]

If no vaccine or cure is found soon then I expect as things get back to normal and this becomes a seasonal virus, then places like WDW and schools would be best served to start requiring testing for the virus prior to admittance...

The idea while a good one is not even realistic of testing each guest prior to admittance to WDW.

 

[thomas998]

The idea while a good one is not even realistic of testing each guest prior to admittance to WDW.

While it isn't realistic right now based on the scarcity and time required to test someone in the US, When newer test pop up it that are quicker and much more accessible it could become viable. It could also allow Disney to do what they have always wanted to do and only allow entry to the parks by people that stay at their resorts. Just imagine you check in to your Disney hotel, everyone is swabbed at the front desk and after a couple of hours if your family's test results are clean your magic band get activated and you can get into the parks. Sure it would never generate the same crowd levels they have now, but amusement parks are going to have to do something dramatic if this virus turns into a part of life with no cure or vaccine. Otherwise who in their right mind would want to go to WDW if you knew the parks were the equivalent of being stuck on cruise ship with infected guests... and what employees would be willing to work in a place like that where you would know that every day you were going to be subjected to some number of infected guests.

 

[celluloid]

While it isn't realistic right now based on the scarcity and time required to test someone in the US, When newer test pop up it that are quicker and much more accessible it could become viable. It could also allow Disney to do what they have always wanted to do and only allow entry to the parks by people that stay at their resorts. Just imagine you check in to your Disney hotel, everyone is swabbed at the front desk and after a couple of hours if your family's test results are clean your magic band get activated and you can get into the parks. Sure it would never generate the same crowd levels they have now, but amusement parks are going to have to do something dramatic if this virus turns into a part of life with no cure or vaccine. Otherwise who in their right mind would want to go to WDW if you knew the parks were the equivalent of being stuck on cruise ship with infected guests... and what employees would be willing to work in a place like that where you would know that every day you were going to be subjected to some number of infected guests.

While they do typically get more money from people staying at the resorts because of profit margin. This has never been a goal as you could fill up all of Walt Disney World's Resort rooms and the parks would still be nowhere near capacity. They win by having people who can not afford resorts or would not because they are day/weekend trippers within driving distance still give the company money by admission, food and drink.

 

[ELG13]

Here's entitlement to another levelhttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...a331e792-6a14-11ea-a53c-e31a480d5e69.amp.html

So you can get arrested for lying about having it, but you won't get arrested for knowing you have it and going out to parties or getting on plane. Got it.

 

[TheDisneyDaysOfOurLives]

If WDW opens before there is a vaccine or cure for the virus, then WDW would be the last place other than an airport that I would ever want to work. People that have spent thousands on a vacation to WDW are some of the last ones on the planet that will not put it off if they just feel a tiny bit under the weather, and when a large percentage of those currently infected with the virus either feel no symptoms or extremely mild symptoms... well wellcome a perfect petri dish for the virus. If anyone had a clue that worked at WDW they would demand hazard pay for working there now.

If no vaccine or cure is found soon then I expect as things get back to normal and this becomes a seasonal virus, then places like WDW and schools would be best served to start requiring testing for the virus prior to admittance... for place like WDW you would expect it to happen the first day they arrive... for schools you would want it to happen on a fairly regular basis for both the student and any household members of the student. It might be expensive but something like that is what you would end up doing with a virus like this.

There's more than likely not going to be a vaccine or cure for the virus for quite some time, probably a year. Everything can't remain shut down during that time frame and you can't just test everyone multiple times all the time. Just not efficient or effective. Everything will be opening back up in sixty days barring a catastrophic rise in deaths. That's just reality.

 

[Lilofan]

While it isn't realistic right now based on the scarcity and time required to test someone in the US, When newer test pop up it that are quicker and much more accessible it could become viable. It could also allow Disney to do what they have always wanted to do and only allow entry to the parks by people that stay at their resorts. Just imagine you check in to your Disney hotel, everyone is swabbed at the front desk and after a couple of hours if your family's test results are clean your magic band get activated and you can get into the parks. Sure it would never generate the same crowd levels they have now, but amusement parks are going to have to do something dramatic if this virus turns into a part of life with no cure or vaccine. Otherwise who in their right mind would want to go to WDW if you knew the parks were the equivalent of being stuck on cruise ship with infected guests... and what employees would be willing to work in a place like that where you would know that every day you were going to be subjected to some number of infected guests.

Ok, but you are aware thousands of guests that enjoy the theme parks on a daily basis stay at off property hotels/motels to include locals also. Disney has always wanted for only resort guests to enjoy parks? Iger would never agree to this idea.

 

[thomas998]

While they do typically get more money from people staying at the resorts because of profit margin. This has never been a goal as you could fill up all of Walt Disney World's Resort rooms and the parks would still be nowhere near capacity. They win by having people who can not afford resorts or would not because they are day/weekend trippers within driving distance still give the company money by admission, food and drink.

I agree that they don't have enough rooms to fill the parks, but they are continually building more and more rooms, and if they could get their wish it would be for a Disney only guest. If they were to simply continue expanding the number of rooms and never open a new park they would eventually arrive at a point where Disney only would happen. This virus may just be the thing that forces them to do it before they have enough hotel rooms to be where they want to be.

 

[Lilofan]

While they do typically get more money from people staying at the resorts because of profit margin. This has never been a goal as you could fill up all of Walt Disney World's Resort rooms and the parks would still be nowhere near capacity. They win by having people who can not afford resorts or would not because they are day/weekend trippers within driving distance still give the company money by admission, food and drink.

Thousands of hotel rooms in Kissimmee and Orlando thrive or survive because of WDW.

 

[celluloid]

Thousands of hotel rooms in Kissimmee and Orlando thrive or survive because of WDW.

Yes, that furthers my point of why the company would never want people visiting who are onsite guests only. More people stay offsite than on. Think about that.

 

[thomas998]

Ok, but you are aware thousands of guests that enjoy the theme parks on a daily basis stay at off property hotels/motels to include locals also. Disney has always wanted for only resort guests to enjoy parks? Iger would never agree to this idea.

And if they don't move to that idea and their is no fix for the virus, how many guests would want to have a vacation where you knew you would be exposed to a virus that has a mortality rate of 1.4%... I mean how many people are jumping on airplanes right now? Or even before the lockdowns in some cities started, the air travel was taking a beating because no one who could avoid being stuck in a flying petri dish wanted to fly... That same mindset will hit amusement parks when people realize they are just as risky.

 

[thomas998]

Thousands of hotel rooms in Kissimmee and Orlando thrive or survive because of WDW.

That doesn't mean that they will continue to survive if the virus doesn't get defeated. Big events often leave a different landscape after they arrive and sometimes they leave lots of closed up businesses.

 

[drizgirl]

I agree that they don't have enough rooms to fill the parks, but they are continually building more and more rooms, and if they could get their wish it would be for a Disney only guest. If they were to simply continue expanding the number of rooms and never open a new park they would eventually arrive at a point where Disney only would happen. This virus may just be the thing that forces them to do it before they have enough hotel rooms to be where they want to be.

They would never want the parks to be for their resort guests only. Too much variance in crowd levels. They need to maintain high occupancy levels in their own resorts. They let the offsite hotels absorb the overflow.

 

[Lilofan]

That doesn't mean that they will continue to survive if the virus doesn't get defeated. Big events often leave a different landscape after they arrive and sometimes they leave lots of closed up businesses.

No doubt millions of people are now laid off and or furloghed and a number of small and big business will not survive. CNN reported just this week 2.5 million people in the USA have filed for unemployment. That is the most in history. And the online system crashed several times so not all could apply successfully.

 

[ELG13]

imagine a family's excitement as they receive their customized virus test kits and MBs in the mail

If I can customize it, id be excited

 

[thomas998]

They would never want the parks to be for their resort guests only. Too much variance in crowd levels. They need to maintain high occupancy levels in their own resorts. They let the offsite hotels absorb the overflow.

And yet in recent times their occupancy levels are fairly constant compared to 15 or 20 years ago. They didn't stop sending out the near continual special room rates because they weren't effective those went away when they didn't need them to fill the rooms. They also wouldn't be expanding the number of rooms if they didn't think they couldn't justify them with a certain level of occupancy.

 

[ELG13]

I always wondered why they bothered with masks when it was only for pollution. Unless you have a respirator with special filtering cartridges you won't have any real effect on your standard smog. At best they make people feel better because of a placebo effect but that's all.

Yeah I wondered as well. I have a few Asian families in my neighborhood and there are two women that wear them when I see them outside. I live in Florida.

 

[Rimmit]

No, while the number dead from the virus does continue to increase the mortality rate has been going down as they have realized the number of people that were infected was higher than first thought. Last number of the mortality rate in China was 1.4%, which is about half of what it was thought to be previously.

You missed my point. I stated the study was from the beginning of this whole outbreak until Feb 29. Since Feb 29 there have been very few new cases in China and Wuhan, yet they have had a notable number of new deaths. Some days the deaths have been nearly equal to the number of new cases this skewing the death rate higher.

This Natures studies main weakness is it did not exclude the current cases which had no known outcome in order to get reliable stats you have to know the outcomes of all the cases or exclude them from your analysis. There were still many people infected on Feb 29th with no known outcome and those should have been excluded from the study but they were not, or they should have waited to have published the study after all the outcomes were known. This would skew the sCFR (symptomatic case fatality rate (sCFR) as they like to reference in the study) higher as at this point there almost as many deaths as new cases. Interestingly, They mention the lag between identification and outcome as a weakness for their rates outside Wuhan, but never regarding Wuhan. Interestingly enough, they point out many of the weaknesses in the study in their discussion section, which I will not go into in depth here, but they never address this particular one. I suspect the authors were rushing to get this published just to be one of the first Wuhan studies. That would be a very prestigious honor in academia.

Nature is one of the top, if not the TOP worldwide peer reviewed scientific journal. This study was somewhat sloppily done imo and if the world circumstances were different I suspect it would not have passed the peer review process. That being said, right now the world just needs ANY study to try and get a handle on things. The death rate is likely lower than the 1.4 percent they stated, but this study was not the best done. It is the best done given the current conditions we are dealing with at this time and for that reason we have to accept it.

 

[thomas998]

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Now do you notice the difference in the spring break crowd and the Disney crowd? Disney isn't catering to clueless college students that don't worry about anything beyond running out of beer. A Disney crowd is going to have more families with kids where parents are probably going to care more about safety than any college kid ever will.

 

[Lilofan]

Now do you notice the difference in the spring break crowd and the Disney crowd? Disney isn't catering to clueless college students that don't worry about anything beyond running out of beer. A Disney crowd is going to have more families with kids where parents are probably going to care more about safety than any college kid ever will.

A cough is a cough, a sneeze is a sneeze.

 

[thomas998]

No doubt millions of people are now laid off and or furloghed and a number of small and big business will not survive. CNN reported just this week 2.5 million people in the USA have filed for unemployment. That is the most in history. And the online system crashed several times so not all could apply successfully.

Yep, it is going to put a big strain on state unemployment agencies that are unlikely to have the budgets to cover the claims. In the end it will result in higher unemployment insurance rates for businesses which will increase the labor costs for businesses and kill off a few more that were treading water already.