Yeah I'm scared of new variants in the future, we will may never get back to normal if vaccines aren't working against new variants in the future. We will may start over for years...masks and social distancing will be forever as pandemic will forever in USA for years...@GoofGoof
Nooooo...if a variant appears that lowers the effectiveness of the vaccines, they can modify the vaccines VERY quickly. Don't worry - we have the tools to fight COVID, and they're working on more as we speak. We just need to be patient and masks and social distancing will go away.
Disney and Equity reached an agreement months ago. At this point, it really seems to be $omething else entirely.
For full-scale productions - or Festival of the Lion King (Lite) situations? I'm embarrassed for not knowing.
I think this is true. In urban areas with higher population density you have way more natural infection. Those areas also tend to be where the highest vaccine acceptance is. Reaching herd immunity locally is very likely in some parts of some states. We may already have in some areas hardest hit like LA. This is also why WDW needs to be a little more cautious than other businesses with relaxing mitigations. People from the areas that had fewer natural infections and low vaccine uptake can leave their home area and go to WDW as carriers and can also bring Covid home, causing an outbreak. I get the mentality from the people already vaccinated who say “who cares, those people had a shot at the vaccine, it’s their call to take the risk” but Disney still doesn’t want the headline that rural Montana town overrun by Covid outbreak linked to a family that visited WDW.
I don’t know all of the details, either. But people more in the know around here have said that agreements re: all of the shows (at least at HS) were reached with changes to blocking, # of performers, etc.
It simply may be laziness in terms of reblocking a 40 year-old show (or however long it's been) like BatB. But yeah, they could lose a few forks or whatever and bring something back.
True. Absolutely why a place like WDW will be last to drop mitigations, and why cruising is so difficult even when everything else is open in some fashion. We should also expect the bottleneck points of our national parks to have mask mandates a little longer for the same reason.
So long as those random counties don't come to my town!
Yep, It’s just economics now. When capacity increases the revenue increases and they will take on more costs. That’s coming soon. Multiple additional hotels are opening in the next few months, we’ve seen park reservation availability expand in May and June alluding to an increase in park capacity. They are hiring back workers as fast as they can find them. If they switch to 3 feet of distancing they will be able to effectively remove capacity limits as they won’t be maxing out any of the parks any time soon. The peak Summer season starts in about 6 weeks and I know they want to maximize profits for the July 4th holiday week so I would expect some further movement sooner than later, probably by the end of May. Remember that WDW has transformed from an economic model of a theme park with hotels and restaurants to compliment that business to a hotel and restaurant (and timeshare sales) business with a theme park to compliment it. The real sign of economic recovery for WDW is seeing more hotels opening and most of the rest of the restaurants coming back.
It's funny though, that Disneyland/California Adventure now have more character photo opportunities and interactions since reopening last week, compared to WDW. You can cite the vaccine but even with that in mind, WDW still, today, has a laughably low number of characters out in the parks.
Trust me - the folks that I’ve met living all over the US that want to (and can) visit your town, will also be personally protected! Their kids will be, too, if they bring them along. I’m confident to say that with like 90% certainty.
The BatB situation simply blows my mind. They even had the GF orchestra doing their thing with a few of the costumed characters in that theater for a while. That show, in some form, really highlights Disney’s laziness and unwillingness to think outside the box to perform some level of live entertainment.
@GoofGoof At least the pandemic will be end in US by months soon as the pandemic will still going in the worldwide right?
And I still can't reconcile the loss of that orchestra. I shouldn't be surprised by any entertainment decisions at WDW since then or going forward. They've already demonstrated that the public doesn't need these things to keep the cash registers going.
I agree. I actually think the change is coming soon and will be swift. Restrictions are being lifted a lot of places, even liberal strongholds like NYC and CA. Whether people like it or not without the British and Canadians in the mix the most influential geographic demographic for WDW is the Northeast corridor. Without foreign tourists they probably make up over half the visitors to WDW. Once NY/NJ/CT and the rest of New England and PA and even OH start dropping restrictions and drop mask mandates it will be hard for WDW to continue requiring it. Most of those states are dropping other covI’d restrictions in May and at least PA has set a vaccination threshold for mask mandates.
It’s a locals park out there so less mobbing of the characters. When we were at DLR in 2019 pre-Covid the characters were everywhere but without the mobs of people around them. I think WDW went the cavalcade route instead
I still don't know anyone personally who has stepped onto a plane - except for work - since last year. NY'ers all. That is, until now. A friend is going to Pensacola (yay?) next week. That's a huge disturbance in the force within our bubble. Looks like things are looking up. Except, why one would choose Pensacola as a stepping stone is a mystery for the ages.
I'm familiar with Disneyland (don't mean to sound snarky) but there are ways for Disney to have hired even 20 more characters to dispense around the WDW parks. But they don't see the need.
