would love to see a report from my favourite resort, thank you so much in advance
Yes please! TDR trip reports are pretty rare and since I've never been there, it's neat to see other's experiences!
Get on it! You have an obligation to us.......details upon details, please.
Ok, I'm not the type of person to write super detailed trip reports with lots of photos, so I'm just going to write up a bunch of thoughts about my experience yesterday as best I can:
Funnily enough yesterday was the fastest and easiest entry procedure I've ever had at TDR. I'm assuming this was partially due to the lower capacity as well as staggered wait times dissuading people from jamming in all at 8:00 AM, but also because of the new entry plaza finally being finished. Your temperature is taken at the new metal detector posts (which I guess weren't on because I went through with everything in my pocket and it didn't go off) and then you're shuffled into a box taped on the ground to stand and wait for the gate to open and people to start moving. Once you're nearly at the gate you go through bag check (where I was asked to take everything out of my pockets, which I don't remember ever having to do before) and then finally to the front gate.
Suffice to say, the park was super empty in the morning. Waits were around 15 mins for everything, with 20 mins being probably the absolute highest wait time you would see anywhere in the park before noon. I went first to Hunny Hunt where I waited 12 mins on a posted 15 min line. After that headed to HM where I literally walked straight from the queue entrance to the Doombuggy with no stopping, skipping the entire outdoor queue and also walking straight through the stretching room which as everybody probably knows by now is currently disabled (there was just a single CM standing there in center of the stretching room in the dark, actually quite creepy, they should play that up more). I also walked on Big Thunder, PotC, Car Toon Spin and a couple Fantasyland dark rides. I had my own boat on PotC which I'm pretty sure was a life first for me (photo). Longest line I waited in all day was 35 mins for Splash Mountain on a 45 posted wait time. One thing that was very noticable was the emptiness of the streets and pathways, almost certainly due to the lack of Fastpass putting everybody in lines.
In the afternoon the lines ticked up and got somewhat more normal (tickets are currently sold in three staggered groups: 8:00 AM entry, 11:00 AM entry and 2:00 PM entry), with an average of maybe 25-30 mins for most attractions, still really good of course but not like it was in the morning where it was just a total free-for-all. The highest posted wait time I saw all day was 50 mins for Splash Mountain, which, along with Hunny Hunt, had some of the highest average wait times all day. I'm curious if part of Splash's high wait time could be due to fears about an inevitable closure now that the news about the American Splashes is out.
Every queue for all attractions as well as line space outside shops/restauraunt/stalls and even bathrooms has yellow tape 6 feet apart throughout the entire space as well as an insane number of cast members throughout the park holding signs saying "Please Keep Distance" and occasionally trying to space people in the line. It must have taken them forever to fully tape the entire park. There's also hand sanitizer stations at the exit of every attraction and of course face masks are required for all guests. There were a couple places where I noticed they didn't bother trying to put up tape, notably the Mark Twain deck. One interesting thing I noticed was at PhilharMagic, it seems like there's a wait time between performances (I'm assuming for disinfection) so as a result you don't do the whole thing where you wait in front of the doors for them to open. Instead once you walk in the doors to the theater are already open and you just walk in and take a seat. The audio pre-show with Goofy and all that starts shortly after. They're also periodically closing attractions temporarily throughout the day (I'm not sure for how long) to disinfect them. I don't really have much to comment on about the anti-Corona measures, they seemed to be working and people were obeying them. I mainly just felt bad for what seemed like the nearly infinite numbers of CMs whose only job right now is apparently to stand around holding social distancing signs and waving at people for hours on end.
As has been already reported, some shops and restaurants are not open, including what seemed like almost every stall/cart in the park outside of a couple popcorn carts. I was quite dismayed to find that the Ice Cream Parlor was closed. But there's still enough food stuff open to where you don't really need to worry.
Finally, what most people are probably most interested in: The BatB area looks completely finished and construction walls are down but is sitting behind roll-away planters as well as what looked like a temporary mesh-type fence. The area was also playing its music loop through speakers. Of course views of the area are limited but it looks really nice and well done, especially compared to the rest of the extremely un-themed and boring concrete Fantasyland around it. It seems like the entrance to the actual BatB attraction is further back under the castle, so I couldn't make out anything about it. There were people stopping outside of the land entrance all day trying to shoot some photos of it. Same story with all the new stuff in Tomorrowland, it's all there and looks totally finished, just sitting behind the planters. One thing I do have to say about the BatB area is that the sightlines are well, not very good. Beast's Castle is very plainly visible from Tomorrowland, almost so obviously that it looks like it's meant to be there or something. There's also angles in Fantasyland where you can see Beast's Castle and Space Mountain right next to each other side by side and it looks weird. I'm assuming tree growth won't fix this so the park is probably stuck with it. I dunno, TDL's lands have never been much for thematic cohesion so I guess this wasn't a big priority for them. There's an interesting mountain range cardboard cutout in the area which I had never seen before. Also, while there was no sign of construction at BatB land, there was a ton of visible construction behind/next to it (you can partially see in the photo below). I'm assuming that's TDS expansion construction. I can never remember how close exactly TDS is to TDL, when you go there via monorail it seems kinda far but whenever I'm able to see TDS from TDL it seems a lot closer.
In all I had fun and I didn't feel too limited by Corona closings or social distancing procedures, the nearly non-existent wait times in the morning make trying to get an 8:00 AM entry ticket very worth it. I might try to go to DisneySea in another couple weeks.
Some other random observations:
- I saw two attraction effects across the park not functioning properly (a rarity in Tokyo): Monstro didn't come out on Pinocchio (although I saw him pop out for the car in front of me so just a timing issue) and the cubed Randall at the end of Monsters was stuck inside the conveyer belt and not coming out. Of all the effects at TDL the Randall conveyer belt is the only one that I've consistently seen not work, I think I've only ever seen that effect act as intended once, over two years ago.
- I did Mark Twain for the first time at Tokyo and had no idea the burning cabin was still here, surprised to see that.
