News Walt Disney World theme parks increase capacity but see longer waits and less physical distancing

Cesar R M

Well-Known Member
That depends.

As someone who enjoys walking through the park more than the attractions themselves, long lines (even those than snake through the park) gobble up a lot of Guests, making the walkways that much more bearable.

This is a sample of what I dealt with last week at DHS, where nearly every attraction had a posted wait time longer than 30 minutes, commonly 60-90 minutes. Just imagine what the walkways would have been like if those in 30-60 minute virtual queues were wandering about.

P.S. I wish I took a photo of the Smuggler's Run queue, which ran backstage.

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I guess I'm going to have to do a lot of walking around. Those long lines terrify me. XD
 

OhioDuo

New Member
200,000 Americans have passed away and it is very sad. But to paint a real factual picture that is .001% of the US population. The parks need to get busy so they do not go bankrupt or have to layoff another 28,000 people. If you don’t feel safe, I totally understand that but just do not go. People keep complaining about the parks getting busier but why???? What’s your goal???? You want them to close forever???? You clearly won’t feel safe until there’s a vaccine, so in the interim stay inside if you feel unsafe and let others just live their life. I was at Disney today and cast members do an amazing job and asking people to pull their masks up and keep distant from each other. I never felt close enough to even worry about someone sneezing on me. They’re doing the best they can and we should all be grateful they haven’t had to layoff more than 28,000 considering they’ve already taken a $3.5 billion dollar loss this year.
Unless of course one of those who passed was a mother, father, grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister or close friend. So according to your logic, tough luck.
 

zengoth

Well-Known Member
Animal kingdom today felt like a normal pre-pandemic day. Despite some restaurants and shows still being closed, there was plenty of fun. Besides everyone being masked, the only odd things were the 6feet apart queues. Festival of the lion king might be closed, but it became the place the Safari line started in one direction and Flight of Passage started in the other. Wait times were inflated. FOP showed 80 minutes, but we were inside in under an hour. There were a few chokepoints, like around the Everest queue, where we had to wade thru the thick crowd, but for the most part we moseyed along and did everything on our agenda. One more weird thing- it appeared FOP was honoring a few fast passes. We wondered how that was happening.
 

bluetiedye

Active Member
Disney World is fooling themselves if they think they can stay open through the winter without an outbreak.

While winter will push people indoors in most states, in Florida it actually enables people to be outdoors more, which is preferable to limit the spread of COVID.

Of course, nobody knows for sure as this is the world’s first winter with COVID, but the hope is that the winter may actually be advantageous in Florida.
 

legwand77

Well-Known Member
Disney World is fooling themselves if they think they can stay open through the winter without an outbreak.

been doing fine since they opened months ago and during schools coming back, pro sports being played with fans in the stands, major holidays , hitting capacity, being open at night, bars being open, and many other things that some have said that would cause them to have an outbreak or shutdown again. Also did fine during the months of February when it is known that the virus was actively present in Florida and it was business as usual in the parks full capacity etc.
 

marni1971

Park History nut
Premium Member
I am just discussing Disney in response to the previous poster, saying Disney will probably have to close this winter, not discussion the pandemic.
I’d be surprised if they do close WDW again. Maybe more restrictions, but closing would mean it’s gotten a lot lot worse in general in Florida. And if that’s the case vacations may be the last thing to worry about.

Again, I hope and don’t think it would come to a full closure. But there again if you’d asked me in February did I think a full closure would happen this year....

2020 has proved one thing. Expect the unexpected.
 

rreading

Well-Known Member
Crowds at MK today are remarkable. Someone looking to avoid corona should NOT be here. Social distancing is not consistently working as the line for HM stretched into Frontierland (and for those who haven’t been here - they’re winding it through the Liberty Belle and Keelboat docks). Huge number of people here.
No one seems sick though.

Waits for snacks are routinely daunting (50 feet long) though the waits we’ve waited were only ~15 minutes. Lots of carts closed.

I for one miss FP+ terribly. Normally we can skirt a few selected long waits. Today there is no avoiding any long waits. Sure the standby lines move routinely but there are way more people in the standby line. Perhaps when they re-introduce FP+ they can limit it to three per day so as to not overwhelm the number of the fast passes that are used.

That being said, for right now they probably do a much better job of spacing people out in the queues compared with having people in the shops and the esplanades.
 

HongKongFooy

Well-Known Member
the line for HM stretched into Frontierland (and for those who haven’t been here - they’re winding it through the Liberty Belle and Keelboat docks). Huge number of people here.
No one seems sick though.

Waits for snacks are routinely daunting (50 feet long) though the waits we’ve waited were only ~15 minutes. Lots of carts closed.


You describe a terrible outing at WDW....absoltely abysmal

Masks everywhere, queues so long as to mess with the atmosphere, closed eats. NO THANKS


I think I'd take a 95 degree day with scattered huge downpours, 62k guests sprinkled with some Brazil chants over the above scenario.
 

Dan Deesnee

Well-Known Member
My experience last week (Sunday to Wednesday) was:

The Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom were as empty as I've seen them since the early 2000s.

Epcot was empty compared to the last several years.

Hollywood Studios (on Monday) was almost as crowded as it was in 2019 for the same September week. As least, until the rain came at around 3.

I included photos in my trip report so that everyone can judge on their own:

https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/the-“is-it-safe-”-trip-report.970517/

I was there last week and experienced the opposite of what you're saying...

I've been to the parks over 10 times now in the past 5 years. I would say it felt like pretty low crowd early November days to me. Definitely not empty.

Also the pictures are pointless. When I was in the park if you turned your head one direction it looked packed and if you turned your head the other direction it looked empty so you can use pictures to prove either point.

Also I think it's interesting to note that the resorts are crowded and I was at three of them throughout the week. Including Riviera.
 

Jrb1979

Well-Known Member
You describe a terrible outing at WDW....absoltely abysmal

Masks everywhere, queues so long as to mess with the atmosphere, closed eats. NO THANKS


I think I'd take a 95 degree day with scattered huge downpours, 62k guests sprinkled with some Brazil chants over the above scenario.
Get used to it as it's most likely going to be that way for awhile.
 

Chi84

Premium Member
Get used to it as it's most likely going to be that way for awhile.
Nobody knows this - depends on factors such as the unpredictable nature of this novel virus, development of a vaccine, development of rapid tests, public tolerance of restrictions, Disney’s business decisions, etc. I suppose “awhile” is vague enough to cover anything. I’m optimistic that things will be better “soon.”
 

rreading

Well-Known Member
Nobody knows this - depends on factors such as the unpredictable nature of this novel virus, development of a vaccine, development of rapid tests, public tolerance of restrictions, Disney’s business decisions, etc. I suppose “awhile” is vague enough to cover anything. I’m optimistic that things will be better “soon.”
Unfortunately soon won’t likely be until Spring
 

BWDVCkidsince96

Active Member
My guess is they were fast passes given out by guest services as apologies for something.
We have the typical recovery apology type fastpasses for our December trip coming up but as with most such fastpasses, they exclude the most popular rides like fop, sdmt, MMRR, etc, so the people with fastpasses for fop would probably be those with disabilities, rider switch, or the like I’d imagine.
 

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