Actually the Disneyland resorts are only staying open until the 16th, to give guests a chance to plan alternate travel and escape.

Also, every time I go there are no pinballs, and to get from my resorts to ones that have pinballs requires careful bus planning and multiple hops. They're always at resorts with no secondary transportation like Animal Kingdom Lodge.

Anyone ever watch any backstage footage? A local has made the news lately by repeatedly infiltrating Disney (climbing Big Thunder Mountain, touching Everest's yeti and escaping on dirtbike, putting out to Discovery Island, River Country, etc.) This is the only possible upside I can see to Disney World itself closing.

I've seen his youtube posts. I don't know why Disney doesn't prosecute him, I get that the PR might be bad, but his ability to keep doing this is hurting their image and brand IMO.

He's got a great tale of his two prosecutions by Disney up there, but it's likely to be updated with an additional claim from Universal now that he raged Volcano Bay. The second time he was spoken to by a senior security official, a straight shooter, who told him that he couldn't care less for such hijinx and considers it a minor nuisance. He did allude to an elite team of three people online who have to scramble to make sure this doesn't affect the park's reputation, on call 24 hours a day.

The non-legal response that he revealed lately seems a lot worse for PR, as Disney attempted to stop his activities by going after those close to him and applying threats and pressure to them instead. The only thing they can do is add single minor charges one at a time to him, and only with a heap of eyewitness testimony.

In the time since I posted initially, he's already made bold his vague plans to take advantage of this downtime, as well as solicit any media others might garner. I suspect if he really wanted to capitalize on things he'd solicit political donations to break into the Hall of Presidents and administer a devastating wedgie to shock the nation.

The issue is that he now decreases the confidence in WDW to contain security risks. Knowning how Disney protects thier assets, I'm sure it's a matter of time. I believe in more drastic measures similar to trespassing on railway property, but I'm not the CEO.

Yes, videos like the two families battering one another into a pulp in the middle of Disneyland while security stood around scratching their heads didn't help much either. Disney likes to threaten female employees and make them cry to beg him for the videos to come down at the expense of her job if that's what they do on the railways.

Anyone checking room rates? Disney price points for individual nights as well as third-party DVC point-trading/renting sites seem to have an inflated idea of the value of staying in Disney World in late March right now.

So my story starts on February 28th. My wife, my parents and our two boys leave California for Orlando to depart on a Disney Cruise that will take us to Cozumel, Grand Carmen, and Jamaica. We board the ship on the 29th and are aware of the virus but are not concerned. At that time I had posted on here many times that virus is really a non issue.

There is screening to get on the ship and even one group gets turned away because they had been in Japan in the last 14 days. The first night we go to the show and they announce between crew and passengers over 70 countries are represented on board.

The cruise goes on and we have our fun, also watching the news to see what is going on around the world. The concierge informs us they are bombing the ship nightly with disinfectant and they are cleaning the ship day and night. We continue cruising and having fun.

Wednesday, my wife gets an email from my son’s school informing us that he will be quarantined for 14 days upon his return because he has been out of the country. I think it is crazy because there are no cases in the area we are cruising and cases in the county we live in California. We call the school and they tell us that if we get a note stating our son does not have corona virus he can go back. We call his doctor’s office and they tell us there is no way they can provide that. They tell us we would have to go to public health. Public health states only to see them if you have symptoms. So I am certainly not taking my healthy son somewhere where there are very sick people. I talk to my wife and parents about extending our stay in Orlando upon our return and going to Disney world for a few days because we have never been. We discuss it and all agree to do so.

On March 7th we finally disembark the ship and take the hour ride to Disneyworld. Everyone is pretty excited. We finally arrive, and it is very crowded. We spend the day in Epcot and my mom seems very quiet. My mom sometimes gets like that when she is uncomfortable. My dad actually is a little pissed because he thinks she is upset we went and the park is too busy. My parents end up going back to the hotel early. We stay and do some rides and make the best out of the crowds. I mean it is Epcot on a Saturday what do you expect?

Sunday we wake up and go to Magic Kingdom. My mom is super quiet. She says she feels kind of off. About 1PM my mom and dad decide to go back to the hotel and rest. We stay and ride a couple rides, park is obviously super crowded. Finally we get back to the hotel around 9PM. My dad says my mom has gone straight to bed when she arrived and that she has a fever.

We wake up Monday morning and my mom is not feeling well. She still has a fever and has now added chills and an uncontrollable cough. My dad stays with my mom and I take my wife and boys to animal Kingdom. My dad tries to get my mom to go to urgent care but she is an incredibly stubborn worman and resists. She has another day of the same symptoms, with them progressing throughout the day. We arrive back late in the evening and go to bed. We are in a one bed room suite and I can hear my mom coughing uncontrollably throughout the night. The driest, painful cough I have ever heard.

Finally we wake up Tuesday morning and my mom is toast. She can’t move barely can talk. I am scared shitless. She is still coughing uncontrollably, but now has added vomiting and diarrhea. We finally convince her that she needs to go to the doctor. She says she has to get ready before going, again very stubborn proud woman. She tries to get out of bed for over an hour but can’t manage to do so. She is just too weak. Everyone at this point is freaking out. Finally I have had enough and call 911!

The EMTs arrive in about 15 minutes. They are in full hazmat gear, shields over there faces and plastics over all their clothes.They say they really don’t know what to do. They take my mom’s vitals and her temp comes back at 100.8. She is 5’5 and about 105 pounds, so she is pretty frail and has heart issues. The EMTs finish all there tests for vitals and say my mom is stable. They offer her the option of going to the hospital and she refuses. They pack up their hazmat shit and leave.

We decide since my mom is so frail that the best option is to call private doctor to the room because my mom is just too weak to get to urgent care. At this point I am sure my mom has the flu, my wife and I had it a couple weeks prior and it kicked our asses. At this time my 4 year old also started to have minor fever. He was the only member of our family not to have the flu so it made sense. The private doctor arrives that afternoon very nice. No hazmat gear, just super casual, tells us she has visited two other cruise ship patients earlier in the day and both tested positive for the flu. At this point I am like this sucks but it is the flu. So the doctor takes my mom’s temperature and it is now 102. She tests for the flu and you should have seen the look in that doctor’s eyes when that test came back negative. She tells us immediately that my mom must go to the hospital.

My mom and dad go to hospital. I stay back with my son that is running the fever. My mom goes into a special room at the hospital. She by passes the lines. No hazmat gear or anything like that. The doctor’s start running tests. They tell my dad it is some type of infection. After running some more tests they say she has pneumonia and that she is free to leave the hospital.

My parents finally return from the hospital at 12:30 in morning and my son is now coughing uncontrollably and burning up. We are planning on leaving that Wednesday and fly back to California. Even though the hospital told my mom that she was free to fly, she was just too weak. My wife and I are stressing if we would be let on the plane because my son obviously has a pretty intense fever. Finally on Wednesday I say good bye to my parents and head to the airport. No one looks or cares that my son has a fever or is coughing uncontrollably. We board the plane and head for California.

Thursday we wake up and I call my dad. My mom is still very weak. No way she can fly. We are having problems getting her meds for her heart because we had extended our trip and she had only brought a few days extra of pills. Finally that gets squared away. I tell my wife we should take my son to the doctor because he still has fever and uncontrollable cough. They ask if we have been out of country and we go through the whole drill. They tell us to bring him in. They see my son and tell us that he has um “a virus”. They say take him home and if he still has the fever on Saturday to bring him back.

Meanwhile my parents are still in Florida and I hear that Disney is closing Disneyland. I call my dad and tell him they got to get the hell out of there because Disneyworld is going to be next. My mom is still super weak. He books the air flight for Friday. Today my parents head to the airport, my mom is still coughing uncontrollably and is very weak. The plane is delayed and has mechanical issue. After two hours the plane finally takes off and hopefully my parents will arrive soon from the trip from hell.

My dad now has fallen ill and my wife and I feel off. I don’t know if our symptoms will worsen or it will just pass.

I left for this trip with complete faith in our medical system. Maybe that was naive but that is how I felt. After this whole experience, I feel no one has any idea what they are doing or how to handle the situation.

My whole family had:

Been on a cruise ship
Been out of the country
Had flulike symptoms
Tested negative for flu
And was allowed to fly and roam freely without any Coronavirus testing.

I am not saying we have Coronavirus or not but we were not quarantined, visited theme parks and flew on air planes and were told it was fine to do so by medical professionals.

After my experience the virus is everywhere and probably has already infected hundreds of thousands of people but I guess we will find out.

As I was reading I had to fight the urge to scream "your mother has viral pneumonia!" Then I hit the confirmed pneumonia. Where's the penicillin? This whole affair you relate suggests that the medical community has joined the rest of the world in forgetting everything they've ever learned. Back in my day, when you got viral pneumonia they wouldn't worry about what crazy virus set it off, they'd fight the infection and do chest x-rays to monitor the progress. Now we know just enough to identify the virus that's causing a lot of viral pneumonia. If the doctors have gone mental, best order some bovine antibiotics and treat yo'self to that time off everyone's mandating. And reduce the fever. Your timeline of events combined with confirmed cases in county of origins suggests you brought it on the boat with you from home, with the much-touted "incubation time". Even with all the crazy information out there you can't get to thinking people from 70 countries could have done it, although they reduced the incubation period by half today after Trump said he'd been around a Brazilian guy or something.

I got that same illness months ago in Disney World, first day there, when a little girl coughed all over me. Took a while to knock out. Seemed like everyone had it. Didn't turn into viral pneumonia though, but I'm not elderly.

There are indeed pinball machines out there... At the Port Orleans Resort arcade. I was just there a few weeks ago, I would have played them but they were right under some very bright overhead lights causing playfield reflection, but it was cool to see the Disney lineup!

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It was Doc's fault for the missed diagnosis of Sneezy.

I believe many of us lucked out. Most in this thread have been there this year.

https://www.tmz.com/2020/03/19/34-year-old-california-man-dies-coronavirus-visited-disney-world-florida/?fbclid=IwAR0ggSe3PhE-LZOlGsY5FfryGp0CQ6zPB0djAm5GxanYk5I6k4OQltUETF8&fbclid=IwAR0gQoO8KdFeRgLbQmFp9kRGfhd2v7lFL6CcVjluUvDZgeOUiV02PuDCfDU

About 2 months ago there were a couple of reported cases in orange county. Around that time I went to Disneyland and then a few days later got really, really sick. After several days to a week I felt better, though it was more like a few weeks before I felt completely better. I went to urgent care and they asked if I had traveled outside the country, which I had not, so they thought nothing of it and assumed I had some generic viral infection, but I don't know if I've ever been so sick in my life. I think there's a very good chance that I got this thing early and, not being in an at risk category, got over it before long. I wish there was a test to see if I've already had it.

Star Wars races got canceled.

I’m assuming they’ll use the same medals and merchandise for next next year.

Aren't they dated?

I don’t think they were manufactured yet. They are made in China and I’m guessing they haven’t gone into production yet. If they were, I could see Disney giving us the option to receive them. My 2020 marathon medal, the Mickey side of it was poorly painted. They sent me a brand new medal for free.

We are getting the virtual half marathon medal. I will keep everyone updated as to when I get it.

I fully canceled my trip for the races. I’m disappointed. Was really looking forward to the flower and garden festival. I was there March 4, but I was more focused on the food booths and trying different things, to prepare for my April trip. Next trip is scheduled for Wine & Dine races.

When I saw the Stones in New Orleans in August, both my wristbands (for the floor, and for the pit) had the wrong dates!

One had the canceled Jazzfest date from April, the other the incorrect August date (show was delayed a day due to Hurricane Barry.)

The Disney Machine must just be hemorrhaging, especially the billion dollar WDW resort.

Every business like that is going to be losing money right now. They are based on guests, and there are no guests right now. Every hotel, every vacation destination if hemorrhaging money right now.

I'm think Disney is in a better spot to get through it. They make millions of dollars a month on Disney+, and I'd guess the number of subscriptions has gone up like crazy in the last week or two as schools were closed. If you have seen the parks in the last couple of years, they have been packed almost every day. Each person there has been paying a ton of money to be there, and the hotels have made buckets of money. They will be fine once the world gets back to normal... provided they don't go back to "normal" too early. Because the last thing they want is the story of the guest that stays there, and then shows up with the virus. That was the reason they closed when they did.

Disney put marathon weekend race signups on hold. They were suppose to open them up April 7th.

Any thoughts on how Disney will be able to re-open the parks?

I was taking to one of my friends tonight. I’m guessing they’re either going to take everyone's temperature or use that 5 minute test on everyone. I just don’t know how you do it. Big deal if the Orlando area is clear in a couple months, anyone flying in won’t quarantine for 2 weeks before going to Disney.

I’m afraid they will cancel all the races, even if the parks are open.

Thoughts?

If you do, and the world is normal, your timing might overlap with IAPPA trade show and/or Freeplay.
IAPPA is a must, at least once, if it interests you.

I don't think any thoughts about them reopening would be valid right now. We just don't have a handle on this thing yet. And at the rate Florida is going with no shelter-in-place order from the Governor, I'd expect Florida to get a lot worse before it gets better. I've already cancelled my September trip.

Disney is currently targetting June 1st. Whether that happens or not we shall see. They may open Disney springs first, then the resorts, then finally the parks. And when they open the parks they'll likely modify things so that people don't have to be crammed together like in haunted Mansion preshow

Disney won't be open for a long time ... I would not count on anything possibly even through summer.

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Who knows for sure, but like I said June 1st is the target at this time

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We need a wide deployment of rapid covid-19 tests. No one is going to want to go to Disney world or anywhere else if they think they're putting themselves and others at risk.

I am optimistic that that is a problem that can be solved. It just won't be this week.

Like everything else, you won't be seeing Disney open until the Fall.

I said this when they hilariously predicted a March 28th reopening, and I've seen nothing since that changes that.

I don't believe that. There is a small percent of the population that wouldn't care.

I think Disney will open this summer, although it will be small launches up until the parks open.

Society today is very selfish. Did you see the idiots in NY not giving a damn about staying indoors and not practicing social dInstance just to see the hospital ship in the harbor? There’s ppl that go on vacations while ill bc they paid for it and won’t miss it, everyone else’s health be damned.

The good news is that the overwhelming majority do care. There’s always a small % of people that go against anything that is right and good.

people read WAY too much into that simply because that's what the reservations line is doing right now.

No matter when Disney opens in 2020... it won't be the Disney that we had before March 2020.

We were supposed to go in July. I’m wondering if they’ll even be open and even if they are, if we would want to go.

I can’t imagine what precautions they’ll need to put in place to keep everyone safe.

If the park isn’t crowded (empty) then I might consider going back. Can’t believe people pay to stand in lines all day. I’d love to see the “keep your distance” line lengths if the park gets back to normal.

Totally. The whole park would just be winding lines. They’d almost need to do Fast Pass exclusively.

If you check the facebook Disney and Passholder forums you'll see that the above is wrong. The parks were packed right up until closing, when it was a given that somebody there must have been sick, and lots of people booking speculation trips betting on it opening June 1st or soon after. Silver passholders with blackout periods will FLOCK to the park when it opens. Virus be damned.

Even if it was all fast pass, all the time, it still wouldn't help. Most attractions have a pre-show where everyone is crowded together. Think R'NR, TZ, Haunted Mansion, Dinosaur, Flight of Passage, etc etc. If you skip the pre-show, you would miss a great deal of the fun. The only solution is for us to discover a vaccine or effective treatment, so the corona virus is of no more significance than a cold.

Then it should read "No one IN THERE RIGHT MIND is going to want to go to Disney world or anywhere else if they think they're putting themselves and others at risk."

I didn’t even think about the pre-show stuff. You’re totally right. They’ve got bigger problems.

Thanks for clarifying my words. Even now I know we won't get 100% compliance with everything. Hell, that old dude stayed at his home when Mount St Helens blew.

Your mind sWould be blown reading the disney forums... ppl just want to go.

The levels of change being discussed is monumental in terms of what the company is considering in an attempt to open. I still think they’ll lag normal businesses etc. its just too much to try to unwind all their crowd/density aspects.

Touringplans is feeding the mentality that everyone wil flock back too with their crowd estimates. I think they are completely underestimating how far reaching the unemployment and business slowdowns will be.

I can’t wait for the Wine & Dine races and Marathon weekend.

I’m still upset that the Star Wars races were cancelled, but I understand why they did it.

They'll do a soft launch that will eventually peak with the park opening, which will no doubt be tied to bringing the staff back on line.

The (very) soft launch is scheduled a week from now for Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney for any old timers).

“a limited number of shopping and dining experiences that are owned by third-party operating participants will begin to open during this initial phase. The rest of Walt Disney World Resort will remain closed, including theme parks and Disney Resort hotels.“

https://www.disneysprings.com/reopening/

Opinion: I’m fascinated by it being third party places. It’s an interesting way to be on both sides of the fence. However I don’t think I’m ready to eat sitting in a restaurant yet.

Marathon weekend sold out in 30 minutes yesterday. Goofy took 15 minutes, Dopey took 28 minutes.

Disney definitely limited the numbers. Dopey should take months, not minutes.

My wife and I were supposed to be at WDW right now. Instead I'm sitting on Pinside. We rebooked for late September and got a free dining offer for doing so. I feel confident that it'll be open by then, possibly in a limited capacity.

We've been booked for the last week in August since late last year. I'm interested in seeing how things are handled when they open. However, if there's a mask requirement, I'm cancelling the trip. A mask in 95º heat is a deal breaker.

The new look of line queues (for Shanghai) ... tickets sold out in under 10 min. They were way under capacity but said that all of the attractions had a 5-10 min wait max. Honestly, I'd wear a mask and distance myself in line for 5-10 min wait times on every ride (personally I love having the lines spaced out because there's always people bumping into you which gets annoying after the 20th time)

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Universal Orlando opening this week with reduced capacity, I would guess if it goes well Disney will follow soon.