What It’s Like Going to Disney World During the Pandemic

For seven months I was as cautious as anybody could be. I didn’t eat at a restaurant once between March 11 and October 11. We still get most of our groceries delivered. If I have to leave the house I always have a mask on, and sometimes two. So my decision to go back to Disney World wasn’t made lightly. I’ve read so many on-the-ground reports about the parks’ covid precautions, watched videos and listened to podcasts, and although there’s obviously still risk in any situation involving groups of people, what I’ve read about the parks made me feel just comfortable enough to test it out for myself. So in September I booked a couple of nights at the Caribbean Beach Resort, and two weeks ago I made the drive from Atlanta to Orlando. (There’s still no way I’m getting on a plane.) And surprisingly I felt more comfortable at Walt Disney World than I thought I’d be.

One of the biggest concerns I had was with mask-wearing in the parks. My drive down confirmed that, for many people, this pandemic apparently just doesn’t exist. I limited my stops on the drive down, but I still had to get gas and use the bathroom, and I saw too many people at gas stations who weren’t wearing any facial coverings at all.

Fortunately that doesn’t fly in the theme parks. I spent two days at the parks, one at the Magic Kingdom and one at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and mask compliance was almost universal at both. There were a small handful of people at Magic Kingdom who’d maybe have the mask below their nose, but twice I saw a cast member ask somebody to pull the mask above their nose, and both parks had employees who’d regularly walk around holding signs reminding guests to wear them properly. There was this one family who drove me nuts at Hollywood Studios—I saw them repeatedly throughout the day and neither the mother nor her three pre-teen sons were ever wearing their masks properly. Sometimes they’d be off entirely while they were eating or drinking, which the rule is you can only eat or drink if you’re stationary and not around other people. Sometimes they’d just have ‘em below the nose. I kind of have a personal vendetta against this family now—they just seemed like a stereotypical suburban clan who felt super entitled and like the rules didn’t apply to them. Fortunately they were never within 10 feet of me, and again, they were the only people in either park on either day who I saw repeatedly flout the mask rules. Other than this one family, everybody else I saw at the parks took the mask rules seriously.

Of course there weren’t a lot of people there—especially compared to what you’d see when we’re not in a pandemic, but even with me expecting a much smaller crowd, I was still surprised at how empty the parks were. At least the Magic Kingdom was noticeably less crowded; Hollywood Studios felt a good bit busier, presumably because all of the most recent additions to Disney World are there, and also it’s just a smaller park, so there’s less room for a crowd to spread out. The longest line I waited in at the Magic Kingdom was for the chicken and waffle sandwich at Sleepy Hollow. It took about 20 minutes to get on Splash Mountain, and no other ride took more than that. Granted I didn’t even try to ride the Seven Dwarves Mine Train, which always has the longest lines in the park, but even with other rides that usually have long waits, like Peter Pan’s Flight, The Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder, etc., the lines took only as long as it did to physically walk through them. Now, again, I was there on a Wednesday, in the morning, during a school week. And lines definitely grew longer throughout the day, with Haunted Mansion’s queue getting especially backed up (this was the week of Halloween, after all). Still, from a waiting perspective, it felt like an entirely different decade at the Magic Kingdom.

The lines were longer at Hollywood Studios, where there’s less to do and much of it is new. Even at rope drop the wait for Mickey and Minine’s Runaway Railway was close to an hour. I waited maybe 30 minutes for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. I didn’t even try the Tower of Terror or Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, because those rides just seem inherently less safe from a covid perspective than others—they’re both sitting in a small, enclosed space with others for several minutes. I was able to snag a boarding pass for Rise of the Resistance, as I had my phone in my hand and the app ready to go a few minutes before 10 a.m. struck; they lasted for mere seconds before all being claimed.

There were moments in Rise that gave me pause. They distanced guests out in the interrogation room scene, and aboard the shuttle, but in both cases I was still in a small, enclosed area with between six and 12 other people. I’m not sure what the solution should be for that ride, though—it’s still new, so most guests haven’t experienced it, and those moments and that story are so crucial to the ride’s power. I’m not sure how the ride would feel if you had guests just walk through those scenes without stopping. That’s how Disney has handled the Haunted Mansion—you’ll just cut right through the stretching room, with no preshow, and get right onto the omnimover. Yeah, I missed the ghost host’s speech, but I’ve also ridden this one probably a hundred times in my life, so I can handle it. Rise of the Resistance, though, would be a noticeably inferior show without the full sequence of events. They did install plexiglass partitions in some of the preshow areas, and had a plexiglass divider between the front and back seats of the ride vehicle. Most rides had ample space between riders, with only the first and last rows being used on rides like Pirates or Splash Mountain, and with two empty cars between every occupied car on Big Thunder and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. With the high demand for Rise, and the lack of a guarantee that you’ll even be able to get a boarding pass for it, Disney seems reluctant to reduce capacity any more than it already is. I would’ve felt safer if I had been in a vehicle by myself, and the plexiglass didn’t really make me any more comfortable. But these are all thoughts I had after the fact—I was totally swept up in the ride and wasn’t really thinking about this during it.

The Aerosmith coaster blew my masks off my left ear. Fortunately I was able to grab them before they flew off my right one, too. “Love in an Elevator” rocked my masks off.