Disney World in the Late Pandemic: How the Most Magical Place on Earth Is Adjusting to Covid
Photo courtesy of Disney
Last October I went to Disney World. During the pandemic. Not quite at the height of the pandemic, but fairly close to it—I was there a few weeks before that terrible holiday season spike that ran across the last two months of 2020 and into January. No, it wasn’t smart to go to the world’s busiest theme park at that point in time. But as a professional whose job is at least tangentially related to some concept of “journalism” it felt like something I had to do. I write about theme parks; this was a unique, once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully) situation for the entire world, and writing about how it impacted theme parks seemed like an obligation. Also, after seven months in quarantine, I was just desperately ready to go anywhere. So I put on a mask, put on a second mask, packed like a dozen more masks and a box full of hand sanitizer bottles, and drove down to the most magical place on Earth. (No way would I have flown without a vaccine.)
At that point Disney World had been open for about three months since closing for the pandemic. Capacity was still very low, masks were still mandatory everywhere except when actively eating or drinking at designated locations, and as somebody who obviously wasn’t vaccinated yet and who was also super cautious—maybe paranoid—about the virus, I kept two masks on the whole time. I only took them off to eat outdoors or in my hotel room, and avoided any attractions that required sitting stationary indoors for more than a few minutes. I didn’t catch anything, and I actually felt pretty safe the whole time. Disney took its precautions seriously, and as a result I had a very entertaining and relatively stress-free trip during an otherwise miserable year.
Fast forward to earlier this week. I am fully vaccinated. I flew for the first time in 14 months earlier in May for this piece, and if I wasn’t vaccinated I would have been absolutely freaking out the entire time. The airport and plane were both absolutely packed, but people wore masks and I knew I had the vaccine in me so I generally felt safe. Still, I was relieved that the next trip I had lined up—the one to Disney World that I just got home from—was going to be by car. Covid rates are dropping fast, but until it’s mostly disappeared it’s still safer to travel in your own vehicle than on a giant metal tube with dozens of strangers.
Well, I was going to drive to Disney World. And then some hackers commandeered a pipeline and everybody freaked out over gas shortages. When the gas panic hit late last week I quickly scrapped plans to drive and booked a flight to Orlando, because I didn’t want to get stuck somewhere in south Georgia or north Florida without gas. I know the pandemic is not over, I know there’s still a risk doing anything like this, but if I’m going to trust the science I should also probably trust the science of the vaccine and start to feel safe getting back to something that more closely resembles what life used to be. And for me, yes, that means flying a few times a month, and going to Disney theme parks way too often.
So: what’s Disney World like today, in the late spring of 2021, in what are hopefully the final days of the pandemic? How’s it feel on the ground and in the parks, and what do you need to know before you go? Here’s what I saw earlier this week, and what you should probably keep in mind if you’re weighing a trip to Disney World.
First off, if you plan on going inside one of the theme parks, you still need to make a reservation in advance. You’ll need a specific reservation for each park for every day you hope to attend. Park hopping is back in limited form—halfway through the day you can move from one park to a second park, and that’s it. The old days of hitting your favorite rides at all four parks in a single day are currently gone. They’ve raised capacity since I was there back in October by a noticeable degree, but you still need that advanced reservation, and as travel continues to pick up I imagine it could become difficult to get those for high-demand days. I would not be surprised if next weekend, Memorial Day weekend, is already booked up. Also, if you want to do anything within the parks or the Disney World complex that require a separate reservation—whether that’s Oga’s Cantina or the Savi’s Workshop lightsaber experience at Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, or just getting a reservation at any of the sit-down restaurants in the parks or hotels—you’ll need to be on top of that well in advance. I scheduled my trip this past week over a month beforehand, in mid-April, and at that time it was already hard to get a reservation at most restaurants inside the parks, or the higher-demand hotel restaurants. There are no fast passes, so if you’re used to trying to nail those down 30 or 60 days in advance you won’t have to worry about that, but you absolutely need to channel that fast pass mentality for any other reservation in the resort.
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