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Thread: Park closures - COVID-19

  1. #1
    Registered User Silvercat's Avatar
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    Park closures - COVID-19

    Well so far we have Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo all closed. We are supposed to be going to Disneyland Resort Paris at the end of the month - let's hope that park doesn't join the closed list!

    Silvercat

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  3. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Silvercat View Post
    Well so far we have Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo all closed. We are supposed to be going to Disneyland Resort Paris at the end of the month - let's hope that park doesn't join the closed list!
    I've been seeing that it might with the French ban on public gatherings (currently indoor gatherings but could be extended). I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

  4. #3
    Registered User
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    Sep 2006
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    My husband and nephew are going to WDW mid April and they are getting nervous. All the reports I’ve read say the peak here in the US is late March to mid-April.


  5. #4
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    Aug 2014
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    Gulf Coast of Florida

    Let's go! Open WDW up slowly and use what we have learned to stop the spread of human to human viruses. I know I have gotten bad colds after vacations at WDW.
    We need to start moving towards opening up WDW. The models were wrong. Let's go!


  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by wdwchuck View Post
    Let's go! Open WDW up slowly and use what we have learned to stop the spread of human to human viruses. I know I have gotten bad colds after vacations at WDW.
    We need to start moving towards opening up WDW. The models were wrong. Let's go!
    It's going to be interesting (not just for WDW) how things open back up. For WDW, I'm sure it's not "now" (don't think Disney has announced yet, but Universal announced all of their FL and CA parks would stay closed until at least May 31 a few days ago). Obviously the following is all just IMO, etc.

    Even if the government were to claim businesses can re-open (though it seems pretty certain nothing closed now is opening back up until at least the end of April), the whole model of pretty much everything at WDW involves closer contact/proximity than the current social distancing guidelines. It would certainly seem like an impossible task to incorporate 6 feet of distance for all the various things people do. Restaurants - problem. Rides - definite problem (with all the open mouth screaming and such on roller coasters, how could that be considered "low risk", no matter how far you space people apart?). Transportation (monorail, buses, ferries) - definite problem with 6 foot rules.

    I would suspect Disney themselves would probably feel they need more time to: a) observe how things evolve and coordinate with medical personnel the best way to proceed and b) figure out what steps can realistically be taken in an aim to decrease the odds of spreading.

    The concept of temperature taking upon entry I think was floated in the announcement (or maybe it was just an interview) with Iger. But what about people with no symptoms? There are not enough tests in the world to test people who do not have distressing symptoms (and maybe not even enough for those who do, though it seems like more are being manufactured). Tests can't be manufactured out of thin air (it's not like the global medical community knew anything about this virus before 4 months ago - there is no "stockpile of tests in a warehouse" to draw from), and the quantity needed to do testing upon entry at turnstiles to theme parks would be prohibitive (even if they were more readily available). That doesn't even address if some version of the test could both be administered and have nearly instant accurate results to be useful in such a scenario.

    I saw a statistic from a Seton Hall poll of NFL fans over the weekend that suggested 72% of fans would not attend a game in person until there is a vaccine available (which most stories seem to indicate would be at least a year away). If that type of caution ends up being applied to WDW, who knows how many visitors may even be willing to risk a visit in the near future? Whatever screening Disney may come up with could impact that level of comfort, I would suspect.

    If it were to open and have a rule like "mask mandatory", what type of masks (obviously not medical grade ones) would be considered acceptable? Home made? Bandanas OK? What happens when people are eating, obviously the masks need to be removed to eat.

    Lots and lots of questions, and no one knows the answers at this time.

    I'm as antsy about continuing to stay home except for occasional grocery shopping as the next person(though I am blessed that I can work from home, I feel for all the people who cannot and are furloughed/laid off), but as much as I might feel like needing a vacation, I certainly don't want to risk things getting back up too soon and have a repeat of the last 6 weeks. Note I said 6 weeks, even though the shut downs for the most part became widespread about 4 weeks ago. I'm counting some prior time that could be involved with people catching the virus and many not even knowing it (but being able to spread it, also without knowing it) before we saw the large increases in reported spreading and deaths as the weeks passed.

    True the original models seem to have been proven wrong with more recent updates using real data. Hopefully that is demonstrating that the distancing has helped at least a bit. Obviously (thankfully) we cannot "prove it" since we can't go back in time and see what the alternate reality would be if we had all just continued along same as always. Just casually looking at the delta in reported deaths every Monday since 3/16 shows the number over a short time to be worse than the flu results that are always reported for a full season. From 3/16 until now, the Monday numbers were 96--> 547 --> 3003 -->10,834 --> 20,378 (the last one being 4/11 numbers, so could be different when they update on Monday, 4/13). So while a low number for a flu year might be 20-30,000, that's not normally only over 4 weeks.
    Last edited by Dave1313; 04-12-2020 at 07:44 PM.
    -Dave

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