We went to Disney World. We didn’t have to, but we couldn’t resist. It was all too tempting…well, actually, one thing was too unbelievable, too amazing to pass up – the promise of less people. It was literally a dream come true.

‘Come experience Disney as a seemingly private experience with all your favorite Disney friends’. And, I mean, it’s safe…right?

I did my research…

From Disney’s website: you know that they temperature check as you walk through security (before scanning your entrance ticket) to prevent anyone with a fever from getting too far into the park. They have added tons of social distancing signs and have park employees reminding you to keep distance. They have added plexi-glass dividers on some rides and limit overall riders on others. They have hand sanitizing stations before and after each ride. You must wear a mask and they are very strict about enforcement.

Every blog and social post covering the “Disney World Pandemic Experience“: supported my belief that Disney World was safe. Each one emphasized the detail to which Disney had implemented sanitation procedures to such length that it seemed possible that some visitors had actually come back healthier than when they left.

So we went, and what we found was…different – fundamentally different now than it was before. (Different doesn’t mean bad -read on.)

Pandemic Disney World isn’t 2019 Disney World, and what I had found in my research didn’t match up to my overall experience. Was any of this a deal breaker for us – no-ish. We planned on going for three days and we stayed for three days. But, would I do it again, or suggest others take the trip…well….

There’s no universal answer as to whether your family should or might even really want to visit right now. What is true for everyone though is what I’ve said – Disney World is different. Traveling to Disney during Covid may be a perfect fit for some while definitely a bad idea for others. So, instead of telling you to go or not to go, I want to outline the very different Pandemic Disney experience we had and let you tell me if you are going to make the trip.

What is a ‘No Crowds’ Disney?

Maybe not everyone, but – let’s be honest – most families considering a trip to Disney World are being being lured by the promise of less people in the park. For me, it was the idea that we could live in the magical world of Disney as we always have – socially distancing-ly embracing the wonder of each park with the ease of a VIP. 

But, like all dreams, reality has its own constraints.

First off, there are currently less people in the park. You must register in advance for which park you want to attend and attendance is capped. As we stood watching a mini-parade at the roundabout in front of the Magic Kingdom Castle, there were probably only 200 other guests in sight – where as usually I’d expect 1000+. In Animal Kingdom, we walked from Bugs Life the back way to Avatar and saw no one. Those are crazy – apocalypse experiences.

Keep in mind though, the park offsets its reduced capacity by limiting some activities and closing other experiences, shows, and dining options. Sure, we had a semi-private parade, but that same day I also spent 10 minutes scouring digital menus to try and find a kid’s hamburger anywhere in the park, stood in a ten minute line to get into a store, and queued around a bathroom to get into Its A Small World.

The real question though that we’re all curious about is – what about those teeny-tiny wait times?

As far as the lines go, when we went, the lines seemed to move faster than I would typically expect (I mean in one afternoon at Animal Kingdom we rode the Avatar Flight of Passage twice and then did the Kali River Rapids six times back-to-back.). BUT, for a lot of the rides – especially the indoor rides – Disney is being very careful with the seating. Which means on the positive side, and to promote social distancing, many parties will find themselves as the only people on the boat/car/whatever. (To go back to Avatar, on our first ride, our party of three were the only people in our ride room.) On the negative, some rides take much longer. (Like the :45 minute wait for the carousel).

**Quick Note :: As for us just with the rides, I would say we did benefit from a reduced park capacity. However, we went mid-week in mid-November on rainy days. Our friends who went mid-October on a weekend said they encountered many more people in the park than they expected and much longer wait times – so the actual Covid-Crowd experience seems to still follow the patterns of pre-covid crowding. So in the end, full days still feel very full but less traveled days might feel more empty.

Real Covid Compliance

Sure, there are less people – so how safe is it, or at least how safe does it feel?

Disney may have been praised for their ongoing efforts to protect visitors, but the park staff can really only do so much to prepare the park. In the end, it really depends on individual visitor compliance. So, the actual safety depends on who’s in the park and how they help Disney to be safe through mask use, social distancing, and sanitation. 

Masks : Disney is really serious about keeping masks on pretty much all the time. Most of the enforcement is staff members walking around with small signs that encourage mask wearing and polite verbal reminders to keep masks on both nose and mouth. 

How far did it go? 

• I saw one staff member literally leap in front of a camera (ruining a picture) to get the subjects of the photo to put their masks back on. 
• Our ride on the outdoor, spinning Dumbo attraction was brought to a full halt and grounded when someone in one of the planes took off their mask.

I think both of these are examples of two things that Disney is fighting to control. The first is obvious, they want masks to stay on all day. The second, they don’t want any images of Disney World spread without masks – they want the only message spread about Disney to be that masks are on everybody, which probably helps prepare future guests’ expectations.

Quick Notes : There are two ways to take off your mask in the parks. 

• The first, anytime you are stationary and actively eating or drinking – you can’t walk around eating ice cream or cotton candy (which really, really impacts the tour of food at Epcot).
• The second is designated relaxation areas, places throughout the park where guests are allowed to rest and remove their masks. I saw more of these at Epcot than the Magic Kingdom and I didn’t notice any at Animal Kingdom

In the end, I only saw one person really violating the rules – riding a dark ride without a mask.

Social Distance : I think we all understand that there is only so much Disney can do as far as forcing space between people. To that end, they really put their stamp in two places – lines and dining – but no one can account for everything. So…

• Lines :
  • Each and every attraction, food stand, and shop has designated markers set 6– feet apart. 
  • They traced these lines really long (longer than we ever used), which means that the nicely separated line doesn’t devolve into a Covid-transmitting-cluster towards the back.
  • Some are really hard to follow, which makes the honest mistake of ‘not knowing if the next line is clear yet’ a regular occurrence.
  • How much were the lines followed? 
    • Well if we’re looking at perfect use of the designated space – probably 50-60%. That’s for people who lined up and stood on the exact line or close enough that everyone had significant distance.
    • Another 30-40% seemed to try to keep some distance but had difficulty (if a family of 4-5 is in line, they aren’t going to fit in the 6’ space allotment).
    • Then there was probably 10% of people who just didn’t care, and would line up back to front like it was 2019.
• Dining :
  • Ordering – pretty much every place pushes guests to place their order from their phone and won’t let people inside without having already placed their order and received a notice that their food is ready to be picked up. This really helps keep the indoor space open and reduces guest-to-guest interaction – even if it makes the area around the doorway sorta cluttered with family clumps trying to figure out how to order.
  • Eating – There has been the appropriate amount of tables removed or closed to keep space within dining areas. Great. Except, there aren’t more tables elsewhere to eat – so, it can be hard to find a place to actually sit down and eat a meal.
• Sanitizing :
  • Rides – I’m not saying it was a lie, BUT…there is no cleaning between the rides. Sure, we didn’t ride every ride, but we rode 70-80% of the total rides and never saw anyone clean the ride off. Maybe this was something Disney tapered off, but I definitely went in expected to see more active sanitation on high touch points.
  • Hand Sanitizing Stations – Clearly the Disney theory is that guests should use sanitizer before and after any interaction. There are auto-dispensing sanitization stations near every dining spot/food cart and before-and-after every ride. They aren’t scattered throughout the park on their own very much, so if you just touch something weird and you aren’t in a queue or eating – you have wait to clean it off. Also, around mid-day at the Magic Kingdom – probably a third of the stations were out of sanitizer. *We brought our own wipes and sanitizer and would suggest you do so too.
  • Dining – There were sanitation attendants at most dining spots that cleaned the tables between guests. Great. BUT, where it was hard to find a table, I saw guests sit down as soon as the previous diners stood up and then didn’t see anyone come by to wipe the table. Sure, that’s the guest’s fault for not giving the attendant time, but at the same time, we’ve all been in that situation – where hovering and swooping in on a table is the only way to find a seat (which as I said before are already hard to find), which happened more often here because there are less seats than ever before.

So…in the end…what is the Disney Covid experience?

The exact difference between 2019 Disney and Pandemic Disney isn’t any single structural thing – it’s everything together. Ultimately, the park has lost some, if not a large part, of its magic.

I recognized the change on the first day of our trip, visiting Animal Kingdom. As we made our way through the park, it slowly became clear that our day was a continual, uninterrupted walk to the next ride. This was even more clear (unmistakably so) when we finally visited the Magic Kingdom. The ambient micro-experiences and passing upbeat interactions with park attendants, characters, and pop-up shows are gone – leaving behind just a collection of rides in a cement park. One example: the moat was drained so you just saw the under-workings of the boat and random electrical stuff. I’m sure Walt would be excited to entertain us all again, but I think he’s rolling in his grave that we saw so much of the behind the scenes “magic making”.

Sure, getting food was different, and a lot of the continued experience elements (themed shops, sidewalk performers, etc) were closed, but that had less of a direct impact on our experience than it did contributing to the overall – missing feeling of being in the park.

Looking back, some of the biggest shifts were how ‘in Covid Disney’ you can go all day and never actually::

• Spot a character
• Have more than a directional interaction with any park personal
• See a smile (this one is weird but definitely super impactful)

**I want to add a special note about Christmas at Disney World. We’ve gone to Disneyland every Christmas season for the past three years. This year, the sparse decorations, lack of characters, and small, unannounced parades didn’t make the park feel especially prepared for the holiday. In fact, most of the time, when we’d spot one of the minimalist decorations, it only reminded us how much Disney didn’t feel like Christmas.

What did we think about our trip?

We enjoyed our trip. I know – saying ‘the magic is gone’ is heavy, but that didn’t ruin the whole trip. Both the Animal Kingdom and Epcot were overall much better experiences than I expected, and even the toned down Magic Kingdom had some special moments. 

We still made memories- Augustine rode her first roller coaster as she’s tall enough to hit above the mark on all the rides. Exciting moment for all kids as they walk up to the height marker for the first time.

Of all the parks, our trip to Animal Kingdom benefitted the most from the reduced capacity. We had plenty of time to ride the rides multiple times, had shorter wait times overall, and didn’t have many problems with social distancing throughout the entire day. I mean, it’s pretty fantastic that we got to ride the Avatar’s Flight of Passage twice, the Kali River Rapids 6 times, and the TriceraTop Spin nearly 10 times. Animal Kingdom also had a running live show (rare at Disney) – Feathered Friends in Flight – where a bird sang several songs – which was literal magic.

Epcot already had so much of an outdoor focus that the experience was similar to before Covid. Epcot had very short lines for several of the immersive rides and there was even staff helping enforce the social distancing in the longest line (Frozen). The most unsafe part was probably wandering around the many cities of Epcot while eating, but it was usually very easy to find a way to get away from any crowds.

Augustine’s overall trip highlight was seeing the princesses at the Magic Kingdom. The Magic Kingdom is clearly still the biggest draw at Disney World, and where we found the most people and the most unavoidable lines. This is also the park missing the most pre-Covid magic.

I would suggest that if you are someone in your family is at even a moderate risk or has any issues with people being within 2-3 feet on a regular basis – stay away. Even though I’m only slightly more anxious about Covid-19 than most people, several times in each park I had situations that I had to ask our whole family to walk away from. I do want to make clear though that each situation was being caused by other guests being careless, which Disney can’t control but happen anyway.

If I knew before what I knew now, I would definitely have more reservations about going to any of the parks at this point, but would have opted out of Magic Kingdom.

Have you been to Disney World since the reopening? What was your experience? Let us know on our Facebook page!