It’s been one of those weeks this week. Nothing going on for weeks, loads of rumours and possibilities and more questions than answers and then – boom! – Disney drops the news everyone’s been waiting for about the new park booking system. This new system is completely new to WDW and it’s to try and get things operational again whilst limiting park capacity, to ensure social distancing and ensuring guest safety can been maintained. We’ll come back to that later and check out our new YouTube channel for this week’s chit chat about what’s been going on this week – we had a good walk filming that today.
Universal seems to have been operating fairly successfully this last couple of weeks. The are not operating a park booking system, it’s simply first come first served. We have watched all our favourites filming in and around Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure and from what we can see it looks pretty successful. The tip is to definitely get there early, for when park gates open, if you want to ensure you get in. We haven’t seen or heard anything which seemed to indicate that lots of people were turning up and being unable to get in, so that’s a positive for sure. We would also suggest you download the Universal App, as it will mean you can mobile order your food ahead of taking a seat in a restaurant, or at any rate decrease your contact with a fellow human (sad but true during these still slightly nervy times). Lots of the queues in Universal and Islands have been switched to a virtual queue, so you can get into the App and reserve your time slot to ride certain rides. Most attractions have a standby queue still too but some don’t so we would definitely urge you to get the App sorted before you go.
We are pleased to see character interaction still a possibility at Universal and although they are doing it slightly differently to ensure the health and safety of everyone, it is still nice to know the characters are in the parks, putting on impromptu shows and skits and just generally being fabulous.
We are also delighted to see that indoor shows are still happening too, just being seated leaving gaps and rows between parties, which is good all round. The Bourne Stuntacular had its soft opening this week, when park visitors got to watch a technical rehearsal run through of the show. Comments and reviews were very favourable so we’re delighted shows are possible during the current “trying to get back to normal whilst still keeping everyone safe” interim period. We also can’t wait to see the Bourne show as everyone was raving about how fabulous it was.
Hand sanitiser was being used by guests before and after each ride, cast and guests are all wearing face coverings and ride trains are being cleaned down between each ride and are also being seated leaving rows empty between parties.
So by and large guests and cast seem to be following protocol and there doesn’t seem to have been any major issues. Good stuff!
On to WDW. As readers of the blog will know we tentatively booked our Fastpasses, knowing that our trip is still in jeopardy and also knowing the WDW were planning a new system for upcoming trips, but we booked them anyway, and as everyone predicted they were cancelled by WDW within about 48 hours.
There have been lots of rumours and second-guessing about what the new system would involve and when it would come into play, and now we know.
This is the basic information for upcoming trips.
June 22nd 7am Eastern – 12 noon UK time – anyone with a WDW hotel reservation and park tickets will be able to book their park days and times through the WDW website. you log in to your account, select your date and park and the time you want to enter, and then confirm it. You can then select another date/park and you are able to select the park visits for the length of your whole stay.
June 26th – WDW Annual Passholders will be able pre-book their park visits and dates.
June 28th – Anyone who has an already purchased valid WDW ticket will be able to book/request their park visits.
So basically you cannot just turn up at the gate of any Disney park you fancy with your ticket and walk in. You will have to have pre-booked your park dates. We are unsure yet whether you have to be at the park by the exact time you have chosen, or whether you just cannot go in before that time. WDW are obviously very strictly controlling numbers entering the parks and so it is also therefore not guaranteed that you will get the dates/days/parks you have requested. For UK visitors who generally have a 7 day or 14 day pass this MAY be a problem because you could possibly only get maybe three or four park visits in under the new system, but again this depends on numbers visiting and what capacity WDW are working on. An unknown at this point.
One thing is for sure – if you are going to WDW any time in the next 12 months you will definitely need the My Disney Experience App on your phone or other mobile device or at least will need an account to be able to log in and request select your park dates. WDW are suggesting this new way of park reservation will be around until potentially next Summer. As WDW, along with most other theme parks and attractions in Orlando, they are encouraging mobile ordering for food/dining etc and also contactless payment of purchases. This can be done via your App, Magic Band or of course with a contactless bank card, so if as a UK visitor you usually turn up with a fistful of dollars that may not be the best option for you this time.
We have no doubt that WDW’s hygiene and health policies will be as stringent, if not more so, than everything else opening up in the Orlando area. Face masks are a must and so you’d better get used to wearing them. We have had a lot of fun watching our bloggers and vloggers riding roller coasters with various styles of masks on and reviewing how it feels to be wearing one for most of the time, and their reviews have certainly made us worry less about that aspect of things. There are areas set aside for you to take them off and rest a while, you don’t have to wear them when you are seated in a restaurant of cafe, you can happily purchase your ice-cream and then sit on a bench or have a little stroll and eat it without your mask, and you can also (certainly in Universal anyway) take them off briefly for a photo in some places, but from what we’ve seen most people don’t.
WDW mention in most of their updated information that parades, fireworks and character interactions are halted for the foreseeable future. Anything that attracts big crowds and high density of people they are avoiding it seems, and this ties in with them cancelling all of this year’s Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Nights, which they also announced just this week. These are ticketed events and it will be a big blow to WDW’s revenue stream, so they haven’t taken the decision lightly! It is a shame for big fans of these even nights. Christmas celebrations have not been announced yet, so whether those will go ahead remains to be seen. WDW have said though, in view of so many changes to normal operations, there will be a host of impromptu gatherings and cavalcades of characters in cars, on parade routes, on lakes and lagoons etc, which leads us to believe that lots of extra things will be happening but as they won’t be planned and guests won’t know when or where they will crop up, there won’t be a “crowd” as such. So that keeps everyone more safe. Just a case of keeping your eyes peeled and waiting for the magic to happen, and being as it’s WDW we are sure that magic will still happen. If we do get to travel this year we are quite looking forward to these random possibilities – as much as we adore meeting the Main Mouse and getting our photo taken with him, which we absolutely do and always will, we do have many many years worth of those photos, so a random gathering of characters in an out of the ordinary place sounds exciting to us.
Finally for this week, we had a bit of excitement with our flight as of first thing this morning. We checked our Dial-a-Flight App to find a message suggesting a change to our itinerary and to give them a call. We did that before we’d even had our breakfast and were told that our flight out of Manchester was cancelled. For a few moments, while they checked everything, we thought the inevitable day we had been waiting for and expecting had arrived – our trip this year was cancelled. However, it seems that it is just the Manchester flights that are cancelled currently and the Heathrow flights are still showing as operational at the moment. So five minutes later we had switched to the Heathrow flights and, those being 404 quid cheaper, a wee refund is due to us. So the dream lives on for a few more weeks yet! Oh the agony of the will they won’t they – worse than the Ross and Rachel saga this is! If we had a pound for every time someone asked us if we’ve heard anything about our holiday we’d have enough cash to book another trip. If only! So clearly our friends and family are living the agony with us. Maybe agony is a tad over-dramatic, given the world situation just now!
Right that’s us signing off – next week’s blog could be about anything, how we’ve booked our days in the park, how we failed to book our days in the park, how our Heathrow flight has been changed or cancelled or who knows what. A lot can happen in a week! One thing is certain though – the blog next week will probably not be uploaded until Sunday as it’s Rob’s birthday next Saturday and although clearly the world is not our oyster right now, we think we might have some socially distanced visitors arrive to see us (hoping for sunshine in the garden) or at any rate we’ll have a day completely relaxing so that the birthday boy enjoys his day.
You all take care now, see you soon.
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