They could be doing it differently in Florida, but here (Texas) every restaurant has a posted max occupancy, I believe it is set by the fire marshall based on square footage and exits. That’s what they are applying the % here against.
I think here the max capacity has to be posted in “public view” along with the health certificate, often in a hallway or whatnot.
Any liner on site could probably look around and see if they can spot one. It depends how the restaurant is complying, though to figure out the %. Some of our restaurants are only taking X% of reservations. Some are removing the unusable Y% of tables.
Yes there is an actual capacity number and before florida opened up 100% there was a resturant capacity limit. I am just suggesting that some resturants it may not be a feasible number and a capacity limit may not be the only factor in WDW deciding what restufants to open or how manynpeople they allow in. For example, lets say a resturant has a max capacity or 100 people. The resturants are told they can have 50%capacity. Once they get all the tables marked and spread apart 6 ft in every direction they realize they can really only fit 25 people in there while still complying to social distancing standards. So 25 is how many people they allow in at one time for that resturant. So even though they can have 50 people they are still only running at 25 %capacity. Ogas is a prime example of that. I know that they can slam people in that area but there are like 12 parties at any one time in there. Way less than normal. Any more people and we would all be too close
Allowing 25% of capacity (which I always understood pertained Max park capacity, not typical capacity), while having less than 25% of dining, shopping, and entertainment available is bound to create issues of crowding while people wait for what they CAN experience. I agree that more things will need to open up in the parks or this will continue to be a major issue and only get worse around the times when the parks were likely to come close to or meet Max capacity back in the pre-COVID days.
Here is an article I found yesterday when I was trying to find out if Disney was really at 25% that gives some idea about numbers and what 25% might actually mean. :Given that TWDC doesn’t give specific numbers regarding what attendance is like at any one point in time, I don’t know that we have any way of knowing exact numbers, but this feels like it is probably pretty close.
Disney has made some strange decisions as of late. I assume they’ve focused on keeping costs down, but they could get more people into the parks (which should translate to more revenue) if they went the opposite direction with some of the decisions. For example, extending park hours would spread people out over the day. Open the shows and have more shows per days. Open more restaurants, especially the large ones or ones with outdoor seating (or the possibility of outdoor seating). Also, I don’t know why they didn’t open one or both of the water parks. Maybe they don’t make money on the water parks.
Also, it might not be popular, but they could split the park days in half and people could purchase one or the other. Personally I’d rather have less park time but know it won’t be so crowded and have wait times of 60-90 minutes all day. I would go in the morning, go back to the resort for a swim, and visit a resort for dinner. It would spread people out more all across the property.
My guess, WDW is looking at the marginal cost of the choices you are talking about.
Yes, they could expand hours or open more restaurants, but what would be the additional marginal cost to do so and would the revenue exceed the cost involved.
Opening shows only helps marginally because they have to run at 1/4 capacity at best. Doing movies is okay, because it doesn’t cost that much extra…but full shows not only include the CMs who attend to the lines and such, but you have the performers…many of them…who are relatively expensive to pay. Running more of them just means paying them even more. And with 1/4 capacity, it likely wouldn’t free up enough to increase crowds.
And of course if they do the half day split idea, then Disney has got to offer much more for folks to do during their much longer non park times, otherwise the resorts (pools, etc) and DS will become even more crowded. Besides, we were there in August with the lower crowds and we didn’t have time to get through everything at Epcot, etc. A shortened day would make matters worse.
Interesting concept in theory. WDW is great at pricing, so maybe if a typical one-day ticket is $120 now, a half-day ticket could be something like $80-90 and you could have the option to do both sessions for like $130-140 (or do one session at 2 different parks for like $150). If you want/need a full day, you can still get one, but just pay more for it.
Of course if you have both sessions purchased, or just the later one, you’d need an extra wristband or something so they can tell easily who needs to leave, similar to when normal park hours run into MNSSHP.
How do u get the morning crew out for the evening crew? Im not against this, Ive thought of this too. You could also park hop, if you were willing to use an additional ticket.
Not sure, but the wristband idea works for ticketed events so I would think something like that would work for this. I’m sure someone much more familiar with the logistics of parks could come up with a solution that works to maximize attendance while minimizing costs and risks. Disney just seems to be doing the bare minimum. Not taking risks or trying anything new. The strategy is the opposite of what Iger talks about in his book that I read recently.
A children’s museum in my area is doing something kind of like this. They’ve divided the day into three two-hour sessions, each with an hour-long gap in between. You have to reserve each session individually. I believe that those 2-hour sessions cost as much as an all-day ticket used to. (We are members so I don’t track pricing closely, but if it’s not the same it’s pretty close.) You arrive for your session, then leave at the end and the museum staff runs around disinfecting everything before the next batch of families arrives.
Capacity is massively reduced - I think that they only let something like 10% of their capacity in at any time. I think they’re really doing an excellent job in keeping people as safe as possible while still keeping things running. Anyways, I don’t know if the exit-reentry methodology would work for a place like WDW that has such a large group of people using shared transportation, but it’s worked well locally.
Either way, the general concept of batched entry would definitely have the potential for extra $$ to WDW. I know that our local museum does sell out of tickets pretty regularly. Not for every session, but at the more popular times.
I’m not so sure. Let’s say that they take some of the extra revenue from the half day tickets to extend hours, so the mornings start earlier and the evenings end later. There may be more people staying in the resorts, but at any given time during park hours there would probably be fewer people in non-park places. I’m guessing that DS would get more crowded in the late evenings when all parks are closed, but it might actually alleviate the crowds at the pools and at DS during park hours.
I think I’m getting more and more glad that probably my first 10 visits were well before the onset of Fast Pass in any form, so lines were NORMAL and felt NORMAL. I had one solo trip in October one year (again before Fast Pass in any form) when October was dead (it hadn’t been “dead” for a while, let’s be honest) and it just didn’t feel like Disney to me.
Do I use FP+ when it’s there? Of course, because that’s the way the game is played now. But I don’t let the lack of one - or a large wait-time number - stop me from riding something if I want to. I realize I’m abnormal, but I have no issues packing a book in my bag and reading as I’m in lines that don’t have a lot to look at or taking in all the details in a line like that for Flight of Passage.
So I’m not stressing about January - or even July. It just makes it feel like Disney of old!
To be honest, I think they are smart in NOT taking risks with this. If they take a risk and it backfires and there is an explosion of cases that can be directly traced to Disney, that would be an absolute nightmare. This is not the kind of thing where “Well, we tried it and it failed.” would remotely cut it.
Disney right now is focused on the long term. Maximizing current park attendance is not a major focus at this time. Maintaining the Disney reputation right now is important, one super-spreader event at WDW and it will take years to rebuild consumer confidence in the WDW brand. It is the trust and confidence in that brand that generates revenue.
I think that there is a huge difference between taking financial risks (“Should we build a new, expensive, superheadliner?”) and taking risks with people’s health/lives. I would think that (or I would hope that) Iger is not in favor of taking the latter risk.
I meant business risks in the sense of thinking outside the box, doing what is not expected, etc. Iger talks a lot about it in his book with the various purchases of Pixar, LucasFilm, opening Shanghai etc. Stripping all of the magical experiences to save costs, mistreating DVC members, firing cast members and restoring executive compensation is not a long-term focus. I’m not saying they haven’t done anything good. I think the cavalcade was a good alternative to characters. It just seems like they are watching what others are doing and copying it if it seems to work. I expect more creativity from Disney.