Iām going home. I canāt work anymore.
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But for real, I laughed silently to myself with a huge smile on my face reading the whole thing in my work office. Since we live 2 million miles apart, Iāll do my part, you do yours and we can edit it together.
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That was awesome!
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So, my question is this:
Vaccine. Wonāt be readily available to the masses for a while after release. Even then, there are a lot of anti-vaccers, people who may not be able to afford or not able to get down to the Drās/Walgreens/Etc. to get it (but miraculously can get to Disney). At what point is āsafeā established before masks arenāt required and people are free to roam/park hop?
There were no screens for the flu and being a minor germaphobe myself, I noticed when parents were dragging their obviously fever ridden children, or worse themselves, through every turn style in the place? āI didnāt pay two thousand dollars for this trip to hang out in the hotel room watching you #^& yourselfā are words Iāve actually heard a parent tell their child.
When will Disney be back to normal? A year after the vaccine? Or is this really the new ānormalā everyone is talking about?
Since I brought up vaccine, just my guess, the back to normal for WDW will be when the transmission rate of Covid-19 is 1% or less for Florida and the USA. How we get there, vaccine, herd immunity or some combination, we will see.
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Love this.
I guess it depends on the definition of normal.
I am now genuinely in a bottomless pit of despair. As of yesterday, virtually all entertainment CMs at WDW have been cut. Only a skeleton crew to run the cavalcades and the handful of characters currently there remain.
Most of the entertainers as most people would define it were part-time, some with 20-30 years of experience, like the orchestra, Citizens of Hollywood etc. They canāt hang about waiting to see if they will be recalled. Most of the technical crew behind the shows, parades etc are gone. So too the cast of the show and most character CMs.
If something isnāt there now, by way of shows etc, the CMs are likely gone. When they do resume bigger parades, characters, M&Gs - they will be starting from scratch. Some of it will return, but not all of it and not the street performers. This is what Chapek was aiming for all along.
For me that is a huge part of what makes WDW special. I could quite happily go to each park for a day and not ride anything. The thought of WDW without the entertainment seems pointless. At the moment the only reasons I have for wanting to return would be to see Pandora, Galaxy Edge and the Skyliner. Of those, GE is the biggest and if I wait 4 years I can see it in Paris.
Honestly I donāt know if I want to return next year. I have to really, if we can - it was supposed to be DSās 21st trip. But right now I donāt want to go with this new normal when itāll be another 2-3 years before we return.
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If your definition of normal is going back to exactly the way is was before the shutdown in March 2020, then I can give you a 100% definite answer, never.
Thatās why I posted earlier, this is a brave new world, a whole new world we are going to see with WDW.
Change is inevitable, drastic sudden change like this can be painful. What will come out of it remains to be seen. Unfortunately a lot of CM are bearing the brunt of this.
I think that Disney management is using this Covid 19 situation to quickly implement changes that were already in the works. Bob Chapek literally said this the other day on CNBC when discussing the changes to the Entertainment divisions and streaming. Iām expecting some new things to come about and some old things to go away with Disney Parks.
Hopefully, the next several months will work out okay, but what the final product that comes out of this situation is, remains to be seen. For most of the past 49 years, WDW has been pretty successful in maintaining the magic.
Iām so sorry that youāre feeling down! It is really sad when so many folks with such a wealth of experience and talent are let go. For a frequent visitor like you, I bet itās that much harder.
Iām sure that if you go next year, just being there celebrating with DS will have itās own kind of magic. Iām not trying to say that it wonāt be difficult to have a different experience than you would have in the past, or that there wonāt be some sad nostalgia mixed in there, but Iāll bet that youāll still form memories that youāll cherish.
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Weāre very infrequent visitors. But itās always seemed like our happy place, despite not being ride people at all. I have never ridden ToT, RnR, Everest, will never ride Space Mntn again (did it once). It is all about the street performers: the meet & greets when the boys were young and then CoH, Dapper Dans, Caseyās pianist, the WS entertainment, the drummers at AK, the international CMs around WS and at AK & AKL, the character appearances, Gaston at his tavern, even the character dining.
Even last time we went, I dreaded going to DHS. Iām an old school fan, I missed the Backstage Tour and the LMA stunt show, the animation studio, even Streets of America. I still enjoyed the day but something was missing.
Iām sure youāre right, weāll enjoy it. But I have a feeling the soul of the parks will be missing. I can easily now foresee just a couple more trips for us and then can see us selling our DVC. To me that would have been upsetting to think about a year ago, now it seems quite probable.
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LOL 
Yes, and some amount of change is to be expected. But I canāt imagine that single park admission, mask enforcement and attraction cleaning every hour is forever. Disney will always be about the bottom line.
I have already cancelled my 2020 holiday trip and Iām really close to cancelling my 2021 make-up trip as well. Iām pretty sure @Nicky_S and I arenāt the only ones. I refuse to spend money on a reduced experience Disney. Not when I can take that same money and go experience all of the places we want to show our son before he gets too old. Just an hour ago I asked my DH if heād be amendable to taking that same money and trying Adventures by Disney. He countered with blowing off WDW and doing DLP insteadā¦quick, stop twisting my armā¦Iāll go, Iāll go!
Me as well.
My DH just brought up an excellent point as well. He just said that even at full capacity, they will probably still maintain the single park admissions to handle all of the crowds that are being pushed this past year. He said that without his knowing that WDWās 50th is next year as well. So them extending it is less to do with Covid and more to do with crowd control, even with parks at full capacity.
Thatās definitely possible. As much as I desperately want to go back, Iām worried about the āfloodā of people who are waiting to storm the gates - especially if itās reopening coincides with the 50th. That might make me wait until 2022ā¦ 
Dumb question, are people actually buying these for 2021? Also, isnāt there a risk of not being able to hop to the park you want since you cannot reserve 2 parks on the same day?
They arenāt. But, if there werenāt reservations, then they could sell park hoppers again. Park hopping is extra revenue with no extra cost. So, I have to think that Disney will put it back as soon as it can.
It would be possible to change the reservation system to allow people to book 2 parks per day if they want to.
Everyone I know of who has a genuine inside connection says they intend to bring back park hopping when they consider park capacity can be increased to allow them to do so.
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Ok, so even though they are selling park hoppers, they may not allow it yet for your ticket dates in 2021. So will they just reimburse your ticket upgrade?
Ok, so this is all I found. Iām just surprised that they can take your money for the upgrade with no clarity. Quote from TP:
āYou can buy Park Hoppers for 2021 visits, though itās currently unclear how reservations for park hopping will be necessary and if so, how they might workā
So we have a trip planned in Sept 2021 and have park hoppers. I asked the CM what happens if they donāt allow hopping and she said they would credit us. Honestly Iām not too worried about Disney reimbursing us for the hoppers if we canāt use them, especially if I put up a stink. We added them as itās always cheaper to reserve as much as possible in advance before any price hikes. (Last trip was reserved in advance, Disney did 3 price hikes between when we reserved and when we actually went, & even with fall discounts our original rack rate was way cheaper than the fall discounts).
Iām more concerned now about doing a trip at all. In addition to the COVID concerns which I was hoping would diminish next year, Iām not excited about paying thousands of dollars for a pared back experience with no fireworks, entertainers, etc. When it gets closer to paying off the trip, weā'll evaluate the state of the world and the state of the World at that time and see if we still want to go.
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Thank you! This is exactly what I was wondering. I hope to go in March and would park hop one day if available.