End of July for me as well. If Disney isn’t far enough along for us and UOR is (which, with teens, we basically love equally to WDW), I think we are coming around to the idea of keeping our flight (that must be used in 2020) and time off from work and just doing UOR+beach and saving the significant chunk we have tied up in gift cards for a future trip when Disney is much more normal. Still hoping for WDW as planned, but it feels like a lot of the pressure is gone now with another (seemingly) feasible backup option.
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That is a nice backup for you! Mine are younger so UOA isn’t a good alternative for us. It stinks they don’t have many options for younger kids because my older two loved Harry Potter. I want to take all 4 but am waiting on the younger two to hit 48”. 
I have a room only res and a trip planned for May ‘21 so (worse case) we’ll cancel the room and use the money paid for tickets for that May trip.
You will probably have noticed by now that I keep grasping at any potential positive side.
There have been studies showing that people take covid way more seriously after someone they know gets hospitalized, regardless of previous belief or political affiliation.
Now, my hope is: after opening up, there will be enough people changing their behavior on their own to avoid an explosion in cases. And as cases increase, more people see covid as a serious thread and change their behavior as well, and maybe that is enough.
I would definitely prefer if the government were involved. The incubation period is long and exponential functions are weird (it takes the same amount of time to go from 1 case to 1000 than it takes to from 1000 to 1000000), so by the time you feel how bad things are, things will be worse than they needed to be. And parsing through all this new information without guidance is really difficult, so having professionals you can trust setting safety guidelines would also be great.
But to be honest, one of my main worries with the lack of government action is the effect on small business. When stay-at-home orders are in place, everything is closed and small business have leverage to negotiate rent, utilities, mortgages, taxes (since everyone is in this together). Without stay-at-home orders many small business will fail to stay afloat (razor thin margins, decrease capacity and reduced consumer spending (in Sweden consumer spending fell 25%, without lockdowns)), but they won’t have as much leverage to negotiate (as some larger business will manage to profit, and will be able to take the whole market). Which is worrying to me, but it is nowhere close as worrying as millions of deaths.
I am incredibly hopeful that people will be careful once they see the effects, that by then we will already know which activities are the most dangerous and that this will happen soon enough that millions of deaths won’t happen.
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This! The only people close to me that have (presumably) had COVID-19 are having a tough time recovering and they had “mild” cases. It is weeks if not months later and they are still fatigued, coughing, occasionally feverish, etc. Maybe because I work in HR, but I have been thinking about the impacts to work productivity as more of the work force gets sick and then struggles for so long to really get well. And this is not even touching on those who are seriously ill and need hopsitalization/ventilators.
My friend who had it (presumably - didn’t qualify for testing here) is so thankful she’s working from home and on a 10% furlough. She works every day for as long as she can, then naps (sometimes for 5 hours!) then works a little more in the evening. She would not be able to go into the office for 40 hours a week at this point. And it’s been over a month and a mild case.
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@Shmebulock, I don’t know if the quarantine rules will help your case, but I would be calling Disney again and arguing you could not self-isolate on return. They may well announce a change of policy as a result, I would hope so anyway.
And yes, it applies to UK residents returning from holidays - in case anyone was wondering.
And …
The Foreign Office is still advising against non-essential travel, and that is not changing either. Given all that, Disney needs to change it’s policy NOW. 
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Do you teach English as a second language to Americans? 
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That’s a very good point. And that was with my very low end figure of .2%!
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There is a mid 40’s female in our area that was told her lungs may never recover full function. Very scary!
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They seemed to have updated their US language too to suggest people should contact them if you want to cancel.
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Is there anything to read from the tea leaves of this statement, or is this more of a “We know Universal is opening soon and you’re getting impatient with us. Please hold on a little longer while we finish figuring out how and when to take your money while offering you a reduced experience” kind of statement that really doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know?
The U.K. one hasn’t changed yet. Soon, hopefully. 
You’re right there is nothing new I’m seeing, but I appreciate them acknowledging that they have details to work out and implying that they’re not going to rush to re-open just because Universal announced a date. I’m hoping it’s them giving Shanghai enough time to be open to evaluate adjustments before opening.
I can imagines the conversations that occurred…
- We are getting flogged by verbal abuse from the renters at Disney Springs. They want us to reduce or even forgive their rent during the pandemic.
- Not on my watch, allow them to open up. Have them figure out all the guidelines for us. Let them make the mistakes. We can learn from them. It would be a PR nightmare if we were the first to open and then the number of cases starts to escalate out of control again. Let someone else take the blame for that. Just sit back a little longer…this is a win-win for us. We will continue to collect their rent, and learn from their mistakes.
- Good idea! I also hard Universal is opening now on June 5th.
- Poor souls. They are not solvent enough to hold out for others like Lego-land and Sea World to break new ground. Let them. We are in no rush to screw this up. We are collecting valuable data from those retail locations at Disney springs, it is good that an amusement park is opening to figure out all the hard stuff for us in that space. I know it sounds like a broken record, let them make all the mistakes, spend all the money to figure out the proper hoops to jump through. We can scoop up all the things they have done right and use them in our parks. In addition, anything they do wrong is under a microscope right now. It would have been a PR nightmare for us to lead this initiative. Let them fall on the proverbial sword.
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So…those planning to go this summer if they are open, how are you mentally dealing with the masks? We went shopping yesterday on a mild day in Ohio and is kinda sucked wearing them in the few stores we did. 100 degrees and humid… Ugh just thinking about it. Poor cast members as well…
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Finding the right mask is one thing.
Second, I have decided to wear tank tops each day instead of the Disney theme shirts we had already purchased.
Third, planning the days so that we are not there all day and have periods of cooling off.
Fourth, practicing
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Our trip is supposed to start June 21 and to be honest, I’m still just expecting/hoping it to be cancelled …though with Universal now opening up in early June, anything is possible. At the rate they’ve been going, I’ll know one way or another by Thursday, June 4th—and I waver between hoping they’ll still be closed and wanting to go which comes down to the mask requirement. The thought of masks in the Florida June heat and humidity is dreadful. I wear a mask all day at work but outside in the summer is a different scenario as is expecting this from my 5 and 3 year old.
I normally would not go in June but had originally scheduled this trip around a conference that is now cancelled so it was already going to be a different kind of trip for us with more pool time and less park time. I also decided to rent DVC for this trip (mistake!!!), so even though the conference is cancelled, unless they are closed, we’ll probably go. I’m looking at it as a different Disney experience than we normally would get, maybe just short jaunts into the parks for favorite rides and as soon as the brood gets cranky and tired of wearing masks, we’ll head back to the resort and swim. I would not feel this way if this were a once in x years trip but we have been lucky enough to go somewhat regularly. Now, if the pools are not open…I’ll probably just eat the cost of the rental.
We booked a short trip for mid-August with the idea that it’s probably not going to happen, but would be nice if it did. My daughter (17) is the one who really wants to go. But we just got back from a short trip to the store and she hated the mask. I asked if she really thought she could wear one in Florida for longer than an hour in 90 degrees and 90% humidity. She’s on the verge of saying we should cancel. We live in Western Washington and we don’t have real heat or humidity (in summer) here. Just being in Florida in August would be a challenge for us without masks. So today I’m leaning toward cancelling … But I want to go so bad!!
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I’m really hoping after a couple of weeks they’ll change mask requirements and not make them mandatory outside. I’ve about decided we could go and enjoy the trip if masks are only required inside but my family walked from the parking lot to inside of target when it was only 80 and THAT was not pleasant. We will cancel if masks are required all the time. Or I’ll just continuously buy my kids popcorn and Mickey pretzels and let them walk around snacking all day so they can have their masks off. Y’all. Think of how kids AND adults normally meltdown at Disney in the summer JUST dealing with the oppressive heat. It’s gonna be a s**tshow throwing masks into the mix. 
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I like the constant snacking for the kids work around. Good idea!
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