I’m going to be part of a large family trip to Disney World in July, and many of us are very COVID-conscious, including myself since we have an unvaccinated two-year-old.
Anyone have any insider knowledge on ventilation / air filtration / air flow exchange at indoor settings at Disney World, especially dining locations where you can’t stay masked all the time? Obviously outdoor dining options are great, but we can’t eat outdoors for all meals, especially when having some special meals for the trip.
I would love to learn something like “Disney HVAC has always included MERV-11 filters, and then when planning for COVID reopening, upgraded everything to MERV-13 + UV disinfection”. I haven’t been able to find much by Googling.
I have a better handle on transportation. Skyliner has decent passive air flow. For monorails, I can compare them to NYC subways, using this NYT article from early on in the pandemic as a guide. What Happens to Viral Particles on the Subway - The New York Times And busses, if the windows are open, when moving, there’s great air flow. But when just relying on AC, I’m not as sure. And being outdoors on boats is great
Disney bus windows do not open, or I’ve never seen them open. I would ask for a skyliner bucket to myself and explain that you are willing to wait. I’ve not seen or heard anything about HVAC precautions at Disney resorts or restaurants. But we know from other liner’s reporting that if you come down w/ covid and are staying on site that your room remains empty for a time after the sick person vacates it.
I think what really matters is air changes per hour. You can have a great HVAC filter but if it only changes the air 1x per hour that’s not much covid protection in a crowded space. Airplanes change air 15x per hour and amtrak trains are comparable. NJ transit says 5x per hour for their buses.
I prefer exterior entry hotel rooms to facilitate air changes.
This is just my guess, but I imagine WDW doesn’t publicly specify any air quality, filtration etc details because they vary between different locations. I wouldn’t expect them to have much more than standard AC at most locations, more modern in some and older in others.
For me personally, restaurants were not a big concern. I’ve said this before but a WDW bus was the most uncomfortable part of my entire trip (which included various airports, transatlantic flights etc). I felt claustrophobic in a packed bus were some were unmasked, some poorly masked, people coughing etc. This was when omicron was starting to peak and I hadn’t had covid yet.
If you want peace of mind, I would avoid buses, at least at peak times. Skyliner is perfectly fine if you have the bucket to yourself. Monorail is ok unless it’s super busy. Boats outdoors are ok but on the smaller boats (Friendships) there’s very limited outdoor space and people are more tightly packed.
My experience with restaurants varied, and I would not assume they have a great air system.
Two restaurants I felt uncomfotable in due to crowdedness, lower ceilings etc were Coral Reef and Teppan Edo. I thought Tepan Edo would be particularly good because of the giant vents, but there were many times we were in a small room with 4 full tables and no vents on.
Also on ROTR there is a part of the experience when you are in a small cramped hall with very little air flow.
You might want to consider Uber to avoid the buses. I believe they still require masks for the drivers but not sure. It shouldn’t cost too much if you’re staying onsite.
Thanks for all of the tips! Especially about the busses and monorail. We’ll be at Poly, and will have a car, so at least having one parent driving the 2-year-old will likely often happen for both napping flexibility and avoiding transportation crowding. Using the ferry boat and then walking to/from TTC will be a good option for MK at crowded times.
We’re going to bring our supply of N-95s/K-94s and will wear them indoors and in crowded outdoor settings. One-way masking isn’t perfect, but even with having much less masking in Disney than in NYC right now, this seems like the type of risk that we know how to manage. Restaurants are trickier for us, since we haven’t eaten indoors at restaurants since the pandemic began.
Whether there are high ceilings or not for indoor restaurants is definitely a factor about how anxious I may feel about eating there. “High ceilings” may be the best proxy for air flow/air changes that I can have. Of the indoor ADRs that we currently have planned, I know that one definitely has super high ceilings (Chef Mickey’s), some I think have somewhat high ceilings, based on past experiences eating there and from pictures (Kona Cafe, Grand Floridian Cafe, Boma, Sci-Fi and Cinderella’s Royal Table), but there’s two new ones that I’m less sure about (Topolino’s and Space 220). Maybe because they’re both new, they were designed with good air flow in mind?
Ultimately we know that we are accepting some degree of risk and uncertainty for agreeing to the trip (which we’re very much looking forward to) — but at the same time, we want to reduce unnecessary exposure when it’s not necessary, and to thoughtfully choose which “higher risk” experiences we will have in our plan.
This would be a really interesting metric is there is a bored Disney blogger.
Take a CO2 monitor into the various Disney restaurants at peak times and give us the readings. I know there are places in Asia that have CO2 monitors installed in public inside places so people can make informed choices.
Yes and no. If the fan is replacing stale air with clean/outdoor air, then yes. But if it’s just swirling around stale air, then it might not help much.
One caveat for Boma, when you check in ask to be seated away from the buffet line. One morning it felt like we had the entire line at the table with us. That was during masking so it wasn’t too bad, but without masking that wouldn’t be great.
In summer 2021 I mentally set my bar for taking masks off at 0.1% positivity. Brookline, MA almost hit that target. We had a vacation planned there and were hoping to take off masks but then Delta hit. Maybe we can get to 0.1% positivity with an Omicron-specific vaccine and better ventilation.
Thanks for this thread. I’m interested in the matter too, as we’re heading there soon and have good reasons to try to keep avoiding covid… Even 8 months later there is close to zilch information (that I could find) on Disney’s mitigation procedures such as ventilation/air filtration. Looks like they’ve embraced the “pretend covid doesn’t exist anymore” like 99% of folks… Nevertheless I found one person who did some CO2 measurements in one WDW hotel (CBR, where rooms open directly outdoor) and… I think it’s fair to say it’s poorly ventilated. Very poorly https://twitter.com/LongDesertTrain/status/1489794246764904449
Welcome. I took some CO2 readings at WDW recently and posted them in the covid thread. In general indoor ventilation at the parks was decent except for the RotR standby queue and the Dino preshow.
