Ventilation / Air Filtration / Air Exchange indoors at Disney World?

Thanks a lot for this DWJoe :). Might take my CO2 monitor too, discreetly :wink:

I used an Aranet4. It’s pretty discreet, and you can check the readings after the fact via the app on your phone.

Note: this reading is not from WDW

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I have one too - I like the fact that you get the logs vs time too. Otherwise I have a Chinese “keyring” one, small, cheap and handy (if a bit less precise and no logs) - pretty much same as this one (but no “brand”): Vitalight Mini CO2 Detector Review - An Affordable Alternative?

I ran my co2 monitor in my Disney resort room a month ago. It was higher at night as that Twitter link described but not that high. Only deluxe resorts have balconies that you can open to get fresh air circulating.

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covid measures are now pretty much non-existent - distancing has removed, most plexiglasses and such are gone, cast members tell people to pack tightly in queues and waiting rooms etc. A lot of people (reporting here) returned with covid or the flu in december.

That said, my family was able to avoid getting anything with very basic preventive measure (avoiding the biggest crowds where possible, washing hands, telling kids every minute not to touch everything). But part of it is ultimately up to luck.

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When we were in WDW in May 2022, while riding the carousel my 4 year old son leaned forward with his mouth open and put his open mouth right on the handle that every rider touches. You should have seen the looks on my and DW’s faces. Somehow, he didn’t get sick from that.

All 4 of us made it through the May trip without getting sick, but we took significant precautions. We wore high quality masks at all time indoors at WDW and did not do any indoor dining. We did not, however, mask outdoors even in crowded areas … including, for better or worse, not masking on the carousel :slight_smile:

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I think you have to go into the trip with the mindset that you are going to be exposed to Covid and that WDW is not taking any measures to avoid illness spread beyond any measures that were in place in 2019.

You can reduce your risk by masking with high quality masks indoors and avoiding indoor dining. You can reduce your risk ever further by masking outdoors.

Go into the trip with reasonable expectations … while waiting in indoor lines, there were many people visibly sick (bad coughs, noses running).

One smaller suggestion I have read for the hotel is … if you are in a room with a connecting door to another room, place a towel at the bottom of the connecting door to avoid air getting through from the room next door. I have no idea if that works or has any value, but it was an easy thing to do without any cost or inconvenience.

If you are driving, you could bring a portable HEPA filter with you. We fly so have not done that, but I probably would bring a HEPA filter if I was driving and had room in the car.

This is a huge factor. The past October friends of ours (family of 5) who never had Covid up to that point decided to go to WDW without taking any precautions in the parks. None of them got sick at Disney World. 6 weeks later, their daughter caught Covid at school and spread it to the entire family.

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Thanks for this post - and the suggestion re. towel if we have a connecting door indeed, good point. We’ll be masking (flo masks), do not plan to do any indoor dining (or maybe if “feel safe” e.g. not too crowded / high ceiling etc… Skipper Canteen maybe?), using nasal sprays… For the HEPA filter we’re flying too, and it’ll be a long flight (almost 10hrs), that’s our major risk I think - again we’ll be relying on masks etc but difficult not to have the kids eat and drink so am planning to have QT3 filters with us there… Even if we were to only get a “mild dose” (pg!), would hate to spend part of this so-costly trip in isolation… So we’re doing what we can but it’s true that it’s also relying on a chunk of luck. We’ve been avoiding school-related contamination so far as have been homeschooling - every other family I know here has been sick through kids…

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Our flight was shorter. DW and I kept our N95 masks on during the flight, but our kids removed their KF94 masks to eat and drink on the flight. Yes, that is a risk.

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Hi, just in case it’s of interest to anyone… I took a few recordings with my aranet4 while we were in WDW earlier this months (I actually took a lot more, but forgot to export them in time… so they got erased/replaced by new ones every 3.5 days or so).
Like DaveJ above, we were masking indoor (flo masks) and eating outdoors. Hence a lot of “baseline” signal in my plots. No huge surprises otherwise in the parks i guess: mostly decently ventilated, places where lots of people are kept waiting (thinking of the theater @ Mickey & Minnie’s RR, or of the Haunted Mansion “lift”) get high quite fast, as do indoor stages where lengthy shows take place. Shops/restrooms not always so well ventilated (given “density of population” at times). Bus - meh, depends a lot on number of people, 'can grow fast too (no exemple recorded but one of our trips to MK from CBR got higher than 3000ppm). Am a bit puzzled by the peak at Ratatouille in Epcot here (it was busy but no room where everyone stays put?).
In the hotel however, or at least in CBR, ventilation is shite, pardon my language. Most nights we’d end up with concentration higher than 2500ppm, up to 4500ppm a couple of times (meaning more than 10% of air is rebreathed I believe?). Needless to say that if someone in your party gets a bug you’re all quite likely to get it in the end (and that’s what happened to us - one of the kiddos, the one who’s the least good at keeping his mask without fidgeting with it, got sick, and after the week all of us were in turn. Fortunately not covid, annoying nevertheless…).



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That is surprising … in a not the good kind of surprise way.

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