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We just went to Walt Disney World!! It was our first trip and during a pandemic no less! You may be thinking "why would you go right now?" That's a great question and I plan to answer it. I did need to experience Walt Disney World and the disability access for this 40+ acre area. We had started planning this trip in January before everything shut down. Like so many other people we had to reschedule because our trip was in June before the Parks reopened.
I had already been planning a trip in September as well because my training was scheduled for 4 days in September. When the Parks reopened and my training was a go it was natural to reschedule our planned June trip to September to coincide with my training trip!
There is so much different right now in Walt Disney World and I am going to give you 5 reasons to go now and 2 of why you should wait. Ultimately you have to do what's best for your family.
Reasons to Go NOW!
You can still experience attractions, parades and characters: You are thinking wait...they aren't doing parades or character meet and greet. While technically that is true they have character cavalcades which you can see and interact some with the characters and they are like mini parades!! Please ignore my singing in the background! I love this song. It's from Mickey's Mix Magic which was the nighttime show at Disneyland for Mickey's 90th Birthday. The photo of Woody is from a character cavalcade. He was playing with a kid watching from the side! While you can't get an autograph, you can definitely get character interaction still!
2. The second reason you should go to Walt Disney World right now is wait times. While the wait times of 10-15 minutes are no longer, you can still get on an incredible amount of attractions because they are still limiting the number of people allowed in. Once things begin to return to normal and the wait times go way up you will wish for these 45-60 minute wait times again!
With less people in the Parks, you can get photos with less people in the background and sometimes even NO people in the background!
3. It's a unique experience and perspective. You may never have this opportunity to see the Theme Parks like this again! How often does this happen? It has never happened since they have been opened! Will it ever happen again? Who knows!
4. Wearing a mask at a theme park all day isn't that bad! I am not going to kid you it was horrible. Especially because of the humidity. It's not something I would want to do long term, we had to develop a lot of coping methods and I am planning a whole post just on this subject. But we got through it!
5. The global pandemic didn't take the magic out of Disney! Even with social distancing, masks and hand sanitizer, there was still magic to be had at Disney!! It's not super magical to hear cast members yelling at people to put their masks back on so you have to ignore that part, but you can still experience wonder at seeing Mickey and Minnie and Princesses, you can still ride Seven Dwarves Mine Train and let your little one have their first time on Slinky Dog Dash! You can still get celebration buttons!!! And when one cast member found out Gillian had lost her glasses she gave her a soda on Disney to try and cheer her up (AKA a magic moment)!!! Magic doesn't leave because of a global pandemic, no it doesn't.
Now for the two reasons, I would wait!
1. They don't seem to have enough cast members. At almost every time we went and ate at a quick service location, we had to clean the table in order to get one. They had fewer tables available because they had them blocked off for social distancing but we could never get a clean table. Also at the stores, they had 1 way in and 1 way out and they didn't seem to have enough cast members to really control the traffic. People inside were standing very close together and it was very chaotic.
2. Masks- As in everyone else's. I am an advocate for living your life and living every day so I am not afraid of catching COVID from Disney. If you are then I would wait because people were horribly non-compliant with mask-wearing. I heard cast member after cast member yelling at people to put their masks back on or pull them up because they had it under their nose. I saw people non-compliant with wearing masks. I heard people getting off of Test Track joking about "oops their mask fell off" on the ride. I have asthma and the humidity was making it hard for me to breathe, but I wore mine unless I was eating or drinking while stationary.
Did I want to take my mask off? Oh yeah!!! You bet!!! But I wore it because that's what Disney's rules are right now. Do I agree with it? No. But I went so I complied. It is your choice to go. Disney is private property so you have to comply with their rules if you want to go. If you can't or don't want to, then wait. Don't ruin the magic for other people.
Are you planning on heading to Walt Disney World later this year? Or early next year? What do you want to know about going to Walt Disney World during a global pandemic? Let me know and I will write about it for you!
Do you want to go to Walt Disney World? You can call or book online. If you call tell them Disabled Disney sent you! Use our promo code DDCREW for $10 off your vacation package!
