Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Are you just asking Jeff, or anyone?

This feels like a "the risks your kids face traveling there is greater than the COVID risk of being there" moment.

But I don't know if that's actually true or not.

OhioStater said:

Are you just asking Jeff, or anyone?

I guess anyone. But I was specifically asking Jeff because of his specific mention of an 11y.o. and Disney parks, which is the specific situation I'm thinking of and because I think we tend to align on our risk sliders.

Edit: Wow. I really like the word "specifically."

Well, to see what Disney is really up to, you can go to Disney Springs for free. They're not dicking around. There are periodic loudspeaker announcements about masks, and signs that say we'll ask you to leave everywhere. It's very un-Disney-like. But it works. With no Fastpass, limited capacity and apparently good queue management, I'm comfortable with it.

As for the science for kids, the illness and death risk has a similar profile to flu, oddly enough, but it's also way more contagious, so net risk is certainly higher. He's been at school since January, and my concern was more about his ability to use a mask more than anything (because of the ASD). He does just fine. You're outside 90% of the time, and the other 10%, you're in a building with ridiculous air conditioning blowing on you at all times. There has been little community spread among cast members.

The risk is not zero, but it doesn't seem that high either. Again, if it's like Springs, that's probably the most compliant public place I've been to anywhere.

I think your decision about taking your kids to a park are going to depend on your own variables and they may differ from Jeff's. I imagine you're going to get as many different answers as there are those who respond to your question.

Since my kids have been doing in-person school since August, we decided to do Universal for Spring Break. We're glad we did. It was the closest to normal fun that we've had in a long time.

I want to say we have had four individual visits to the parks this past year: Epcot twice, MK and the Studios once each. Two adults, a 17 year old who turned 18 and my 15 year old. None of us were vaccinated on our trips. We wore masks and were, by and large, happy with the 35% capacity and strict enforcement of the Covid protocols at Disney.

As an aside, Old Town and the FunSpot next door were an unmitigated disaster and we didn't last 15 minutes there.

As Jeff said, Disney does mess around. On our first visit we were leaving Epcot at the end of the night. Nobody was around us for 50 feet, at least. I suggested a quick photo without our masks with Spaceship Earth behind us and no sooner had I pulled my mask down than a cast member came out of nowhere to direct me to put the mask back on.

Queues are properly spaced...leading to long exterior lines that sometimes stretch into adjacent lands/countries...but they move quickly by and large. The notable absence of Fastpass (other than intermittent allowances for what I assume were riders that were caught in a breakdown...or VIPs) was a breath of fresh air.

The absence of live entertainment is also notable...and unwelcome. That is the reason we chose to pass on AK since some of it's best attractions are shows.

I offered the family Universal or Sea World. The kids looked at the experiences their friends were having...which appeared to suggest less stringent enforcement of protocols...and they chose to skip those parks.

I felt safer at Disney than I have felt in other circumstances. I went to a professional hockey game and, while the seating was safe, the hallways and concession areas were a little out of control. Nobody asked me to go back.

Disney does permit photos without masks now.

Jeff said:

Oh, I forgot to mention, we're VIP assholders again at WDW. We're vaccinated, and pretty comfortable with what they're doing while my 11-year-old is waiting for the trials to conclude.

I guess this means they are now selling new passes. I wasn't aware they had pulled the trigger on that yet.

It doesn't mean that. As best I can tell, there is some criteria regarding previous passholders who cancelled last year that they're not really advertising. I don't think they'll sell a new pass.

Anecdotes are anecdotes and there’s a lot of bias.

I think Universal and Disney both do a pretty good job of encouraging mask wearing and social distancing with announcements, signs, markings, etc. Over the last month Universal had enforcement folks absolutely everywhere including the parking garage but in reality I’m not really sure they make a difference. People know the rules. They’re told to wear their mask correctly, they do it, then like children as soon as they are out of sight they pull it down again.

On ET I shared the ride with a dad who had to be told by the ride op in the loading station to wear his mask over his nose. While on the ride he pulled it down and they called him out over the ride’s audio system on two separate occasions.

At Epcot on three separate rides I rode with people who pulled their masks down during the ride only to put it back on as soon as we were pulling back into the station.

One thing I absolutely hate about Disney’s approach is the pointless plexiglass partitions. I noticed them on Runaway Railway, Rise of the Resistance, and Smugglers Run, but the absolute worst were Living With the Land and Frozen Ever After. You can’t see anything through them and Frozen’s get wet and foggy.

Universal uses plexiglass on two rides that I can remember; Fast and Furious and Kong.

Disney cut the price of their masks in half. Changes coming to mask requirements? An interesting thing with Disney’s queue management is that they ask people to finish their food or drink before entering the indoor queue so they’re already setup for masks to be optional outside, required inside.

Orange County will ease mask restrictions based on percentage of people vaccinated and aggregate positive test rates now, but I'm not sure if the parks will necessarily respond to those changes, given the outside tourist nature of the business.

Michigan announced specific triggers for relaxing restrictions:

Two weeks after 4.5 million Michiganders have received their first vaccine dose (55% of the eligible population), the state will lift requirements that employers mandate employees work remotely where feasible.

Two weeks after 4.9 million Michiganders have received their first vaccine dose (60% of the eligible population), the state will increase indoor capacity for sporting events, conference centers, banquet halls and other similar facilities to 25%. The state will also increase capacity limits at gyms to 50%, and lift curfews on restaurants and bars.

Two weeks after 5.3 million Michiganders have received their first vaccine dose (65% of the eligible population), the state will lift all indoor capacity restrictions and relax limits on social gatherings.

Two weeks after 5.7 million Michiganders have received their first vaccine dose (70% of the eligible population), the state will rescind the health department's face mask and gathering order and stop issuing similar rules "unless unanticipated circumstances arise."

A potential issue with tying the easing of restrictions to vaccine levels is what happens if they never get to those %s? At some point their case numbers are going to drop and the fine folks in Michigan will storm the capital building again demanding that the restrictions be lifted.

Universal is no longer playing the "Thank you for your cooperation during these unprecedented times" announcements as you enter from the parking garage.

Shades said:
...the fine folks in Michigan will storm the capital building again demanding that the restrictions be lifted.

They can stick their arms with the J&J as they do.

Benefit of setting out objective thresholds is it reduces constant questions about when are we opening back up. Today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? You can just point to the thresholds and report progress towards reaching them.

Also can reduce issues of favoritism. You opened up to let this event or another happen but couldn't let my event happen 4 days earlier.

If you don't meet the thresholds, you can change the requirements to lift restrictions. If cases are low it will make sense to do so. But if you haven't met the thresholds and cases are still high, you shouldn't change the thresholds.

Michigan thresholds still have free rider risk. Works if you reach herd immunity. If you don't seems like it would be better, from pure encouragement stand point, to have thresholds for people who have been fully vaccinated. Encourages people to get vaccinated and people they know will encourage them too to reach given thresholds.

Not sure if the high case count in Michigan will serve to increase people willing to get vaccines. As we have discussed over the 4 years of this thread, sometimes people change their thinking/approach when it hits closer to home.

Apparently there is consideration in Ohio to switch from case counts to vaccination numbers to determine when to lift madates.

But it's possible the orders could be lifted sooner than Ohio meets the 50 per 100,000 threshold.

Ohio lawmakers overrode DeWine's veto of Senate Bill 22, which goes into effect June 23. The law will let lawmakers reject or modify any state health order as soon as it's given, and let the legislature extend or end states of emergencies.

DeWine has also said the state is exploring switching to using vaccination rates instead of the statewide case rate to determine when to lift the health orders. In neighboring Kentucky, most restrictions will be lifted once 2.5 million residents get at least their first shot.

Yea, Dewine started mulling this over a couple weeks ago when the #s in Ohio went through a slight bump only to start trending back down again now.

If the trend holds, even with vaccine #s slowing, it is entirely possible that we (in Ohio) could hit that 50/100,000 by that late June date. For two weeks (as the rule is stated)? Maybe not, but at least at that very low threshold.

Yeah, that general time frame (the 4th of July-ish) seems to repeatedly come up in conversation in regards to goals or reopening or whatever.

I thought it was Easter 2020