Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

That's definitely true. And the tree hugger in me is distressed by all the single-use plastic generated from takeout.

There are still restaurants nearby that are serving on disposable plates and cups at their restaurant. It’s so dumb.

Indoor dining is where we drew our line. We traveled the **** out the late summer/ fall/ winter/ spring but never ate inside. Even on our ski trips.

Tonight was fine. Felt normal after the first five minutes.

One thing we’ve noticed now that dining in has resumed is how expensive it is to eat out. And pre-pandemic we did it a lot. Even though I seem to be racking up 150-200/wk at the grocery, it seems we still have more money than before.
Oh, and the alchohol at home is cheaper and the pour is a lot better....

eightdotthree said:

There are still restaurants nearby that are serving on disposable plates and cups at their restaurant. It’s so dumb.

Yes, I called out Pei Wei for this, and their response was dumb.

That’s a real dumb response. The paper plates don’t just float their way to your table and never get washed with scalding hot water.

They used to have actual plates and silverware, which, yes, they presumably washed between uses.

eightdotthree: "That's a real dumb response"

Pei Wei: "I know you are but what am I?"

We ate at Cheesecake Factory for the first time last year because my son had a gift card. They tried to do the no menu thing with us telling us to scan the code at the desk before they led us to a table. My phone is old and cheap and doesn't do QR codes, my younger son doesn't have his own phone so apparently they wanted 3 people to order looking at one phone. They were giving us some attitude about it. Our actual server brought us menus after we asked and gave no attitude after seeing us struggling with 3 people looking at one phone. The menu was covered in plastic, totally washable so obviously the people standing around up front just didn't want to take the 30 seconds needed to wipe them down after we used them and for the price of the food there I found that pretty annoying.

I'm not an obsessive environmentalist but as someone who avoids disposable things just out of habit from being raised frugally the crazy amount of disposable everything that is getting tossed around lately just feels insane.

Reading the 40-page Cheesecake Factory menu on a phone seems pretty annoying.

Yeah, middle aged vision, ADHD and never been there before so no clue what they even had to offer. I was not a happy camper before we got actual menus.

hambone said:

Reading the 40-page Cheesecake Factory menu on a phone seems pretty annoying.

This is everything wrong with cheesecake in one sentence.

If a restaurant expects me to read their menu on a mobile device, they'd darned well better have public wifi. And the menu had better be designed so I can actually read it. That means no PDF's of ledger-size pages of 9-point type...

Now that we know that surfaces are not a likely vector for COVID-19, can we have our menus and table service items back?

I've noticed a whole lot of businesses have adopted or tried to adopt a vast array of consumer-hostile practices using the pandemic as an excuse. Like all these fast food joints not just with closed dining rooms, but running mobile-order only and online payment only, or cashless. These things are not about protecting anyone; it's about not trusting your front line staff to handle orders and cash. And if your business practices are so messed up that you can't trust your staff to not steal from the cash drawer, you probably don't deserve my business. Or anyone else's.

(And in case you are wondering...no, I haven't eaten or played a game at Waldameer since they went cashless.)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The McDonald’s in town still hasn’t opened their dining room. The owner was chatting it up and said business is basically the same just all in DT now. It is cheaper for them to keep the dining room closed and focus on DT only. No counter staff, less cleaning. Etc.

Online ordering is why I have a job, so don't hate on that. I vastly prefer that to calling a human who might write something down incorrectly. You are completely wrong about trust and cash. Most people don't use cash, Dave.

Its a trend I think will continue (replacing customer service with self-help). Increasing minimum wages significantly will help accelerate that.

I hadn't really thought about it until now, but whenever we are getting takeout anywhere (pre-pandemic even); especially when we're at a hotel in a new city, I always prefer online ordering. I would think this is also a benefit from the restaurant end as well. Unless it's someone's specific job to take phone orders, someone taking an online order is removing someone form the staff that could be waiting on a customer, bussing, or doing whatever else their job is in the actual restaurant. Most places now have such detail in their online ordering (even down to requesting a pizza get "lightly baked") that you can fine-tune your order. Then if there's a mistake, guess what? Both ends of the conversation have exactly what was ordered.

Scanning the menu to read on my phone while actually sitting in the restaurant? No thanks. It would be better to go to the restaurants website on your phone, which would presumably be better designed for viewing on a mobile device. Only had this experience once, and it was literally a PDF of the menu. Not even someone with 20/20 vision could navigate that with any sense of ease.

I like online/in person kiosk ordering because I'm almost always the "I don't want the sauce on it" guy and I know the ticket that goes to the kitchen will reflect that.

I've been watching this website since last summer in the weeks approaching our flight to Miami. (I think I've linked it a few times in this thread)

This is the least red I've seen this map since I started watching it nearly daily last summer.

Also, it still doesn't seem like the states that opened or relaxed things fared any worse than states that kept (or are keeping) a tighter reign on things the last few months.

No real points, I'm just down to these ideas in my head regarding the whole pandemic.

I don't support any of his politics, but I'll add this to the conversation

https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1391484611482562560

Opening things up fixed things, obviously. McConaughey 2022! 😂