Walt Disney World will start opening July 11 with Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom

We outright cancelled our passes with a refund request. We had a little over five months left, so prorated that's about a grand for the three of us. That will be weird to not have passes for the first time in seven years, but:

• The product has fundamentally changed. If the reservation system is anything like what they already use, it's hard to land access. As passholders, we've been able to get on things like Rise of The Resistance and Flight of Passage exactly once.
• Let's be real, people coming from all over the country when the net transmission rate is still over 1.00 will not likely be positive.
• The forthcoming Food & Wine Festival, if they have it at all, logistically would be so bastardized as to not be fun at all. I don't see how they run the concerts either.

We'll be happy to re-up once things improve, but it's not worth it right now.

I am curious about what will be operating and what will not. In particular, the stage actors' union Actors Equity is basically telling actors not to go to work, and I believe they represent at least some of the performers at WDW. I don't know who is included besides performers in actual stage performances, but potentially it includes actors in attractions like the Star Wars area.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/theater/actors-equity-theater-re...virus.html

On the other hand, if they recall furloughed actors and those performers don't return, I would assume that complicates the agreement that was reached prior to the furlough.

Stage managers for some of the shows are Equity as well. Just by calling them "cast members," you could technically consider everything performance, but I don't think there's a lot of Equity reach outside of the stage shows. I'm curious if any of the stage hands at all are IATSE.

AEA covers dancers at stages that do high kicks (Castle Stage), lifts (Lion King), or stunts (Nemo) to name a few. It also covers any type of voice actor/improv such as Monsters Inc, Citizens of Hollywood, Main Street actors, Voices of Liberty, etc. Stage Managers are not covered at Disney as they are just your normal Entertainment Managers who may learn to call a show. IATSE covers ALL Technicians, Costumers, and Cosmo on Disney property. About 75% of Local 631 is made up from Disney with the other 25% being Bob Carr, Dr. Phillips, and the King Center.

Wow, I didn't now IATSE had that large a footprint. I could swear the SM at Nemo that we met said he was Equity, but I could wrong.

It's actually one of the largest IATSE locals simply because of Disney. The SM you met may have once been an Equity SM before coming to Disney, or he meant he was an Equity dancer before making the jump to SM. Since the Stage Managers are just Entertainment Managers with a SM skill at a show, they are salaried and can't be a union Cast Member. However he could still technically be an Equity member but only for the purpose of performing outside gigs around Orlando so that may have been what he meant. Do you by chance remember his name? I have a lot of friends who are SMs around Disney, including Nemo.

No, it was a few years ago. My wife is a non-active member, former SM in NY, so they had a conversation and I was kind of just listening.

The mask thing is a dealbreaker for me. I'm not walking around a WDW theme park all day in the heat and humidity wearing a mask.

All the other restrictions I can deal with.

Jeff said:

• The product has fundamentally changed. If the reservation system is anything like what they already use, it's hard to land access. As passholders, we've been able to get on things like Rise of The Resistance and Flight of Passage exactly once

That's interesting to me, Our last trip was in 2015 and I did get feeling it was harder to get on 'stuff' even then.

In the podcast days I recall you being very positive about Fast Pass, has it lost all its shine?

FP in those days was before NGE and paper based. It was really easy to have a running stack, all day. It's different when you're local and just want to pop in for a couple of rides. The algorithm is weird, because a friend going solo can often get a slot day-of for Flight of Passage, but trying to get it for a family of three, forget it, even 30 days out. Resort guests get them all.

That said, it's still a pretty good system. Capacity improvements have made things better.

And I long for the days of old with paper Fastpasses. If you were willing to get there early you could get anything you wanted. None of this staring at my phone refreshing the app on the monorail hoping to snag someone's cancelled Space Mountain. And don't get me started on how monster capacity rides like Pirates, Haunted Mansion and Spaceship Earth that were always walkon to 10-15 minute waits even on a more crowded day now sport 30-45 minute waits as the norm.

There are ways to get FoP fastpasses within 30 days for larger parties (knowing the drop times, using a reservation scraper like FP4Me.com, banging on the app. all day etc.) but those are certainly not normal use cases.

From everything I’ve been reading, it looks like Disney is moving closer to Gonch’s prediction of “reserve everything and create your itinerary before you leave the house.” How they prioritize different reservation will be interesting.

You are saying Gonch predicted Covid-19?

Ugh, don't give him credit for that. His head will get bigger than his balls.

*poking my head in*

Did someone say Gonch was right!?

(and the Gonch's head grew three sizes that day)