Cruise and Theme Park Operational Updates due to Coronavirus

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I may be remembering wrong, but aren’t you the one who said you have no intention of ever going to WDW? If so, I find your obsession with them odd.
I have been to Disney quite a few times and was planning on taking my little next year. The attitude from some Disney fans and how Disney has turned me off of going for awhile. I don't have an obsession with Disney. I love all amusement parks. Its what my vacations every summer revolve around. I like to talk about all parks. This just happens to be a Disney centric one.
 
Spare me the personal responsibility part here. Disney has a responsibility to the customers they have took money from and their shareholders to at least let people know how long they are sure they will be closed for. Indefinitely was fine for a while, but we are past that now. Announce a date you know you will be closed until no matter what and state the situation may require the closure to be extended after that.

My trip isn’t until the end of September so what is happening right now isn’t impacting me, but I can only imagine if I had vacation booked starting in the last half of June and paid for it with gift cards before any of this started. Disney has been in procession of thousands of dollars of your money possibly for over year. You can say cancel, but that doesn’t get you your cash back. It goes back on the gift card. Those people deserve more certainty than indefinitely and that joke of update on their blog at this point.

If a guest made the choice to pay an entire trip off with gift cards prior to their PIF date, that's on them. Anyone with a late June package reservation isn't required, at this point, to pay off their trip until 7 days prior to check-in. Room-only, it's 5 days prior to check-in. Buying thousands in Disney gift cards is risky business, pandemic or no pandemic. It's a terrible investment, IMHO.
 
If a guest made the choice to pay an entire trip off with gift cards prior to their PIF date, that's on them. Anyone with a late June package reservation isn't required, at this point, to pay off their trip until 7 days prior to check-in. Room-only, it's 5 days prior to check-in. Buying thousands in Disney gift cards is risky business, pandemic or no pandemic. It's a terrible investment, IMHO.
Agreed - but then there are people like me. Trip planned for Easter, paid in full first week of March. We decided to modify our trip to MDW, and then late july. The money we already paid shifted between reservations. There may be someone people like that.
 
We have a huge amount sitting in limbo right now due to our reservation being a point rental. It is what it is. We are rectifying it and dealing with it and I’m pretty confident we’ll come out okay but it was our choice to go that route and have a much harder time getting money back.
 


If a guest made the choice to pay an entire trip off with gift cards prior to their PIF date, that's on them. Anyone with a late June package reservation isn't required, at this point, to pay off their trip until 7 days prior to check-in. Room-only, it's 5 days prior to check-in. Buying thousands in Disney gift cards is risky business, pandemic or no pandemic. It's a terrible investment, IMHO.
I have around $3500 in gift cards that I was going to use to pay for my resorts in March and had used to pay for hard ticket events as well. I had just bought $1500 4 days before we were leaving for WDW. 2 days after that,they announced they were closing.
You know what? That’s all on me. I know the rules on gift cards. I like saving the 5% and I can afford to have the money tied up. Anyone who uses gift cards should know how they work and what the risks are.
 
I never imagined they'd be closed this long when they did, so my guess is probably a poor one, but for now I'm going with September for theme parks.

I've been thinking September for awhile so the latest rumor rings true for me (not that it IS true, just that it resonates with what I already privately thought).

Universal really blindsided me too. I mean I can't even take my dog to the dog park here, parks themselves, like the kinds with trees, haven't even been open for two weeks, I don't even know if Fort Lauderdale will be on phase 2, but they will be open churning guests through dark rides. When I mentioned the Hogwarts Express earlier, it really got me thinking, can they even cycle the air in those compartments? Every seven minutes people in, people out. You know that will be a break when the masks come off.

I realize some people are not concerned about the virus and I respect that everyone must choose for themselves what level of risk they are comfortable with, but to me a theme park that I've been to dozens of times and will be back in the future just isn't worth that, for many reasons. I have relatives that I interact with in high risk groups. I don't usually go to the theme parks in the summer anyway (heat plus crowds with kids out of school, what could be worse for a childless millennial Floridian) so it's not much of a sacrifice.
 
To add this is rumor. Some of it does make sense and could very well be true. Another source replied and said that the firework issue isn’t much of an issue and that the August 31st date isn’t correct.

I definitely think Disney wanted to open later than they might now due to Universal pushing forward.
The Disney can’t match unemployment thing is complete BS. It isn’t an issue for Disney when it comes to getting employees to return to work. If Disney recalls an employee and they don’t return to work, that employee no longer collects unemployment.
 


Seems like there were no crowds at DS today according to a handful of reports. It’s not that surprising. Wearing masks in 90+ degree heat to go to eat and shop sounds terrible to me. Not to start the great mask debate (seriously!!!), but I wanted to share something from personal experience. It was in the 90s here today with what felt like 1000% humidity. I wore my mask on my handful of errands. It was soooo hot, and sweaty which is making me seriously reconsider if we’ll go this summer with this mask requirement. I’m not saying it isn’t necessary. I’m simply saying I may decide I don’t want to do it and not go.
Same here. I was outside but didn’t go anywhere so didn’t wear the mask but thought yeah that’s not gonna work 😔. Today is the first day it’s been more typical hot & humid.
 
I noted in a previous post. He is a poster/source on the WDWmagic forums. A pretty reliable place for info. If you have spent any time on the rumors and news forum here you should see that many of the rumors come from there and many end up being true.
And for what it’s worth, other than the 8/31 date, the rest seems pretty likely of what happened.
 
Agreed - but then there are people like me. Trip planned for Easter, paid in full first week of March. We decided to modify our trip to MDW, and then late july. The money we already paid shifted between reservations. There may be someone people like that.

Would Disney provide a full refund of ticket and resort payments if you or someone else in your situation decided to cancel? Or are you only provided with the amount you paid credited towards a new reservation?
 
The Disney can’t match unemployment thing is complete BS. It isn’t an issue for Disney when it comes to getting employees to return to work. If Disney recalls an employee and they don’t return to work, that employee no longer collects unemployment.

You would probably be surprised to here that the unemployment office is inefficent at best and these people would likely still get paid.
 
Would Disney provide a full refund of ticket and resort payments if you or someone else in your situation decided to cancel? Or are you only provided with the amount you paid credited towards a new reservation?
Refunds would come back to method of payment. So i personally would get it back to my CC. But in reference to OP, I paid my resort in full prior to the cancelation was announced. If i paid with gift cards, it would have came back to those gift cards.
 
No she knows, but when you call, you should get a better answer. That’s unacceptable.
I get what you are saying and I do agree that it is frustrating. However, I think part of why they have been slower cancelling DVC is because if, by some chance, they can open resorts in two weeks from x date, then they don’t want to cause more constraints on DVC availability by having extra points in the system when these points could feasibly have been used. I could definitely see DVC trying to avoid have any extra points carried over to the next year. The timeshare company (in this case, DVC) will do its best to make sure that timeshare owners are able to use as many of their points/weeks as possible in order to avoid glutting the system for the next year (or more).

DVC contracts only guarantee access to the DVC resorts and nothing else, not even that theme parks or DS will be open or in existence. I guess that, technically, they could open up DVC resorts and nothing else and expect owners to stay as booked. But that makes them look like an evil, money hungry corporation and I believe they’re trying to avoid that. I think they’re trying to make it so as many DVC owners as possible can keep their plans and enjoy whatever is open...but that necessitates cancelling with much less notice than cash resorts.

I’m not saying that is their rationale or that it’s right but I could definitely see that as part of it. Maybe I’m just overthinking this. I don’t know.
 
I would be completely shocked if Disney truly had absolutely ZERO idea Universal was going to open on June 5. The theme park execs meet every single week, there has been talk for weeks about reopening proposals, we all knew last week Universal was going to propose this week, and it would be incredible if the big parks weren't discussing dates and procedures together privately for weeks if not months too. And somehow Disney is "shocked" and now "scrambling" and "having to open to compete with Universal" even though they wanted to open August 31? It makes no sense at all. And to be honest it makes Disney look clueless and caught with their pants down, and now peeking at Universal's notes. This is not the Disney I know.
To me it seems like a little spin. Makes it looked like they all agreed to be more cautious, but UO recklessly went forward with plans to reopen. That’s a better narrative than Disney stringing their customers along while they wait to see what the nba wants to do. Seems like an intentional leak to change the narrative.
 
To me it seems like a little spin. Makes it looked like they all agreed to be more cautious, but UO recklessly went forward with plans to reopen. That’s a better narrative than Disney stringing their customers along while they wait to see what the nba wants to do. Seems like an intentional leak to change the narrative.

Totally my immediate thought too. Disney-engineered leak with their own agenda pushed forward. Wouldn’t be the first time such a thing was suspected. To totally cover bases in the believability stakes, they should have made sure to address NBA and DVC. 😂
 
To me it seems like a little spin. Makes it looked like they all agreed to be more cautious, but UO recklessly went forward with plans to reopen. That’s a better narrative than Disney stringing their customers along while they wait to see what the nba wants to do. Seems like an intentional leak to change the narrative.
Yeah some real pearl clutching by Disney there. Further, if true, I can’t believe the secure circuit was actually the relaunch plan. I say this as someone who used to stay at the Poly annually before being relocated to Orlando - in an economic downturn it’s extremely out of touch to open up Disney to just well off families. How... HOW is that good optics?! You’re better off staying closed than looking like (even if only for a few weeks) you’re a park only for the rich.
 
Just my opinion...it is up to each individual to decide if you want to go on a family vacation to Disney during a pandemic. There really doesn’t seem to be much of a way to prevent germs from spreading in a theme park. Disney should not have to do anything except cap attendance. Most everything else is just providing an illusion of safety.
 
Agreed - but then there are people like me. Trip planned for Easter, paid in full first week of March. We decided to modify our trip to MDW, and then late july. The money we already paid shifted between reservations. There may be someone people like that.

I totally get it. As you mentioned in another post, you can get a full refund up to 30 days prior to check-in (if it's a package) or you can reschedule the reservation for free. If Disney cancels, you get it all back. Who knows, if this continues any further, they may even extend the 1-day cancellation policy that they implemented for guests checking in through June. If people want to really get their knickers in knots over massive amounts of money being tied up in trips and not getting deposits refunded at all (I'm not referring to you, BTW), I invite them to head over to the ABD threads - ABD seems to be intentionally cancelling after PIF dates and you either have to take a credit with expiration dates and caveats or throw thousands and thousands of more dollars at a trip three months out that no one can confirm is even happening. Of all of Disney's travel divisions (WDW/DL, DCL, ABD), WDW and DL are the most flexible and lenient with refunds and modifications. I understand people are frustrated (heck, I had a March 17 trip planned - I get it), but of all the Disney travel divisions, WDTC has done the best job, IMHO, of actually refunding people's money and not playing the "credit" game.
 
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