We were scheduled to visit Walt Disney World last April. Then COVID-19 happened, the parks shut down, and the world went into quarantine. We re-booked for October, unsure of what the rest of 2020 would bring. We held our trip loosely, knowing it was important to keep our family safe. As the calendar inched closer to fall we found ourselves at a crossroads, needing to make a decision about whether we were actually going to follow through with our trip or cancel our reservations.
Would you rather get this information through a video? Scroll to the bottom!
I researched Disney’s safety measures. I read blogs about others’ experiences with wait times and their impressions of the parks’ safety. I weighed the risks and considered whether my kids could actually handle wearing masks in the heat and humidity. And at the end of the day, we decided to go for it.
Below is information about our experience, extra measures we took to reduce our family’s risk, and how I restored some of the Disney magic that was canceled because of the pandemic. But before we get started, I think it’s important that you know a few things about our family:
- Nobody in our home is high-risk. While I understand it’s possible for low-risk individuals to get extremely sick from COVID-19, it’s not likely. If we had high-risk family members, it would have affected our decision to proceed.
- We are not cavalier about this virus. We wear masks, we don’t eat at restaurants, we don’t really do anything outside of the home, and we are selective about our (small) social circle. We carry hand sanitizer everywhere and I’ve got Lysol wipes in my car. So while choosing to go to Disney World during a pandemic may seem like we’re reckless, we’re not. We work hard to minimize our family’s risk but we’re also not in complete lockdown and our goal isn’t to eliminate all possible risk.
- This was our first Disney experience. Ever. So in addition to information about visiting Disney World during a pandemic, you’ll also find general advice and information about your first-time Disney World visit.
Information is current as of October 2020.
DISNEY’S COVID MEASURES
Disney has implemented many safety measures to reduce the risk of virus transmission in the theme parks and Disney Springs:
You must have a reservation. After you purchase tickets, you must make a reservation for your visit. They have reduced capacity and this helps ensure it does not get overcrowded, or that they are turning away visitors at the gate. You’ll need to link your reservation on the My Disney Experience app and then make a reservation for each day you plan to visit a park.
There is no park hopping. Skip the park hopper passes. You can’t use them. You can make a reservation for one park per day only.
Face coverings are mandatory for guests age 2 or older. They are very serious about this, and there is no latitude for even the youngest of guests. If you don’t think your young child will keep a mask on all day, don’t waste your time and money. Cast members approach anyone who isn’t wearing their mask properly covering their mouth AND nose, and I heard them talk to parents frequently about kids – even asking the age of small toddlers to make sure they were under the age of 2.
There are no medical exceptions for mask-wearing. At present, there are ZERO exceptions. Face shields are not an acceptable alternative. You may wear a face shield in ADDITION to a mask, but you may not wear one as your only measure of protection.
They have restrictions on the types of masks. Masks must have 2 layers of breathable fabric and fasten around the head or ears. They must snugly cover the nose and chin. No neck gaiters, no bandanas, and no masks with a vent of any kind. If you show up without an approved mask, there are vending machines where you can purchase a disposable one before you can enter the park.
Temps are taken at the entrance. Everyone in your party gets their temperature taken prior to entering the park. If anyone in your party fails, you step aside to cool down (Florida is hot, after all) and temps are re-taken after a few minutes. If anyone in your party fails a second time, your whole party is denied entry into the park. This was a pretty smooth process (nobody in our family failed even in the heat and humidity), but it was most notably annoying at Disney Springs, where they closed off access and filtered everyone into one entrance spot for screening. It was quite a trek from our bus drop-off to the single-access entry point.
There is no FastPass+. FastPass+ has been eliminated to use the extra queue space to facilitate social distancing. This means you need to wait in line for every ride.
Social distancing markers are everywhere. Waiting to enter the parks. Waiting to get on rides. Waiting to order at restaurants. Waiting to get on the monorail or other transportation. Waiting for Disney photographers. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. You wait behind one line, the person in front of and behind you wait behind their line. There are cast members enforcing that you’re not encroaching on other guests in line. They are a very generous 6 feet (many were 8-12). The drawback is that the lines looked enormous for some rides, spilling out of the traditional queue, snaking down streets and around buildings. The benefit is that because of the distance, you were constantly moving and waits were rarely as long as they appeared. They didn’t feel unreasonable because of the constant motion. And also, you didn’t have other guests crowding you so you didn’t feel claustrophobic in line. It was really nice.
Hand sanitizer is everywhere, too. In fact, I didn’t even need to use the hand sanitizer I packed. Dispensers were at the entrance to each queue. Then again at the front of the line before you got on the ride. And again right after you got off the ride. At each store checkout. At restaurant checkout. Basically anywhere there was a possible touchpoint, there was hand sanitizer.
Ride capacity is reduced. This affects wait times, but not terribly. They separate parties on rides to maintain social distancing. They also clean the rides regularly, which means sometimes you’ll be stuck in a line that doesn’t move for a period of time because they’re cleaning and sanitizing the rides.
There are no shows, parades, fireworks, or character meet-and-greets. Disney wants to eliminate crowds and close gatherings. Occasionally a character appears in a set area, but you can only observe them from a distance. They have also put together “cavalcades,” or mini-parades, of small groups of characters throughout the day (for example a Toy Story cavalcade, Princess cavalcade, Mickey & friends cavalcade), but it’s hit-or-miss as to which ones you’ll see. They don’t publish a schedule of when they’ll appear because they don’t want people to gather in anticipation.
Character dining is severely limited. For all intents and purposes, there is no character dining. However, there are three restaurants (Garden Grill, Topolino’s Terrace, and Hollywood & Vine; Chef Mickey’s will resume Dec. 6) that do offer a modified character dining experience, but because they’re so limited it’s really hard to get in. If you are interested in dining at one of them, be sure to make your reservations 60 days in advance (the maximum dining reservation window right now).
ADDITIONAL MEASURES TO REDUCE OUR FAMILY’S EXPOSURE RISK
It was important to me to reduce our family’s risk as much as possible. Some additional things we did included:
Ordering grocery delivery to our hotel. This was partially about reducing exposure, and partially about convenience. I knew we wouldn’t want to go to breakfast every morning so I ordered groceries (including Pancakes on a Stick) and we just ate breakfast in our room each day.
Ordering Uber Eats for dinner every night. Again, this both reduced our exposure and increased our post-park recovery. I know my family well enough that they wouldn’t want to go sit in a restaurant for dinner after a full day of Disney park fun, so on the bus ride back to our hotel each evening we placed a dinner delivery order and ate in insolation in our room.
Restricting housekeeping access to our room. Our hotel actually eliminated housekeeping services (aside from garbage and towel service) but we took it one step further and put out the “do not disturb” sign each day and just set our wastebasket outside our room. If we needed anything – like towels or toilet paper – we just left a note on the door. This eliminated extra people coming into our room.
Bringing extra masks. I brought plenty of masks for each of our family members. That way if one got wet from sweat, breathing, or a downpour we could swap them out and still stay comfortable. I also brought a box of disposable masks. They’re not nearly as cute as customized Disney masks, but they are more lightweight and cooler. However, they also get wet more quickly and aren’t as comfortable, but it’s nice to have a change of pace once in awhile.
Buying mask adjusters. Masks are most effective when they fit well. Since we’d be wearing them all day (and I didn’t want my kids to be messing with them all the time), I bought a pack of silicone cord adjusters to shorten ear loops when necessary and give everyone the best, most comfortable fit possible.
Buying hats. Masks + sunglasses = foggy glasses. Florida is sunny, but I knew sunglasses could be problematic so I bought us hats to wear. We did still wear our sunglasses occasionally, but had to wear them much less because of the hats.
Giving our ears a break. Not to brag or anything, but this turned out to be my most genius move. I sewed a button on each side of our hats to attach our mask ear loops so our ears didn’t get sore from wearing a mask all day.
Isolating upon our return home. We’re not only concerned about our own safety. We want to look out for those around us, too, and avoid accidental transmission by avoiding contact with others once returning home.
RESTORING SOME OF THE DISNEY MAGIC
I understand that some of the Disney magic was lost because of COVID-19 measures. As first-time visitors, we probably don’t really understand what we were missing and still found it to be a pretty magical experience. But I did a few fun things to try and restore some of the magic and make this an extra-memorable experience.
Matching shirts. I know this isn’t unique, but I had our family wear matching shirts for one of the days. Instead of ordering shirts (because you can never ensure a right fit or might not like the texture of the shirt), I bought us all comfortable, well-fitting shirts on super clearance or at thrift stores and ordered matching iron-on vinyl through Etsy.
Cheap Disney shirts. We haven’t been a “Disney family.” Between the four of us, we owned one Disney-themed shirt. I didn’t want to make us match every day, but I did think it would be fun to have Disney shirts for each day in the parks. But I also didn’t want to buy a ton of brand-new shirts. So, for several weeks before our trip I kept my eye out for thrift-store Disney shirts for each of us (also checking online secondhand marketplaces like ThredUp and Mercari) so we all had a fun shirt to wear on each of our park days!
Disney masks. These were all from Etsy. When we wanted to wear them two days in a row I washed them in the sink and hung them to dry overnight.
Disney nails. My 7-year-old daughter and I painted our nails (at home) with a Disney theme the night before our trip. Were they perfect? No. Did she love them? Yes.
Matching PJ’s. My family knew about the shirts and masks. But on our first night in the hotel I surprised them by presenting us with matching Disney pajama pants and t-shirts. It was fun!
WHAT ARE DISNEY WAIT TIMES LIKE DURING THE PANDEMIC?
When Disney World re-opened in July, reports were amazing. You could walk up to the most popular rides. A couple months later, waits were still minimal. But by mid-October (when we were there), word had gotten out that Disney was doing a great job reducing risk and the park experience was as good as ever. Wait times have increased – especially now that schools have rolling fall breaks.
We used the My Disney Experience app to track wait times. For the most part, they were pretty accurate. A couple were longer (mostly due to cleaning delays). Many were shorter. I’d say our average wait time for a ride was 30-45 minutes. Our absolutely longest wait was 70 minutes (Slinky Dog Dash), and we waited an hour for a couple of other popular rides. But as I mentioned above, it didn’t seem awful because the socially distanced lines were constantly moving. Any ride that listed a wait time of 40 minutes or less seemed like a super easy and quick wait. We followed this guide to help us decide which rides to prioritize in the morning (hint: they’re not the same as non-pandemic times) and it served us really well.
ADVICE FROM A FIRST-TIMER
Now that I’ve given you the run-down of visiting Disney World during the pandemic, here are a few general items I think first-timers should know:
Make a list of your ride priorities. It helped us immensely to have a “to-do” list to avoid getting distracted by all the ride possibilities. We certainly went on rides that weren’t on our list, but having a priority list helped us to stay on task and make sure we got the things done that we really wanted to do. Since we didn’t have FastPass+ rides to anchor our schedule, a list of “must-do” rides helped us instead.
Bring food. What I’m about to say will probably anger Disney loyalists, but as first-timers our priority was not the food. We didn’t make any in-park dining reservations, didn’t want to waste time sitting down and eating, and didn’t want to wander around figuring out what to eat. Our first day in the parks we brought snacks but planned to eat in the park, but felt like we took a lot of time away from our focus – the rides! Subsequent days we bought sandwich fixings from our hotel shop and made an entire bread loaf of PBJ sandwiches, which we ate while waiting in line. This was amazing. Sure, we bought snacks here and there when we ran across something that looked good, but we didn’t have to sideline our day to eat. Now, if we go back our visit will probably be more leisurely. We’ll know which rides we love, which we’re fine to skip, and probably take time for a relaxing lunch. But for our first visit we wanted to experience as many of the rides as possible, and by packing our own lunch we were able to maximize that time.
Pack ponchos. It’s Florida. It will rain. You can get ponchos at Dollar Tree. The ones at Disney cost much more than $1. The end. Addendum: You might want to splurge on a youth-sized one if you have littles as the $1 ones are one-size-fits-all.
Pack an umbrella. We lucked out as most of our days were overcast. However, since lines snake way farther out of the rides than usual, an umbrella is handy 1) if it rains or 2) to block out the sun.
Be aware of park hours when selecting your parks. We’re from the west coast. Disney World is on the east coast. I knew I didn’t want to get up when my body felt like it was 4am for our first day in the parks. For our first day, I picked the latest-opening park to make a reservation simply because I thought that would make the day go best.
Plan a rest day. We spent a full 7 days at Disney World, but only went to the parks for 4 of those days. Our first full day was a pool day/grocery delivery day. Then we spent two days in the parks, and had a rest/pool day mid-week. Then we had 2 more days in the parks. Don’t push yourself. We were more than ready for a day “off” after 2 full days of play. BONUS: pools are practically abandoned during the day because all the other guests are out in the parks!
Prep your family. We had a recurring joke in our family while we were at Disney: “Are you wearing your pants?” What this meant was that we all needed to put on our “patient pants” and “positive pants” each morning, knowing the day would be full of activity and (likely) frustrating situations. Everyone knew we’d need to spend time waiting in lines, wear masks, and be flexible. I’m happy to report we made it through the entire stay without angry outbursts or tears!
Bring a mini purse or fanny pack. I had a husband carrying around a backpack, so I figured I didn’t need to bring anything and I could be hands-free. Wrong! It meant I had to find him anytime I wanted to buy anything or take a picture with my phone or when my daughter and I stayed to close down the Magic Kingdom after he’d gone home, we didn’t have ponchos when the skies opened up. I bought a little cross-body purse and it made all the difference.
Buy the Memory Maker. I get it. It’s expensive. But I didn’t want to be busy taking a bunch of pictures. I wanted to be present with my family and have fun. This allowed us to capture memories automatically.
Buy Magic Bands. We didn’t stay at a Disney hotel. {We stayed on property, but at Shades of Green Resort. Read more about our experience here.} This means we didn’t automatically get magic bands. Their usefulness is limited since you can’t pay for things with them and FastPass+ isn’t being used, but we did find it handy to have our tickets pre-loaded on them when we went into the park, and our Memory Maker pictures were automatically sent to our account through RFID technology through the bands. Not 100% essential right now, but definitely nice to have.
Don’t try to do it on a budget. This is a Disney vacation. This is BIG. If you’re stressed about money, it’s not going to be as fun. This doesn’t mean you have to go all-out, but I do recommend generously budgeting so you have plenty of discretionary money for the extras. Let yourself be the “yes” mom at Disney – “yes” to snacks, “yes” to (reasonable) souvenirs, etc. If you tend to have high financial anxiety, review your vacation budget in advance so you know exactly what you have to spend, then keep a running tally on a spreadsheet on your phone of all your spending. This will help you know what you’ve spent so you can do so with the freedom of knowing you aren’t going over your allotted amount.
SHOULD YOU GO TO DISNEY WORLD DURING THE PANDEMIC?
You know what? We had a great time. I know there were some things we didn’t experience, but I don’t feel like we missed out. I felt safe, our family wasn’t bothered by the additional restrictions and mask-wearing, and if I could go back in time and choose to do it again, I’d do everything exactly the same.
But should you? That’s up to your family. Would I go if we were high-risk? Probably not. Would I go if I had a 2- to 4-year-old that I’d have to fight with to keep a mask on all day? Nope. Would I go if my kids struggled with self-regulation or overstimulation and would fall apart at 4pm even WITHOUT a mask? Highly unlikely. Would I go if I had a high level of anxiety about COVID? Not worth the stress on my mental health.
But apart from these things, I don’t think COVID alone is a reason to cancel your Disney World vacation. In addition to the precautions in the parks, there are additional things you can do to reduce your risk and exposure. And while it’s far from ZERO risk, to me it still felt reasonably safe. People were compliant and didn’t try to sneak their masks down below their nose. Guests understood that visiting right now is a privilege, and they have a responsibility to keep others safe. And to be honest, I thought it was a collection of the healthiest people on the planet; despite seeing so many people over the course of a week, I think I heard 2 people sneeze.
So should you go? It’s up to you. But for my family, I’m very glad that we did.
PIN THIS!
Watch the video below!
