By TREVIN BRANDT
Staff Writer
412 days after Disneyland closed its gates due to the then mysterious Covid-19 pandemic, Disneyland is back in business. A reservation and valid ticket is required for entry. Disney is taking major steps in limiting the spread of the virus including doing temperature checks, enforcing social distancing requirements, requiring face masks, limiting the capacity to 25%, and only allowing California residents into the park. On top of this, they are highly encouraging the use of the Disneyland mobile app to make dining reservations and purchases so there is limited contact.
People who have visited the park already have said the park feels very empty due to the capacity limit. This limit can be raised to 35% if Orange county moves into the Yellow Tier. California Governor Gavin Newsom has also expressed his intentions of removing the tier system entirely by June 15th if his vaccination threshold is met. This wouldn’t mean Disneyland would go back to normal overnight considering that in Florida there are no covid restrictions, yet Disney maintains a capacity limit and face-covering requirement at Disney World, but it would most likely allow non-California residents into the park.
Many changes unrelated to covid have been made to the parks over the past year. Avenger’s Campus was set to open in the Summer of 2020, but is now going to open June 4th 2021. Google Earth’s satellite footage shows that the land is complete and ready to go. Jungle Cruise is closed due to Disney’s efforts to create rides that are less racially sensitive. Splash Mountain is still open, yet they plan on closing it soon to make changes for the same reason. Matterhorn Mountain is the most popular ride to be closed in the parks at the moment. There is no official reporting on why it is closed, but it is rumored to be because the ride is structurally unstable. These rumors come only a year and a half after a chunk of the mountain collapsed due to its old and worn out nature.
Before Disneyland closed in 2020, Disney had just opened their newest smash-hit ride: Rise of the Resistance. It utilized a virtual queue due to its massive popularity. The virtual queue still exists today, and even has two reservation opening times instead of one, 7:00 and 12:00. Just like before covid, the “boarding pass” reservations are all being fully booked seconds after 7:00 and 12:00.
Guests and cast members are very happy about the reopening of this park, and see it as the beginning of the post-covid era.