Disney Springs is OPEN! (for phase one)

by Barry Doyle

I enjoyed a delicious meal at The Boathouse restaurant at Disney Springs today.

Let me say that again in case you missed it.  I ate a meal at The Boathouse.  In Disney Springs.  In Walt Disney World.  Yes, part of Walt Disney World has opened its doors.

As of Wednesday, May 20th, Disney Springs has reopened for phase one.  There are over forty retail outlets and restaurants, and you can walk around the entire property.  You can read more at https://www.disneysprings.com/reopening/  More stores and restaurants will be opening on Saturday, the 23rd, and on next Wednesday, May 27th, the World of Disney, D-Luxe Burger, and the Marketplace Co-op will open.  Next Wednesday is significant because those are the first Disney owned/operated stores/restaurant to open, the others being run by operating partners of Walt Disney World.

So, what does a reopened Disney Springs look like?  Not very different, just a few restrictions and a lot fewer people, at least at first.  Official info is available at the link above, but let me give you my take.

Parking: The website claimed Disney Springs would open from 10:00am to 10:00pm, and parking would be restricted to the Orange and Lime garages.  When I showed up, I had to go past Springs and make a U-turn because the Orange Garage flyover entrance was not open, and Lime had not yet opened up.  I parked on the fourth floor, not because it was busy, but because that’s where I always park so I can find my car later.  There were not even a dozen cars up there, with hundreds of spots on the lower floors also available.  The rooftop parking was closed off, and unnecessary.

Once you park, you make your way to the 2nd floor, and I was confused because the escalators seemed to be backwards as I made my way down.  It was later when I came back that I realized they had switched them up so that arriving put you at the “Temperature Check” area whether you came up from one or down from three or four.

Health Check:  They check your temperature before you leave the parking structure.  Not what I expected, but good idea.  It keeps you in the shade if there is a wait and is easier to turn you around without exposing others.  Here is where you need to start getting used to the “Do Not Stand Here” signs on the ground.  They have them near almost every establishment.  In some places, they have six-foot-long “posters” on the ground.  Do not stand on them.  Stand between them.  In other places, they have white/red striped markers (like a railroad crossing bar) on the ground, set six feet apart.  Those, I guess, you stand on.  Or near.  Or slightly behind.  Or somewhere in the vicinity of and if you have eight people in your party you must cram them into that tiny area and not let them encroach on someone else.  Consistency would have been nice…but their hearts were in the right place, so I’ll put my feet in the right place.  Or in the vicinity of the right place.

Lines:  I arrived about 10:30am, and there were lines out the door at a few of the stores already.  A phrase you might expect around Christmas or when a limited-edition item is being offered and the first one hundred people are looking to sell it on eBay.  But it was because the stores had a lower limit on the number of customers they could have in them at one time.  All the stores had the “ground posters” (that seems as good a name as any), telling them where to line up.  Some of the stores had a “counter” out front.  No, not a flat surface in your kitchen, someone counting warm bodies entering and exiting the store.  The Count from Sesame Street has a job until his street reopens.

Vera Bradley had a line outside, but it’s a relatively small store.  Basin didn’t have a line, but it had “counters” on hand in case a line needed to be maintained.  Sugarboo & Co. had a line.  I’m not even sure what they sell, but some people were more curious than me to find out.  And oddly, the “Free People” store did not have a line outside.  Was it because people were enjoying being outside as free people for the first time in a couple months and were afraid to go back inside?  Was it because they’d had enough of the people already in their homes and didn’t need any others, even if they were free?  Or was it because there is a joke or social commentary in there somewhere that they couldn’t quite face?

There was a consistent line at The Boathouse while I was inside having lunch that had usually eight or ten parties waiting.  There was a line wrapped around the building for the Earl of Sandwich.  Nobody seemed to mind.

Piggly Wiggly:  Once upon a time, there was a market (before they became super-sized) that figured that if they could get you to walk past everything, you would buy more things.  It was named Piggly-Wiggly.  Same reason the milk and bread are at the back of today’s supermarket.  They had an entrance door, then you walked up and down every aisle before you got out of the maze and could check out and leave.  I only mention this because a few of the stores have entrance only doors and exit only doors now.  Of course, I don’t expect they will be putting you into a maze internally, but they are trying to both streamline the choke points, and allow them to count the “ins” and “outs” properly so they don’t exceed capacity.  I noticed this at The World of Disney, where the entrance is on the side with Amorette’s Patisserie and The Daily Poutine (notice I didn’t mention Volcom or Uniqlo, thus establishing I prefer the restaurants to the shopping).  The Marketplace Co-op will be the entrance, and Tren-D the exit.  The open-air Pin Trader store also had entrance and exit marks, so I don’t know how that will fly.

The Food:  Beyond the lines and the masks (yes, you have to wear one) and the social distancing, it seemed that most of what was open was operating pretty much as normal.  But social distancing extended into The Boathouse where I ate.  They had every other table fitted with chairs, keeping people apart.  They helped you in one door when they were ready for you, a line having formed outside (with the ground posters telling you where to stand), and they directed you out a different door so you didn’t get next to the people waiting to get in.

The food and service were as good as they were before the pandemic, I’m happy to say.  You get your seat, you take your mask off for a while, and you don’t want to leave.  I had the lobster bisque and the fresh grouper and couldn’t have been happier.  The only hiccup I noticed was that one of their TVs wasn’t showing anything but a “Signal not found” screen.  I talked to the bartender about it and he said that after 30 days, the TVs revert to a factory setting and lose the connections they had.  Disney, like every place in the world, will be having these little glitches over the coming weeks, so smile behind that mask and let the world open back up as it’s meant to.

Crowds:  I’m sure everyone wants to know, “How were the crowds?”  They were the best I’ve seen in a long time.  As I said, some people were lined up for stores or restaurants.  But there weren’t throngs of people around, and generally they were behaving themselves.  I saw a couple of different teenagers with their masks pulled down, but I also saw them get pulled back up.  It’s going to be hard to police the mask policy, and I hope it doesn’t become an issue that makes it more difficult going forward.  I have one friend that says he will gain weight because of the mask policy because he will eat popcorn all day so he can keep his mask down.

The only truly bad behavior I noticed was there was one fellow who was not wearing a mask.  And I became aware of it when he spit ON ME!  Well, I went and told the nearest Cast Member, and they said, that Stitch’s spit had been properly sanitized, so nobody was in danger.  Disney thinks of everything.