Universal Studios Orlando - During a Pandemic

My wife and I like to plan our vacation well in advance. This is because we have to save up money to be able to enjoy the vacation to its fullest. We did that this year as we had our heart set on a 12 day cruise on the Baltic aboard the Brilliance of the Seas by Royal Caribbean. Then 2020 happened and we know what didn't, we had to cancel our cruise and start thinking about what to do with our summer vacation. We then thought, we will go to Walt Disney World over the week of the 4th of July, they should be open by then. They opened on July 11 and the resort we were going to stay at has yet to announce an opening date. What next, we have lived in Florida for 6 years now and haven't visited Universal Studios Orlando as of yet. With both of our kids being older and the fact that Universal opened in Orlando in May, we thought lets check out the parks and stay at one of the Universal Orlando resorts.

We went into this vacation with many doubts about the fact that the number of Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing and I realize that there are probably a lot of people in doubt about if we should have "risked" going to Universal or any type of vacation in today's climate. We did our research and saw what Universal was doing to protect their staff and guests and decided that this was the best time to go. Plus, we all needed to get away from the house for a much deserved rest from reality. I am going to go into some of the more specific details in a later blog post such as the resort we stayed, Endless Summer - Surfside resort. The purpose of the blog today is to tell you why we made the decision to go on vacation and how we felt while visiting the park.

The first reason that helped us decide is that we knew Universal Studios didn't want to put any of their guests at risk and were taking severe precautions. This begins with the fact that you are not allowed to walk around any part of the resorts without a mask. This includes the resort, parks and City Walk. The only exclusion to this rule is the water park, Volcano Bay, which we didn't splurge for on the tickets. You are able to bypass this rule when eating or drinking because you can't morph food through a mask into your stomach. You could also go to a U-Rest zone when inside the parks that allowed you to remove your masks with a safe distance from other guests in these larger areas. Even though it was extremely hot this week, high temps reaching the mid-90s daily with a real feel of over 100, we never once used one of the U-Rest areas. We did purchase the refillable Coke cups and drank more Powerade this week than I have since I was a high school athlete. The big question though is how did everyone else around us seem to handle the mask rules. For the most part, everyone was adhering to the rules of wearing the masks covering both their mouths and nose when walking around. We also witnessed many of the employees reminding guests to put the mask over their mouth and nose when they were seen not doing what they were supposed to do. As long as you stay hydrated, with plenty of water fountains or beverage stations, then the mask isn't an issue at all.

The second thing that we looked into was the crowds and would it be feasible to stay the recommended 6 feet apart from other people. First, the park capacity has been cut drastically and neither Islands of Adventure nor Universal Studios Orlando reached the reduced capacity while we were there. We did hear that Volcano Bay did reach capacity a few times in the extreme heat. This made walking around the parks and even City Walk easy to do as you were not constantly shuffling to avoid bumping into people like a normal day. While waiting in lines for everything, there are plenty of clearly marked tape lines showing the proper distance between the parties. These got to be a little confusing at times because these lines were not built with social distancing in mind. In some lines, such as Kong, the building was windy and you would have to look around the corner to see if the family in front of you have moved yet. Other lines, such as parts of Minions, where the line goes back and forth in a snake like direction right next to each other, the markers were staggered so that you were not standing next to the family going the other direction. This meant that at times, there may have actually been at least 10 feet between your 2 markers. When these situations came about, this is when you would see people pass one marker to try and move to the next without thinking. Also, every now and than, someone wouldn't be paying attention to the markers at all and would get within a couple of feet behind the family in front of them. Again, if it was where an employee was able to see, they would remind the family to move back to the correct marker. Plus, there was a consistent overhead announcement throughout every line that reminded guests to keep their social distance for safety. What a backwards philosophy from waiting in line at theme parks where you are used to hearing "Fill Up Every Available Space" even if there is less than an inch in front of you.

The last thing that I like to mention is the amount of hand sanitizer available throughout the park. Every ride or show that you go to experience, you are given hand sanitizer before being allowed to get in your seat. Every ride or show has sanitizer stations at the exits so that you can get some after the ride. They have random sanitizer stations throughout the park that you can use all the time. If one is out, as soon as you tell an employee, they are contacting someone to get it refilled. Throughout the whole week, I believe that we only saw 3 sanitizer stations that were empty. The staff was on top of making sure that you were safe and everyone had clean hands. In fact, likely the part that surprised me the most, is that I only remember seeing one person (a child) leave the bathroom without washing their hands. Besides the ability to keep your hands cleaned, you were not allowed to go through security at the parks if your temperature hadn't been taken. For those staying at the resorts, you took it there and they would supply you with a wrist band (different color every day) so you didn't have to wait in line at security to take your temperature. Not staying at a resort, you took the temperature at security to help ensure that no one was showing signs of illness at that time.

At the end of the week, I realized that I felt more safe and secure sitting and enjoying my family at Universal Studios than I do going to the grocery store near my home. The guests were mainly following the rules that were supplied, the staff was doing the best that they could to enforce the rules, there were plenty of ways to keep yourself clean and they were doing a basic health check on every person as they arrived to the park. We can't even get people to follow the directional arrows in a grocery store around our house let alone to wear a mask correctly. I know that many people don't think we should have gone and that is alright. I do believe that everyone needs to make decisions on their own regarding the risks that they are willing to take for their health. However, as for me, I definitely will be going back to Universal Studios Orlando as we had a wonderful family vacation.