Shanghai Disneyland reopens with anti-virus regulations

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the global society has been highly aware of secondary and tertiary virus infections created through contacts between people in public places. With the elevated risk of cluster infection, most of the public facilities held suspension of operation and announced indefinite postponement of their reopening date. Likeother public facilities, Disneyland Resort has decided to hold suspension and announced temporary closure of all their theme parks in winter, including the Shanghai Disneyland. Since then, the Shanghai community has been awaiting for the reopen of Shanghai Disneyland with heightened anticipations. Now, assuming that time has passed enough and the coronavirus outbreak has settled down a lot in China, Shanghai Disney Resort announced that the Shanghai Disneyland theme park will officially reopen to the public on May 11, 2020 with new anti-virus controls. 

According to its official website, the Shanghai Disneyland is officially opened to visitors from May 11th onwards with a limited capacity of attendance for each day. The Shanghai Disneyland Resort promised the visitors that they will institute new measures and procedures during their initial reopen phase to prevent future cluster infections. When Shanghai Disneyland uploaded the official announcement, some claimed that it’s too dangerous to reopen such a huge theme park while the pandemic is striking the whole planet. To settle down the controversy, the Shanghai Disneyland decided to adopt new procedures and rules including opening with limited attendance, requiring advanced ticketing and reservations, accommodating social distancing in queues, restaurants, ride vehicles and other facilities throughout the park, and implementing increased frequency of sanitization and disinfection. Even though the park has a capacity of 80,000 visitors per day, the resort decided to follow the government regulation and operated at 30 percent capacity, or around 24,000 visitors. To accommodate social distancing, they suspended parades and nighttime spectaculars to a later date. The reopened Shanghai Disneyland also required basic information, travel document, temperature screening, a green Health QR Code and masks from visitors so that they can keep track of suspected COVID-19 cases and prevent future troubles. 

With the strict regulations made and followed by the workers in the park, the Shanghai Disneyland has finished its reopening procedure in a successful manner. With the reopen of Shanghai Disneyland resort, the entertainment, leisure and tourism industry in Shanghai is showing initial signs of bouncing back to normalcy. Some might say that it’s still dangerous to reopen Disneyland, but it’s also true that most tourists and citizens have received freedom of consumption and leisure back after the reopeon.

Featured Image —A visitor enjoys riding merry-go-round while having her masks on Courtesy of Shanghai Disneyland

By Amy Kang