While Walt Disney World has been open now for a few months, the massive theme park resort has certainly been dealing with difficulties under the new pandemic health and safety measures. The theme parks and the restaurants are running at a severely limited capacity, which puts a pretty hard cap on how much money Disney World is bringing in. This is an even bigger problem for Disney because so much of the company's business has been hit hard by the pandemic. This is why it maybe wasn't all that surprising when it appeared earlier today that Walt Disney World restaurants were increasing their capacity, but it now seems that's not really the case.
After being one of the first to report on the apparent increase in reservation ability, WDWNT is now reporting that the additional reservation options that had appeared on the My Disney Experience app was actually some sort of computer glitch. Disney has since released a statement clarifying that they have not increased capacity at table service restaurants. Booking reservations was made unavailable on the app for a time, but it's now up and running again.
The idea that Walt Disney World might increase dining capacity isn't completely shocking. Florida has been in "Phase 3" of the pandemic since late September, which allows indoor restaurants to be open to full capacity. So Disney World could do that. However, thus far it appears that the resort has done a remarkable job of preventing outbreaks, and while the desire to get more people at the restaurants is surely there, there's also certainly a desire to keep the current track record of safety intact.
And at the end of the day, the simple fact is that while Walt Disney World is only allowing a limited number of guests in each day, the resort, which sees the bulk of its guests visit as vacationers from other places, simply isn't seeing quite as many guests as it used to. There simply might not be a lot of reason to increase restaurant capacity if the guests aren't there to fill the place. Several resort hotels that were initially planned to reopen have seen dates pushed back, because the guests simply aren't arriving.
That's not to say that Walt Disney World isn't taking steps to try and get more people through other parts of the resort. Recently, plexiglass barriers have been added to ride vehicles for Rise of the Resistance and Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway. This will allow more people on each ride vehicle by putting a physical barrier between them.
At some point we'll certainly see Walt Disney World begin to return to its former self, but considering that many of the theme park live shows just saw their casts drastically cut, it seems that Disney World isn't expecting things to return to "normal" any time soon.
