COVID-19 & Coasters: Coronavirus Impacts on the Amusement Industry

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warfelg said:
But I’m conflicted because, you can still tie a outbreak to those parks. What if a scare actor gets too close. Or someone takes off a mask in an unsupervised part of a haunt. A super spreader event can happen on SEAS property and it could tie back to them.
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Unless a scare actor is coughing all over guests with a porous mask, transmission and an outbreak is pretty unlikely. The only real risk in a haunt event would be a poorly ventilated indoor building where scare actors ended up getting each other sick by breathing the same air for an extended period of time. Guests probably wouldn't have an issue as they're only in a building for a few minutes at most.
 
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Look at haunts like this......at BGW there is a person standing at Trappers Smokhiuse telling you which line to get in and when you can go forward. Is there really any diffrence in that persons distancing and distancing of someone in a haunted house? Ok so take out all the hanging things guests touch, have way more scares through windows such as in what under Pompeii has done for years and no scare actoers making noises with their voice. Have more fans moving more air through the houses.....its all possible if they really want to do it it just comes down to money!
 
There definitely is a difference between someone directing the line at a restaurant and an actor in a house—namely that actors shout, yell, etc to startle people which, in turn, expells droplets with far more force—potentially spreading the virus further. (I believe I read minimum of 10 feet for singing? Shouting/yelling would be further.)

That said, as per your larger thought, I totally agree with you. I do think it can be done safely with the addition of plexiglass and distance, the removal of hanging scenic, and pulsing groups to facilitate social distancing—it is totally a matter of money at the end of the day.
 
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Can they effectively do plexiglass or similar barriers and retain the scary 'monster almost touched me' vibe?

The only way that could work to me is in the few houses out there making use of blacklights and vibrant color schemes (forgot the name of the house that was in the Roman Rapids queue area that did this around the 03-04 seasons), or a lot of projection usage where the barrier isn't obvious. Either way, these sound like niche houses and not something sustainable for an entire park.
 
@Jonesta6 Honestly Deadline is nearly the perfect house for all of this.

Most actors were behind walls/had drop windows. When staffed properly had good scares that didn't involve being in your face. Including the ceiling scare, where they definitely made contact with the top of my head with a feather duster.

There are house types that could work for our current environment, but it's still not something I'd wholly recommend most places to do. Since I don't trust that most places would even be able to handle it. //looking at you BGT >__>
 
Zachary said:
There definitely is a difference between someone directing the line at a restaurant and an actor in a house—namely that actors shout, yell, etc to startle people which, in turn, expells droplets with far more force—potentially spreading the virus further. (I believe I read minimum of 10 feet for singing? Shouting/yelling would be further.)

That said, as per your larger thought, I totally agree with you. I do think it can be done safely with the addition of plexiglass and distance, the removal of hanging scenic, and pulsing groups to facilitate social distancing—it is totally a matter of money at the end of the day.
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The singing/yelling expels more air which concentrates the air faster, but that still requires 30+ minutes exposure to infect others. If they were spitting up at the same time it’s a risk, but masks can catch that.
 
Zachary said:
MAJOR [Citation Needed] here. Chance of infection increases as viral load and exposure time increases, sure, but if someone with COVID shouts at you, expelling droplets towards your face, that’s a pretty great vector for infection.
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The 30 mins I saw in some advisory notice that I can’t recall exactly where, but this is a well done article from a professor in the field calculating exposure times - https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them. TL;DR he estimates 50 mins needed breathing air in and 5 minutes of face to face speaking to get enough virus load for infection, neither of which are very likely in a haunt event.
 
Plus also, isn't it still the case where it's usually a couple of weeks of incubation time before you realize you're sick so in theory someone could go through the house and infect everyone with lingering droplets when they scream?
 
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rswashdc said:
The 30 mins I saw in some advisory notice that I can’t recall exactly where, but this is a well done article from a professor in the field calculating exposure times - https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them. TL;DR he estimates 50 mins needed breathing air in and 5 minutes of face to face speaking to get enough virus load for infection, neither of which are very likely in a haunt event.
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From your source:

"Some experts estimate that as few as 1000 SARS-CoV2 infectious viral particles are all that will be needed"

"A single cough releases about 3,000 droplets"

I feel pretty confident that a scream from a guest at a cast member would go a long way towards that theoretical (and it is theoretical according to the article) 1,000 virual particle estimate.

Since neither of us have data on yelling and screaming, we shouldn't be speaking in absolutes.

Jonesta6 said:
Plus also, isn't it still the case where it's usually a couple of weeks of incubation time before you realize you're sick so in theory someone could go through the house and infect everyone with lingering droplets when they scream?
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BINGO! Everyone is talking about guest safety... Imagine being the cast member in a room where hundreds of people a night scream. Fuck that.
 
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Zachary said:
From your source:

"Some experts estimate that as few as 1000 SARS-CoV2 infectious viral particles are all that will be needed"

"A single cough releases about 3,000 droplets"

I feel pretty confident that a scream from a guest at a cast member get go a long way towards that theoretical (and it is theoretical according to the article) 1,000 virual particle estimate.

Since neither of us have data on yelling and screaming, we shouldn't be speaking in absolutes.
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Speaking is 200 viral particles per minute and most haunt encounters are a few seconds at most. Yelling or screaming may be higher, but short encounters are still the norm.

I still suggest that mitigation plans be put in place to protect scare actors and guests even from low probability events, but the idea that a major outbreak of dozens or hundreds of guests is going to occur is probably unlikely.
 
I mean Walmart is aparently safe with lax mask rules and no distancing and there are certainly some scarry people in there.
 
Thats my point.....people dont seem to have a issue going to walmart and them enforcing the rules but then when it comes to parks people act like two seconds without a mask or just walking past someone for a couple seconds the world will come to a end. People like the term superspreader but I have yet to see a massive breakout from a Walmart.
 
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If you feel safe in a Walmart right now, I think you may be in the minority there. I honestly don’t know anyone who feels safe in any populous, public, indoor space. And to be fair, the science says we really shouldn’t feel safe in a circumstance like that right now.

Most people are going to stores right now because they need food and whatnot—not because they want to enjoy a day out at the local Walmart.

And, much like tracing moderate spread back to parks would be next to impossible given our current testing and contact tracing infrastructure, tracing an outbreak back to a Walmart is much the same. There are too many people present and the spread isn’t likely to be severe enough for the cluster to be obvious.
 
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Weird that Manta isn’t on the list. I’m assuming since it’s the first attraction guests see when they enter that it will be open? I was going to IAAPA this year with a couple of friends, and instead have changed it to a normal Orlando trip, hoping these operations don’t put too big of a dent in the usual fun.
 
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Manta is operating from park open to park close. I guess they didnt bother to put it on the list because it didnt have differentiated hours.
 
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