Its important to note that Mother's Day is always one of their busiest days. They usually give free admission to moms. I'm not sure if they did that this year or not.
COVID-19’s Impacts on BGW
- Thread starter WDWRLD
- Start date
Its important to note that Mother's Day is always one of their busiest days. They usually give free admission to moms. I'm not sure if they did that this year or not.
Never really made sense to me why local parks can't just open up to let people spread out and not park in the road while the lot is closed - I feel people are actually forced to be closer together with the closures.
But if BGW were successful in opening anytime soon with any IAAPA suggested protocols and whatever mandated capacity reduction, in curious if Pantheon will be able to open and if it does, how Marketing will try to spin it.
But if BGW were successful in opening anytime soon with any IAAPA suggested protocols and whatever mandated capacity reduction, in curious if Pantheon will be able to open and if it does, how Marketing will try to spin it.
I think I've just grown really pessimistic over the whole situation. I think we're not gonna have BGW this year
Brambo
Cyberdyne Systems Software Engineer
I don't see why they wouldn't open. If the other two big chains have already announced (albeit, they haven't given hard opening dates yet) that they are ready to work as hard as they can to reopen, why would SEAS not? I certainly am ready to be able to do things again, and I'm willing to bet plenty of others feel the same way.
In the DC area, a lot of the closure was a reaction to the hordes who went down to visit the cherry blossoms and because of the volumes couldn’t social distance. The issue was by closing the parks, they’ve made the trails and sidewalks around far busier than anything I’ve ever seen and have exacerbated the problem they were trying to solve. One stat I saw said the bike counters were at 250% of normal, and this is on paths that already got very busy in nice weather and on weekends.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and have a bit of a theory that's based on people I've talked to. I don't think it's the closing of parks that have made trails and sidewalks far busier. I think it's as simple as people that just don't tend to do it often are using those spaces. Like my mom for example, doesn't hike or take walks like that ever. But she told me that the other day she went to a trail near by and took a half mile walk. I asked her why, and she said "just to do something." I countered and asked her why she didn't just walk around her neighborhood with her dogs until they were begging to go inside, and she responded with "I don't know who will be out there that has it". I literally facepalmed. I had some other friends say similar things that they decided to go out to a trail to go into the city to walk around because walking around their neighborhood "was boring". Just take my little corner of the world thing of golf. A local course I know the staff at said their highest day was 225 green fees, with 150 being from first time customers, about 70 of them commenting how they have never golfed before and don't really go out. Me personally, I've also noticed a 'time of day' overlap that daily at about 3pm-6pm the trail around my apartment is packed, but if I go at almost any other time it's a ghost town on it (I walk a loop to let my dog do her business).
Long story short:
I don't think the correlation is directly parks closed = busy paths. I've seen plenty of places close parks for various reasons and not see this type of increase on other areas. I think the psychology of being inside all day against our choosing + parks closed + lack of commutes + selfishness + mental health advice = busy paths.
I drive down Rt 5 and see people walking the Capital Trail pretty much all times of the day. It's gotten more crowded lately because I think people are going stir crazy. I think the thing you need to factor into your thoughts about BGW is money. People take on another whole different persona when you have money involved. There are going to be a lot of members/passholders who are going to think, "I paid for this; let me in". I've seen it under normal circumstances at HOS and CT when they close the parking lots. I think courtesy is going to go right out the window if and when they open.
So this is my fear about BGW specifically that since I've been down here, they've shown to have very little backbone when it comes to things being enforced with the most notable being they wanted everyone off passes and onto memberships, then when pass holders complained about paying more, they grandfathered it in.
I could go on and on about why the daily attendance limitations should be public knowledge but this is another layer to it. If it's known only 10,000 people are let in, and BGW were keeping track, if someone wanted to use that line the park could show them the counter and say they are legally required to stay under that number.
Overall though, I think that issues isn't going to be as big as an issue in the general sense. Most polls these days are showing a vast majority of people are reluctant to be doing things like this. I haven't seen one that breaks down older vs younger demographics, single vs married, kids vs no kids. But I'd be interested in seeing that because I think the group that would be least likely would be skewing to older, married, with kids. And for most amusement parks I would say that tends to be the demographic that is a majority coming in. If I were someone at SEAS HQ, I'd be pouring over that Six Flags model and looking at our membership numbers and figuring out how we can adopt that model to fit our business.
For golf, the courses in NOVA that remained open had been packed for weeks, including what are typically slower midweek times, since all the NOVA muni courses and courses in MD were closed. Last Friday, MD finally re-opened it's courses and Fairfax County re-opened the first third of its courses. I played Sunday mid-day and the course was half as busy as the week before. I had time to take extra practice shots on the course and not have groups jammed hole to hole.
Re-opening the parks should do the same thing. People using the trails will spread out to the parks which will help overall distancing and reduce demand on the trails.
You are missing a key factor in comparing golf to regular parks then theme parks. Golf courses aren’t all access free things. Typical tee times are :06 apart for busy courses, :07 apart for private clubs, :10 for most clubs right now. So even a “fully booked” course is going to have 34-36 groups on at most at any time. Small courses take up 150 acres. If every group has a 4-some that’s 136 people. You cant guarantee that at a park or a trail which is why closing them was a good thing.
But your post missed the point I was making. Paths and trails aren’t busy only because parks are closed in certain areas. There’s more people doing that stuff daily. There’s no way to track it but I would be willing to bet that if you took the average number of visitors to a parks/trails system of a county (they do have rough numbers to guess on a yearly basis) compared to just trails right now, I would bet the parks+trails are a lower number than trails just right now.
The issue is parks are closed, people are being encouraged to go out and exercise, and people have more time to do so than before. Plus the risk factor of parks is higher than trails. Most trails don’t have benches, playground equipment, water fountains, public restrooms (some states require these to be open if the park is), sports equipment. Opening the parks would open more space very logically, but it also brings in a big influx of possible contact sources. On top of that most emergency response plans for cities, towns, townships, counties, and states include a shut down of most public spaces due to the increased difficulty and expense to keeping those areas safe.
I think people are bored. Most places are closed and if they aren't working they have nothing to do. Getting out and walking is just something that occupies their time. Some people have used this event as a way to clean up their homes and finally getting to work out since they have no excuse anymore to keep putting these things off.
With only a few select places opening with limited capacities, people are naturally going to try and find things to do. Some people may think if a local store is opening, that maybe Busch Gardens is too and will try to show up. Not everyone follows the news and hangs to every word. Some read the headlines and that's it. I can imagine several people a day driving up to the park's toll plaza just to realize it isn't open and turn away before finding something else to do with their life right now.
With only a few select places opening with limited capacities, people are naturally going to try and find things to do. Some people may think if a local store is opening, that maybe Busch Gardens is too and will try to show up. Not everyone follows the news and hangs to every word. Some read the headlines and that's it. I can imagine several people a day driving up to the park's toll plaza just to realize it isn't open and turn away before finding something else to do with their life right now.
100% this. And you nailed my feeling of why trails look so busy right now. I doubt it has much to do with if parks were open they would be more spread out. Has to do with if parks were open more people would go to them because they are bored. I go to the school near me daily to toss lacrosse ball against the wall to practice and the place always has people just mulling around, not even working out or walking. And you can overhear conversations of people talking about how it's so nice to do something the normally don't have the time for.
As long as none of the people pulling up do this, we're good:
Ive been saying ths all along, BGW will be swamped when they try to open. Its like the OBX this weekend, everyone I know says they are going. I think what will happen is the beaches will be so packed this weekend they will close them sometime next week for the forseeable future. The 20th will be a interesting day to see how Disney Springs is and then UOE as well.
This is true of some parks, but a lot of parks have capacity limits or entry fees - e.g. Great Falls and most MD state parks have capacity restraints. Those parks could be capacity managed vice shutting them down completely.
I agree that the uptick in trail usage is due to more than just parks being closed. Work from home gives people more free time and closure of bars and restaurants is probably a bigger driver than anything of people looking for alternative ways to get out of the house.
I've previously thought people would be nervous about going out, but the more I see the more I think BGW (and other parks) will be maxed out to capacity at the onset of re-opening for at least a few weeks. If the re-openings had started a month ago, I think it would be a different story, but people have gotten used to going to stores and other "essential" services under social distancing and masks. At this point enough people are getting confident navigating a COVID world, that going to theme parks, beaches, etc is within their mental comfort zone.
Are you talking theme parks, estate parks, state parks, local parks, or federal parks? Of those 5, 3 of them have the ability to do so. Also "capacity managing" a park actually takes more staff than closing it does. If the roadways into a park have gates, and you can manage to 'block' the use of any equipment (locking bathrooms, shutting off water lines, fencing off playgrounds) all you need is an occasional cop to swing by the park to look for trespassers (likely no more than they do on current patrols). Managing capacity of a park means having someone at entrances, counting entrances and exits, having staff within the park to manage flow. On top of that if you hit 'capacity' and people can't pull into parking they are backing up traffic on the road. That costs the entity managing the park much more than normal operating costs, and most boards are trying to cut back on spending.
I will give this example for WDW at least...when this started clients were pushing weeks back a couple at a time. Now the more weeks that have gone by the more people that are doing that every couple weeks. Ive had some clients book over and over. Whats happening is people are bunching up now their trips.
State, local, and federal parks all have the ability to manage capacity if they want to. Numerous parks in NOVA (e.g. Great Falls, Mason Neck, and Bull Run - Federal, State, Local respectively) have a manned booth or visitor center usually because you have to pay to enter. Adding a reservation system to manage demand wouldn't be that hard as other organizations have quickly required pre-payment or reservations to use their facilities. Even locations that aren't manned full time could require reservations and make visitors say leave a printed copy of the reservation on their dash to allow police to ticket violators. This way parks could reduce capacity as needed (say 50%) while keeping overall access available.
As I said, that's incredibly expensive and there's no guarantee they would make enough money to sustain. Most parks are subsidized heavily by tax payer money. That would really require additional staff to man the park.
VA state parks already operate on the honor system when it's cold out, they could probably use all the revenue they could get.
The problem becomes maintenance - how do critical things like maintaining trails and campsites from being overgrown get paid for when there's no money coming in and no staff working?
Tying back to BGW, I figure sooner or later they're going to have to bring some people on to maintain the various machinery behind the scenes plus maybe some of the more customer facing items (rides notwithstanding) since idle machinery doesn't always behave well after sitting for too long (gunked oil or fuel).
The problem becomes maintenance - how do critical things like maintaining trails and campsites from being overgrown get paid for when there's no money coming in and no staff working?
Tying back to BGW, I figure sooner or later they're going to have to bring some people on to maintain the various machinery behind the scenes plus maybe some of the more customer facing items (rides notwithstanding) since idle machinery doesn't always behave well after sitting for too long (gunked oil or fuel).