I was talking with an acquaintance who was excited about taking a trip to Disney in the fall, and who was surprised when I informed them that they should expect the masks and social distancing measures to still be in place. Now, mind you, maybe we'll have reached a point of vaccinations where the existing safety measures are phased out by the time we reach Howl-o-Scream. But the reality is that from a liability perspective, major theme park chains are not interested in creating circumstances where they are either actively placing their guests at risk or APPEARING to put their guests at risk. And given that some people still can't be vaccinated for health reasons, even once we reach a much larger vaccination total than where we are currently there will still be a clear desire from a business perspective for an industry that defines so much of its operations on customer safety to err on the side of caution.
Lockdowns were never feasible in the U.S. for reasons that
@Mushroom just broke down. It's worked in geographically isolated areas, and in situations where there is consistent federal/state government messaging about the virus, two things that America was never going to have. And so we live in a liminal state of precautions, with the goal not of eradicating the virus but of slowing its spread, protecting the most vulnerable, and reducing the burden on hospitals/medical staff so that people with non-COVID-related injuries aren't turned away from hospitals with no remaining ICU space. And in Virginia, as in other states, this has "worked": Virginia's ICU capacity never got above 83%, we weathered the early shortage of ventilators, etc. But the state still had its various waves of cases, particularly around the holidays, as people made personal choices that went against best public health practices.
I can't say why people made the choice to gather with family over the holidays, which is largely considered to be the reason for the surge in cases (and now deaths) in Virginia. But those were personal choices, in personal settings, and thus ultimately not something that the State could ever reasonably enforce. But the idea of a business like Busch Gardens shrugging its shoulders and saying "Eh, whether you want to risk it is up to you" is just not something that a large corporation would ever do. There's too much at stake in terms of their long-term brand and customer relationship to do anything other than what they've done: implement policies that go beyond existing state requirements and which give them the ability to communicate to their customers—including and maybe even especially those who might not be comfortable going to the park right now—that their number one commitment is creating as safe an environment as possible.
I've been a bit surprised by how the combination of the March/April reservations and Northam's loosening of non-theme park-related restrictions had dredged up this debate, here and elsewhere. We have been on this path since last summer. The fact that there are three—or more—viable and safe vaccines that are already being administered to over 13% of Virginians at this point is frankly WAY further along than I thought we'd be when the park was first talking about opening last summer, and so I've long accepted that while we're not close to "the end" of this we're on a clear path to it that was a whole lot murkier when the park opened in August. But it's clear that the fatigue people are naturally experiencing with this existence makes it easy to miss the bigger picture that's been forming over that period, which I can understand. But the best thing anyone can do is just accept that there are certain realities of COVID Parkgoing that are locked in regardless of other changes (capacity, operating times, etc.) that will happen the closer we get to "the end."
