After spending the week following the story of Disney World reopening I found that social media was a great way to get all the info about the event and surprisingly most of the posts that I came across were extremely factual and had other links. These links lead to full articles and more credible sources like CNN, Fox and the actual Disney World social pages. Fortunately this story was posted all over the place. After looking it up once on both my Twitter and Facebook accounts it was all that came up on my feed. Then I would go over to my Instagram and even my Tik Tok account where people were posting videos about how excited they were to go back and most of my friends’ stories on Instagram we’re re-posting the verified Walt Disney World posts about the re-opening.
The entire event started on Monday and Tuesday with people talking about how Disney was set to present to the Orange County board in Florida about their reopening plan. It then moved into talking about phase two of Disney Springs opening up, since about a week earlier, WDW Disney Springs opened back up after COVID-19 and they were moving forward successfully with the second part of it’s re-opening. After this, on Wednesday, Disney presented it’s plans and social media went crazy. Not only were all the news stations and Disney bloggers posting but everyone was commenting or re-posting with either their excitement or hesitation.
The biggest difference I saw in the posts was that the news articles posted on twitter seemed to have far more retweets and likes versus the Disney blog posts I was seeing on Facebook. One tweet posted by CNN had over 908 retweets and almost 2,600 likes at the time. Then comparing these to the memes and opinionated tweets and posts which had far less shares and way more comments with either people agreeing or disagreeing with their opinions. One meme on twitter had over 1.2 million views on the video attached to it, but only 133 retweets.
Overall I think this event was perfect for social media. The information being shared was pretty straight forward that it was easy to figure out what was fake news and what wasn’t and because so many different news sources and people were posting and re-sharing you could easily fact check. Plus there was an original source that was posting verified information, which was the official Disney World Facebook and Twitter accounts. Yes, many people had their opinions about Disney reopening amidst COVID-19, but for the most part they weren’t posting fake news they were just commenting about how they personally felt.
| Disney World Reopening | Pictures | ||
| Tuesday 5/26 | The Disney Blog called Disney Tips began posting about Disney submitting their plans. At first I was hesitant to believe just this blog because didn’t have very many likes, comments or shares, but then further down in my feed more news sources were posting similar articles. | On twitter everyone from WBRC, CNN, Fox and ABC7 was posting about the plans being submitted and linking to Disney World’s verified accounts. |     |
| Wednesday 5/27 | In the morning Disney presented to the Orange County board and right after that the breaking news began. I found Facebook to be a little slower then twitter when it came to the breaking news, but again the Disney Tops blog began posting about the reopening plans and more of the people I followed began to re-post Disney’s post and react with their excitement. | Twitter on the other hand was on the money with breaking news. News stations were tweeting immediately with all the bullet points that come with the new reopening plans and linking to WDW’s website and official social media accounts. |    |
| Thursday 5/28 | Because I had been clicking on Disney Tips’s posts for the past two days Facebook made sure that it was the top thing on my feed everyday for the rest of the week. Now after the initial info of the parks being allowed to reopen more of the secondary info began getting shared. For example what the future holds for annual pass holders during the reopen and a pause on resort reservations due to a quota being hit. | Twitter was the same revealing more info about exactly how the park will open. Like the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom opening on July 11th, Hollywood Studios and Epcot don’t open until July 15. Twitter news sites also started talking about which resorts surrounding the parks will be allowed to open and which ones won’t and why. Most of these tweets had external links and more for you to click on. |    |
| Friday 5/29 | On top of Disney Tips blog, I found the the Disney Dining blog on Facebook and found that while it’s info was technically correct the blog and it’s posts were confusing and also didn’t have a lot of shares and likes so I went over to twitter to see if the news sites could confirm what the blogs were saying. | ON twitter I was able to confirm what the blogs were saying about restaurant reservations being difficult for new guests during the reopening, but this was also when I saw the biggest influx of Disney reopening memes. Thankfully they were so outrageous and commercial that was easy to see that there was no fact and only opinion to them. |    |
| Saturday 5/30 | Final day, blogs continuing to talk about all the small things guests will have to do in order to abide by corona virus rules and how difficult reservations and booking is being for people. | Twitter began to talk about the news updates Disney made due to the rioting and protesting occurring all over the country after the murder of George Floyd. The protests affected Disney Springs, the only part of the park that is currently open. They decided to keep their guests safe to close earlier. |   |
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