Amusement park association wants quiet thrill rides, no hugs as part of post-coronavirus closure reopenings.

The coronavirus pandemic has been rough on many businesses, but it’s been especially devastating for amusement parks. Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea, as well as Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan, have been closed since late February, dropping their attendance-related revenues down to zero even during Japan’s Golden Week Spring vacation period that straddles the end of April and beginning of March.

But with infection numbers decreasing, amusement parks are looking ahead to what sort of precautions they’ll need to put in place in order to reopen. To that end, the East Japan and West Japan Theme Park Associations have prepared a document titled “Guidelines to Prevent the Spread of Infection of the Novel Coronavirus,” which says it has the agreement of Oriental Land Japan and USJ, the companies that manage Tokyo Disneyland/Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan, respectively.

The document, which was posted by Mie Prefecture’s Nagashima Resort hot spring facility to its website, lays out a number of suggested policies. A lot of them seem like they’d be pretty easy to implement, such as capping admission to parks and individual attractions, or checking guests’ temperatures at park entrances and denying admission to those with fevers, and also asking all guests to wear masks while inside the park. The associations also ask entertainment facilities to encourage the use of cashless payment systems and advance purchase tickets, to shorten the amount of time spent standing in lines and handling cash.

Source: ANNnewsCH