In 2019, Timothy and I documented our trip to the DVC community hall at Disney’s BoardWalk Villas, but we admittedly hadn’t been back since the reopening. In January, we stopped by the community halls at the BoardWalk and Bay Lake Tower to see how things are going in terms of safety precautions and check out which activities are still available.
Both community halls were open the same hours, 10 am to 7 pm daily. Just as with the parks, face coverings are required for all guests ages 2 and older, and there was plenty of sanitizing.
Arts and Crafts
You’ll find many of the same activities as you would pre-pandemic like painting, ceramics, Mickey tie-dye shirts, and DIY tumblers or wine glasses. Craft tables were spaced out for social distancing. In fact, you will see plenty of signs reminding you to keep a minimum of 6 feet between you and other parties. Rather than having the markers, colored pencils, or crayons out on the tables, signs let you know to ask a cast member for the materials.
Games
At the BoardWalk, we noticed that you had to ask the cast members for the video game controllers and the air hockey strikers and puck. Before handing them to us, the cast member wiped down each piece with a disinfectant wipe. There were also hand sanitizer dispensers at the front desk and near the video games. When we were done playing a couple of rounds of air hockey, we returned the items to the cast member, who cleaned them again. At the BoardWalk, Ms. Pac-Man, the Star Wars pinball machine, and the foosball table operated as normal.
Movies
Both community halls were showing movies as usual. You can also ret DVDs to watch in your villa. Bay Lake Tower had a very lengthy listing of all the available DVDs posted on the wall.
Pin Trading
At Bay Lake Tower, pin trading followed the new safety protocols. You can drop the pin you would like to trade into the trading box. (This way, the cast members can sanitize it before offering it up on the pin trading board.) Then you can have a cast member help you remove your desired pin from the trading board. Guests are able to trade up to 2 pins.
Rental Equipment
You can still rent equipment for games like corn hole, basketball, tennis, and pool, as well as equipment to use the grills. You can also purchase coal for the grills from the community halls. (However, the cast member not so subtly suggested that we get coal from Amazon Prime or a similar service.) Just note that the fire pits are not being used for s’mores at the moment.
After visiting the two DVC community halls, we thought that they struck a good balance between offering plenty of fun activities and implementing extra safety precautions to help keep guests healthy. Have any of you visited the community halls since the reopening? Let me know what you thought of the new protocols in the comments below.
Great stuff! I always forget about the Community Halls. Headed to the Boardwalk in a couple of weeks so definitely interested in the Tie Dye.
Thanks for the reminder and the coverage. Very timely.
If you are staying on points can you visit any of the community halls or must you be staying at the resort?
Disney’s website notes that the “Amenities and activities are available to current Guests of the Resort where the Community Hall is located,” so technically they’re for resort guests.
Thanks for writing and documenting this. My wife and I have been very timid about going back to Disney. But reading this makes me feel a lot better. I also didn’t know half of these services even existed. Thanks for the blog!
I’m so glad this was helpful! We have gone back a few times now, and we were pleased with the precautions that the cast members took.