Rapid testing eyed to bring fun, crowds back to theme parks

According to Eddie Sotto, the only people wearing masks at theme parks should be the actors playing anthropomorphic rodents, ducks, dogs, and assorted other characters. Yes, he knows there is a pandemic raging. No, he’s not some anti-mask crusader.

Sotto spent 13 years as a Walt Disney Imagineer, an army of designers, writers, engineers and other creative and technical professionals who create its theme park experiences. During that time, he had a hand in developing some landmark attractions.

Sotto, now president of his own eponymous design studio, believes that social distancing, face coverings, sanitizer stations, deep cleaning of shared surfaces, and the other remedies that parks and attractions have introduced to deal with COVID-19 just aren’t cutting it.

“You can’t treat people like they are in a hospital,” Sotto says, referring to the attempts to keep people safely apart at what are inherently social spaces and the practices that disconnect visitors from theme park magic. “It’s a death spiral for the industry.”

Indeed, attendance at parks that have reopened amid the coronavirus pandemic has generally been disappointing.

Sotto’s radical solution? Only allow visitors through turnstiles who have been cleared of infection. Then let them scream to their hearts’ content aboard roller coasters. No masks. No distancing.

To help make these COVID-19-era oases possible at parks, cruise ships, stadiums and elsewhere, Sotto plans to incorporate rapid-result testing as part of a screening process. He envisions a minimally invasive procedure, such as providing a saliva sample or blowing into a Breathalyzer-like device, coupled with on-site equipment that could accurately diagnose coronavirus infection within a few minutes. And he wants to make it a fun experience.

The technology isn’t quite there yet, but it is advancing rapidly, and should be ready soon. Sotto says his goal is to be able to apply the strategies next season, possibly by spring.

Is the concept viable? Perhaps. “I’m a believer in rapid tests and their ability to help open communities up more,” says Dr. Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and an infectious disease expert. But she says she is also a strong advocate for wearing masks and other preventive practices.

Still, she agrees there are merits to the idea of establishing a protective bubble and points to the success the NBA has had with its social cocoon.

Given time, it may be possible for rapid tests to deliver more accurate findings and reduce inaccurate results. By next spring, Katz says that Sotto’s mask-free proposition just might work, adding, “I don’t think it’s completely off the table.”

For Sotto, the “aha” moment came when he was considering airports and TSA security checkpoints. Once passengers pass the screening process and enter the sheltered bubble of the terminal, they feel protected from the threat of terrorism. Likewise, one of the primary tenets of Imagineering is to provide reassurance to theme park guests.

He plans to use a “secret weapon” that designers have in their tool kits: creating fun experiences. His COVID-19-screening procedure would be seamless and whimsical. As an example, Sotto says that a Breathalyzertype device could be disguised and themed as a bubble maker.

“That’s what Imagineers do,” Sotto says. “We never settle. We ask why can’t we make something better and more fun.”