Visitors who want to smoke at its theme park properties, including Walt Disney World, the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and two water parks in Orlando, Florida, as well as Disneyland and the Downtown Disney District in Anaheim, California, will have to do so at designated locations outside the security area, according to a post on the Disney Parks blog.
“As we expand our offerings, we continue to take steps to enhance the guest experience and make it more enjoyable for everyone who visits,” Liz Jaeger, a Disney spokeswoman, said.
It will be up to Disney employees to enforce the ban, she said.
“Employees will ask anyone caught smoking to leave the park and smoke in a designated area,” Jaeger said.
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The new policy, which does not apply to Disney parks in France, China and Japan, was greeted with widespread praise.
Dennis Speigel, president of consulting company International Theme Park Service, said Disney chose “the right course.”
“You’re going to the most wholesome, family-oriented place on the planet,” he said. “Who wants to run into somebody smoking?”
The smoking ban will “ratchet up the bar for the industry,” he added. “Other park operators will follow suit.”
A spokeswoman for Cedar Fair Parks, which owns and operates about a dozen amusement parks across the country, said she was “not aware of any plans for an all-out smoking ban” by her organization. A representative from Six Flags Great Adventure did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, a visitor in a soon-to-be extinct smoking area in Florida’s Magic Kingdom Park was not pleased.
“It’s not fair,” Denis Morissette told The Orlando Sentinel. “It’s legal. I think people who smoke should smoke if they want to smoke.”
Conscious of its image as a family-friendly company, Walt Disney has slowly curbed tobacco use in recent years.
In 2015, it became the first major Hollywood studio to cut portrayals of cigarette smoking from films geared toward younger audiences.
At a shareholder meeting that year, Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, announced that Walt Disney Studios would “prohibit smoking in movies across the board, Marvel, Lucas, Pixar and Disney films” because it “was the right thing for us to do.”
Smoking has already been restricted in most sections of the parks, and designated smoking areas inside the properties have been dwindling. Guests can be charged between $250 and $500 in cleaning costs if they smoke inside the company’s hotel rooms, on patios or on balconies.
The latest move comes before the public opening of Star Wars attractions that are expected to draw throngs of tourists. At Disneyland in California, the 14-acre Star Wars construction site swallowed up the last remaining smoking area, according to news site Theme Park Insider.
In preparation for long lines of Chewbacca and Darth Vader fans coming for the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge spaces, the park is also banning stroller wagons and large strollers starting May 1.
Dry ice, which some parkgoers use to keep drinks cool, is also prohibited beginning Thursday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.