www.themeparkinsider.com: It's a classic Catch-22, chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. When Disney World reopened in July, it revamped operations throughout the resort in order to help promote safe physical distancing and help prevent the spread of the Sars-Cov-2 virus. The changes included the cancelation of parades, fireworks, and nighttime spectaculars.
6 comments:
I personally believe that it is irresponsible for Disney to open. In an ideal world with the proper safety precautions and people following the precautions it would be alright to reopen. However, it isn't a perfect world. People cannot follow the most basic of guidelines. I have observed on the bus or at the grocery store people who can't even wear their masks properly. I personally believe that people aren't going to Disneyland because of the lack of fireworks or big performances but because it is simply unsafe. You are exposed to a vast amount of people and must touch and interact with many things. I believe that even after the vaccine for the virus it will take people some time to transition to being comfortable with places like Disneyland or at least the movie theater. Disney has to both have ways to draw people back but also ensure safety and sanitation.
I personally believe that it is irresponsible for Disney to open. In an ideal world with the proper safety precautions and people following the precautions it would be alright to reopen. However, it isn't a perfect world. People cannot follow the most basic of guidelines. I have observed on the bus or at the grocery store people who can't even wear their masks properly. I personally believe that people aren't going to Disneyland because of the lack of fireworks or big performances but because it is simply unsafe. You are exposed to a vast amount of people and must touch and interact with many things. I believe that even after the vaccine for the virus it will take people some time to transition to being comfortable with places like Disneyland or at least the movie theater. Disney has to both have ways to draw people back but also ensure safety and sanitation.
The fact that Disney World reopened this July, a time when the pandemic was at its peak, still manages to surprise me. Disney World has always been a place of fun crowds and amazing activities, and it being open during the pandemic must have made it difficult for families to really care about staying home during a pandemic. That being said, Disney World did make changes to the way it functions, trying to eliminate large crowds and gatherings, in an attempt to achieve social distancing.
That is why it made complete sense to me after reading this article that parades and fireworks still have a long way to go before they return. And rightfully so, how can people maintain social distancing in a setting where people being huddled together counts as the real deal.
Hopefully, Disney World will be back to the way it was, once this pandemic settles down.
This is funny to me because it feels like these theme parks are just opening so thrill junkies can go get their fix- not really to create the proper Disney ambiance families love so much. Fully agree with the previous comments- Disney is kind of dumb for this, at some point I forecast that basic operation expenses are going to start outweighing the ticket sales-especially towards the winter. Losing money will become inevitable. The thing that really gets me about theme parks and resorts opening up is something that that came up for me when my friends wanted me to go to Vegas for their 21st this summer- it's just not going to be a good time. Really, the people that are at these theme parks are literal low lives that can't go a year without a theme park. My friends ended up not going at all because who wants to go to a prematurely opened casino full of the worst types of gambleholics and corona virus. Of all things, these things are certainly not essential.
I saw this article and began typing my comment immediately. I was there the last day Disney World was open which has given me a unique perspective on this issue. One of the foundations of the parks is there is an absence of news from the real world. In today’s times, many of the guests may have access to phones to be checking the news, but Disney provides many distractions that I doubt most people check the news throughout the park. It led to a detachment from outside of “The Disney Bubble” and thinking that everything was fine and good. It felt impossible to have Disney shut down. Then Disney announced they would be closing just for two weeks and their employees would be paid through that closure. The cast members thought they would be getting a two week vacation. Long story short, that two week vacation became much more than that, especially for the college students (CPs) who would not find out until later that they would not be returning. I am incredibly glad that my cast member friends have mostly been able to return to work, but the hole that the college program left behind is a large one.
Due to this creation of “The Disney Bubble” and a lack of understanding of what life in the time of Covid would come to look like, all of the college participants, among others, rather than social distancing, all gathered on that last night. The “Happily Ever After” fireworks and castle show was definitely the opposite response to what the CDC guidelines would come to be, so I definitely understand not having these offerings now that we know the seriousness of the virus.
I am glad Disney is reopening and bringing some normalcy to this insane time we are living in, but it is hard enough to get people to listen and wear their masks properly. I know that Universal Orlando opened before Disney World, but Disney seems to be getting hit with more of the negativity. Yes, they are not essential, but as long as they are managing to control the environment and the guests, I trust their reopening procedures. I would imagine it would be incredibly hard to prevent people from crowding for the best fireworks spot, so I understand and support the decreased amount of offerings. I do think that Disney could stand to discount prices for a bit because people do expect those offerings when they save up and put down so much money for their tickets. I know they are making a lot less, especially since they have to pay Cast Members more than college students, but their prices are incredibly high. The article talks about how the money the entertainment offerings would bring in would not be enough to be worth it, but it does not cover that the company is at least making up some of their losses through the impressive jump in Disney+ subscriptions and add on purchases. It also does come at an unfortunate time when much of Epcot is under renovation. They did postpone renovating Spaceship Earth and Epcot’s festivals are still occurring, but when you can only go to one park per day, there is not much in the form of attractions to select Epcot. It may be worth making a tier structure for ticket pricing depending on which park you would like to reserve. As someone who knows that Disney has previously valued the attendance and how many people could fit on a ride at one time, I commend them for putting Safety first. Safety is the first of their fundamentals, and it is especially important in today’s times. I may not trust every guest to wear their masks properly, but I do trust Disney to hold up safety principles to bring the best of the magic of Disney, even in a pandemic. I don't blame them for opening and I support Disneyland for staying closed. It comes down to the guests to decide if they want to go. I trust Disney to handle things to the best of their ability, but at the same time, I can't justify the travel and possible exposure at any point for the current cost and the risk of not being able to get a park reservation. Still, as long as people do the right things, I support those who go and Disney for the decisions they make.
-Ariel Bernhard
I don’t think I will ever really understand why Disney World reopened so soon or why it was even allowed to. But why I am so confused really is now that Disney World has reopened, they can’t have anywhere close to the number of guests there as they had before COVID, so I would really be interested in learning more about the profit that they are making. I don’t know exact numbers about any of this, but I just can’t imagine they are making that much of a profit. With the park open they have to be paying for all of their operating expenses, and the amount of ticket sales they can do is only so high with the much smaller capacity. And they must have anticipated that they weren’t going to draw that many people on vacation to Florida to an amusement park in this pandemic. I am sure there were plenty of people in Disney Headquarters doing this math to figure out if the profit was worth reopening, so I bet it is. It is still just surprising to me. And it is also surprising to me that there are so many articles I have seen about how Disney World isn’t making that much money and Disney is still losing money. Like this must have been predicted.
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