With Hong Kong Disneyland Closing Again, Will Walt Disney World Be Next?
When Walt Disney World opened its doors to greet park guests to the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom on July 11, the decision was met with no small amount of criticism. Florida is in the midst of its largest coronavirus surge yet. The day after the theme parks reopened, the state reported 15,300 new cases, the highest single day infection rate in any U.S. state thus far.
Still, people flocked to the parks, nearly as many as Disney would allow with its newly reduced attendance capacity. Under the new safety protocols, guests must book reservations for a specific day to be admitted to a park. Magic Kingdom did not reach its reservation capacity for opening day—but Disney’s Hollywood Studios, slated to open on July 15 along with Epcot, is fully reserved for its first eight days.
Despite recently extending Florida’s state of emergency for another 60 days, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis downplayed the risks of Disney reopening given the rising rate of Covid-19 infections. “Disney, I have no doubt is going to be a safe environment,” he said in a press conference on July 6, citing Universal Studios Orlando’s management of safety protocols since its reopening on June 5. SeaWorld Orlando has been open since June 11, and Legoland Florida reopened on June 1.
However, none of those theme parks have come under the same level of scrutiny as Walt Disney World—but the others reopened before the current explosion of infections, and none of them have anywhere close to Disney’s attendance. AECOM’s 2019 Global Attractions Attendance Report estimated that worldwide, over 157 million people attended a Disney park in 2018. (By comparison, the Universal parks brought in 50 million in the same time period.)
Critics of Disney’s plan were vocally opposing the resort’s reopening before the July 13 announcement that Hong Kong Disneyland will be closing again. That park, but not its hotels, will shut down on July 15 in compliance with a government mandate to restrict social gatherings in light of 52 new reported cases of Covid-19. Now that the announcement has been made, a possible re-closure of Walt Disney World is top of mind for many.
“What we’re trying to do here is take a look at the existing data within Orange County to make the best decisions going forward,” said County Mayor Jerry Demings in a July 13 interview on MSNBC. “We are excited for the reopening, but it’s also concerning to me at the same time.”
Demings said that he has confidence Disney is also considering safety in deciding to stay open despite Florida’s high infection rate. “I always will make my decisions by putting people over profits at any given time, so safety is of the utmost concern to me and the health officers who are here, and I think that is the case for Disney,” he said. “Obviously you have corporate responsibility at play here, so we’re trying to make the best decisions for our populace.”
However, Demings continued, “It is not sustainable fo the long term to shut down our full commerce, so we have to learn to live with this virus.”
“We are watching the external environment really carefully,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences told CNN on July 11. “But what we’ve done here is we’ve built an operations protocol. We’ve phased this opening. We put ourselves in complete control. But our confidence has always been high that independent of what’s happening on the outside of our gates, we’re in a position to open responsibly.”
That statement came before Hong Kong Disneyland announced its second closure due to the pandemic. Demings said in a press conference on July 13, “If we see indications that we are exceeding our hospital capacity or we see any outbreaks associated with Disney, we won’t hesitate to ask them to reevaluate the reopening.”