Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[havoc315]

I think something gets missed in the WDW re-opening discussion. We all want WDW to be "normal" asap, or for our next trip.
And certainly, WDW makes more money with greater capacity, they have a financial incentive to open as soon as possible.

But one should also remember that Disney is in for the long haul. They are looking to maximize revenue and profit in the long term, not just in the next week. WDW has been around for 50 years, and Disney is surely expecting it to be around for another 50.

Point being... they aren't necessarily in the same rush to re-open as we are as WDW fans.

As an example -- the College Program isn't restarting until Fall/Winter. They rely on it for A LOT of their staffing. So it's not necessarily worth it for them to more expensively replace those staff positions with regular employees instead of just waiting for a few months and filling those positions with the cheap staff of the College Program.
They are looking at their long term costs, revenues, profits. Not just, "lets get as many people as possible in the gate as soon as possible."

 

[havoc315]

NYC plans to open fully July 1. Using science and data we know today in April it ok to open NYC on July 1.

I love arbitrary scientific decision making

It's neither fully scientific nor fully arbitrary. Science can look at the current data, the current vaccination numbers, and could reasonably project extremely low case counts by July 1. Certainly, scientists can't pinpoint the exact date over 2 months ago. But scientists can certainly give us a ballpark -- Projections suggest extremely low Covid spread in New York City by sometime in June, which makes July 1 a reasonable target date.

 

[SorcererMC]

45.1% of New Yorkers have at least one dose (per their tracker).
That's good news for Florida tourism because New York is #1 feeder state, per Visit Florida.

 

[DisneyCane]

What this discussion doesn't take into account is what else changed during the pandemic. There's a lot of basing the lack of restaurant workers on the idea that people are staying home on unemployment. But there was expansion in the job market in other places. A lot of displaced service workers found better quality employment elsewhere due to growth in other sectors. There was a story early in the pandemic of a restaurant owner who flipped his staff into the healthcare industry because that was his brother's industry and they needed people answering phones, and handling billing, etc. That's just an example. There were other stories about businesses intentionally hiring unemployed service workers because it was the thing they could do during the pandemic "to help," and they turned out to be quality workers for their needs. Not everyone who was a line cook or a server wants or needs to still be a cook or a server. The competition isn't just unemployment, which has an end date. It's also the other industries that saw a glut of potential labor and picked out the best ones for themselves.

Restaurants might simply have to be faced with "restaurant work sucks," and they will have to do more about long-term wages and working conditions and not short term incentives. Am I reading correctly that FL's unemployment rate is at 4.7%, down from the pandemic high of 14.2%? That doesn't sound like a lot of people choosing to remain unemployed, as much as lack of people.

Definitely a factor. A friend of mine's cousin (I think) was a restaurant worker. When the shutdown happened, she started driving for one of the food delivery services and ended up making a little more doing that than working at the restaurant. If the delivery business keeps up, I'd imagine she will just stick with that instead of going back to her old job.

 

[sullyinMT]

July 1 is a goal, not a hard date...

“We have the evidence now that really makes clear this is the right goal. We will make adjustments as we go along,” Hizzoner said, explaining, “We’ll work with all the other levels of government, but we’ve got to work toward a goal at this point.”

Good. Goals are good. It may be a best guess at this point, but it would be great if NYC officials tied a date to other metrics (cases, deaths, positivity, hospital burden). A melding of what Mayor Demings did yesterday and this announcement.

I’m just happy to see that locales are making a clear light at the end of the tunnel, and giving people a reason to keep coming out for their shots.

 

[DisneyCane]

I ran some calculations to try and estimate where FL was regarding progress towards herd immunity if you count vaccinated and naturally protected while accounting for the overlap. For the younger age groups a much higher percentage of the population has been infected so it isn't a straightforward calculation. I know there are probably 2-3 times the actual infections but to keep it simple, I just used cases. This should eliminate concerns with immunity wearing off in some of the earlier cases and possible lower natural resistance to variants.

What I came up with was that there are approximately 1.33 million people in FL who had been infected, have natural immunity and are not vaccinated yet. When added to the number vaccinated, I calculate that approximately 47.5% of the population has either natural or vaccine induced immunity.

Just because I found it interesting, here is the percentage of the population in each age group that has tested positive:

Age	Pct Positive
0-4	4.60%​
5-14	5.75%​
15-24	13.45%​
25-34	13.54%​
35-44	13.05%​
45-54	11.90%​
55-64	9.82%​
65-74	7.10%​
75-84	6.73%​
85+	7.61%​

This clearly illustrates that the spread is driven by the 16-54 age group. It also shows that children under 15 either have some level of natural protection from COVID or they get a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases so they don't get tested.

 

[GoofGoof]

Yet, they don't have their College Program, which they count on for thousands of cast members. (While they might not typically be kitchen staff, it does mean other regular employees need to shift over to positions previously performed by the College Program). They don't have their Cultural Ambassadors back for a while (that's a lot of the waitstaff and some of the cooking staff at many Epcot restaurants).

Basically, it is impossible for them to have full staff before the end of the year -- They need the College Program and Cultural exchange programs in order to have a full staff. So lack of full staff will limit their capacity to some degree (I have no idea to what degree) until the end of the year and the return of those programs.

They won’t need anywhere close to their full staff until some time in 2022 or maybe 2023. WDW isn’t going to 100% of everything open this Summer.

 

[GoofGoof]

They could buy they won't. They want to make money off of FP

I’ve been hearing that for almost 8 years now yet it was kept free.

 

[DCBaker]

Current Florida vaccine report -

 

[Jrb1979]

I’ve been hearing that for almost 8 years now yet it was kept free.

Now they have the opportunity to do it without that much of a pushback.

 

[DisneyCane]

Current Florida vaccine report -

View attachment 553061View attachment 553062

Breakdown by percentage of each age group and increase from yesterday's report to today's:

Age	% Vaccinated	Increase 4/28-4/29
16-24	19.2%​	8136​
25-34	25.1%​	9272​
35-44	35.2%​	10266​
45-54	43.5%​	10818​
55-64	60.1%​	10793​
65-74	85.6%​	4589​
75-84	84.7%​	2055​
85+	70.8%​	667​
Total	40.6%​	56596​

65+ combined now at 83.4%.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Unemployment has been dropping continuously since the high from March/April of last year. The unemployment rate now is only about one and a half percentage points higher from before the pandemic.

Unemployment went down *a lot* even when people were getting a Federal boost of $600. They're still going down, but not as fast with a boost of $300.

These charts don't show a lot of nuance, like how people who were in industries that couldn't operate (like restaurants) found jobs in 'essential services' (like deliveries). But I hope they dispel the idea that there is a new generation of large numbers of ""welfare queens"" living high off of unemployment benefits. The overwhelming majority of people who lost their employment are now working again.

 

[havoc315]

They won’t need anywhere close to their full staff until some time in 2022 or maybe 2023. WDW isn’t going to 100% of everything open this Summer.

This summer, maybe not. But you are underestimating the demand for domestic travel. I was just reading about car rental rates in Hawaii of $700 per day because they weren't prepared for the sudden massive increase in demand. I expect domestic travel demand to be very "normal" by mid-summer.

People have put off travel for a year. They still can't travel internationally. That will serve to increase demand for domestic destinations like WDW. Coupled with the 50th Anniversary, I expect extremely high demand for WDW by fall -- potentially "normal" demand or even higher than average Autumn/Winter demand.

 

[Touchdown]

This summer, maybe not. But you are underestimating the demand for domestic travel. I was just reading about car rental rates in Hawaii of $700 per day because they weren't prepared for the sudden massive increase in demand. I expect domestic travel demand to be very "normal" by mid-summer.

People have put off travel for a year. They still can't travel internationally. That will serve to increase demand for domestic destinations like WDW. Coupled with the 50th Anniversary, I expect extremely high demand for WDW by fall -- potentially "normal" demand or even higher than average Autumn/Winter demand.

That’s only because the rental car industry had to sell off their fleet to survive last year, and now, new car manufacturing is down significantly due to computer chip shortages. Domestic travel, while improving, is not anywhere near 2019 levels.

 

[SamusAranX]

$10 dollarsx8 hoursx5 days=$400 dollars a week, $1600 a month. I’m pretty sure people would work to get half of that at least.

Also unemployment is $300 a week, which is $15600 a year, slightly more then 1/2 your 30k number. 30k is $15 an hour. I would hope doubling your salary is enough motivation to work.

They get an extra few hundred a week from the covid stimulus. So it’s more then 300 a week. That’s why I think the shortage will improve once that extra money goes away and the work search requirement is reinstated

 

[havoc315]

That’s only because the rental car industry had to sell off their fleet to survive last year, and now, new car manufacturing is down significantly due to computer chip shortages. Domestic travel, while improving, is not anywhere near 2019 levels.

Not yet. As I said, I suspect it will be by mid Summer. It is returning quickly.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

They get an extra few hundred a week from the covid stimulus. So it’s more then 300 a week. That’s why I think the shortage will improve once that extra money goes away and the work search requirement is reinstated

$300 is the extra stimulus. The unemployment is the normal amount of unemployment they would receive, that’s based on their normal pay when they were last employed I think.

Also, some states (mine included) are currently requiring the work search and have been for a few months now.

 

[hopemax]

International travel is not coming back by mid-summer. That's 15-20% right off the top. Some people either won't travel or can't. I never posted, but after DH's company went full WFH forever and we celebrated, he got laid off for stupid reasons. While annoying as all heck, finding a new and better job was pretty easy, but now he doesn't want to take vacation to make a good impression, (he's nervous because he went from a manager with 1 or 2 direct reports, to one with a full team of 7 people, maybe more coming) so my summer post-vaccination travel plans are in flux. I'm still hoping to get him to commit to something in late Sept/early Oct. but we'll see. Money, time, other priorities are all anchors keeping people away from WDW in the short term. A lot will return, but 70% of pre-pandemic, not 100% seems more likely.

 

[danlb_2000]

This summer, maybe not. But you are underestimating the demand for domestic travel. I was just reading about car rental rates in Hawaii of $700 per day because they weren't prepared for the sudden massive increase in demand. I expect domestic travel demand to be very "normal" by mid-summer.

People have put off travel for a year. They still can't travel internationally. That will serve to increase demand for domestic destinations like WDW. Coupled with the 50th Anniversary, I expect extremely high demand for WDW by fall -- potentially "normal" demand or even higher than average Autumn/Winter demand.

People have already found a solution to that, they are renting U-Hauls.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Florida Unemployment:

In general, you get from the state half your salary up to $275 / week.

If you were previously getting $15/hour on a 40 hour week, that would be $600/wk pay. Half is $300. But you're capped at $275 from the state.

If you then add on the $300 from the Feds, that's $575/week. That's the equivalent of $14.38/hour (in a 40 hour week).

Florida requires you to provide proof you were seeking work to maintain the benefits.


If you were previously a part time worker at, say, 20 hours a week at $8.65/hour (minimum wage), that is $173 / week. Half of that is $87 from Florida unemployment. Add in the Fed's $300, that's $387 / week.

An entry level Disney job would pay you $600/week (if full time).