Disneyland faces 32 million attendance drop over 2 years, analysts warn - OCR/SCNG

[shambolicdefending]

There's no way attendance doesn't take a major long-term hit. It was already on the decline before the pandemic.

I wouldn't be surprised if it took a decade to get back to 2015-2018 levels. Operationally, it may not make sense to even try.

 

[donsullivan]

As someone who lives within the geography and economic impact, this is a mighty disheartening perspective but feels like it's pretty close to what is going to happen. While I love the concept of low attendance numbers, I'm not a fan of the fact that those low attendance numbers = the permanent loss of 10's of thousands of jobs in central Florida.

When we see massive job losses as a result of major declines in tourism we actually see major population shifts were thousand and thousands of people have to move out of the market because there are simply no jobs. We saw a major population decline after 9/11 and again in the late 2000's as a result of the financial crisis.

Just remember all those people who will lose their jobs permanently vs a furlough if this does not come back. With the central Florida unemployment rate currently hovering at just shy of 16%, there is great fear it will get massively worse by early October. That is when a lot of companies that took government money to keep their employees on board no longer need to keep them. There is an expectation of major layoffs in the major hotel chains, some of which have already started with individual hotel companies laying off a thousand or more employees each.

 

[mlayton144]

I personally think the sale of Disney parks to a titan of industry like musk or bezos could only be positive - someone with a real vision and innovative mindset. What would we lose ? A bunch of empty suits like chapek?

 

[1HAPPYGHOSTHOST]

Well, that's certainly going to leave a mark.

Or, perhaps kill the entire company.

Even if the company survives this, one can only imagine the massive white collar layoffs, blue collar hiring freezes, and overall cutbacks in investment and future growth strategies that are already being drawn up in Burbank and TDA this month.

God I hope this stops the Splash Mountain re-theme.

 

[1HAPPYGHOSTHOST]

All the WDW parks are now open this week. They are letting in teeny-tiny amounts of people into each park. I get it why they have to reopen like this, but this is obviously not a business model that is sustainable for more than a few weeks. The WDW parks look more desolate this week, the middle of summer, than DCA did in 2001.

In some good news for the sharp pencil boys, they clearly weren't spending their four months of closure on refurbishments and expensive maintenance. Here's the Mexico pavilion boat ride yesterday.

He's just break dancing.

 

[smooch]

Something I thought of with WDW reopening with such little capacity is the fact that Disney only needs to let in enough people that after factoring the limited operating cost of the parks they only need to make enough money that they are losing less money than keeping the parks closed. I know this model isn't optimal or probably sustainable but the parks were losing so much money but if they let a small amount of people in and after operating costs are losing even a little less money than when they were closed then it is technically a better option for the company. Now that doesn't take factors like risking workers / guests into consideration I am strictly talking financials which is what Disney is worried about (not trying to debate using people's safety for profit, that's a discussion on its own) if that has any sort of weight to it. That was just a thought I had so if someone can correct me (I know I'm over simplifying a lot) on my reasoning I would like to hear that.

Moving on, honestly since attendance will be lowered for such a long time I am really hoping to take a trip down to DLR once the pandemic is contained. I don't really think my family would be too happy with me taking a trip to the parks unless things are basically fully controlled but eventually when it is safe to do so I would love to take advantage of the lower crowd levels. Even with the mask rules and plexiglass dividers and distancing markers the footage I've seen from WDW looks so crazy and honestly enjoyable. I would miss the shows / fireworks / etc. but seeing how empty the parks are genuinely makes me feel I would be more safe at WDW than at my grocery store. Forced distancing, huge separation between parties on rides / in lines, virtually no wait times, it seems like a fun enough experience to go if you wanted to focus mainly on rides since there's limited entertainment sadly. I try to distance as much as possible at my grocery store but some people just get right up next to me and don't even attempt to distance and I see a decent amount of people enter with masks then once they're in aisles / away from staff they remove the mask / hang it from one ear so they can quickly put it back on if they're leaving an aisle or see a staff member and that es me off.