Belly up, yes, that is always a possibility. Or just sold to someone and when they buy it they change the feel of things to suit how they view it. I went to Dollywood last year, and it is lovely, and there is no sign of it ever being anything but a charming theme park that immerses you in what appears to be the eyes of Dolly Parton. That being said, Dolly is no spring chicken, and she may have a lot of say in things now but she won't be around forever. I would suspect that when she passes there will be a feeling that things ought to stay the way she would have liked it. People who worked with her closely will still be employed there for another 20-25 years. But then what? A new generation will come in and say "Ah, I don't like this southern-style hospitality feel to the park, it isn't inclusive enough". And by then these people will never even have met Dolly and will start steering things towards their own vision, perhaps. It could happen, you never know.
It happened with Disney. Sure it took a long time, Walt died in 1966 and there were tons of people that were working there even into the 1990s that knew Walt. Roy Disney Jr. died in 2009 for example, and it seemed even in the Eisner era there was this "let's stick to what Walt did because it worked" type of feeling. But there is a whole new era not thinking this way anymore, and it shows.
All good things have to come to an end someday. It may not be in our lifetime but strange things have happened. In 1957 the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants both left town and went out west never to return to their original baseball cities. The Roman Empire comes to mind too. Great institutions can die and fade away and be a shell of their former self. There is still a lot of the old school Disney at the parks and that feel I would say can still be there, but my thought is that it is dwindling gradually.
As for the Covid stuff, there are these rumors of things starting up again, but they said that last fall/autumn as well. I think they will always dangle a carrot over people come the start of flu season as a "What if" sort of distraction. Personally as good of a job as they did selling that agenda in 2020 (I saw it for what it was from the beginning much to people's anger towards me) I don't think they can pull it off again, so I wouldn't worry about it. But yeah, Disneyland especially was closed for an entire year, and it is foolish if people don't think this had a horrific impact on everything from price increases to losing the magic and whatever.
