Disney's Florida parks face sluggish prospects with war looming
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press
Posted March 11 2003, 4:09 PM EST
ORLANDO -- Mary Poppins, normally swamped by autograph-seeking children, stood alone at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, a wide ruby-lipstick smile on her face and a white parasol in her hand.
The worker playing the Disney character waited some more, but no children with autograph books or cameras walked past. When a group of adults finally passed, she shouted a ``Hello'' to get their attention.
``It's just kind of dead,'' remarked Ginger Bullard, of Cookeville, Tenn., who sat with her husband, Victor, at the entrance of one of the Epcot attractions.
Never fully recovered from the attendance dip that followed the Sept. 11-induced tourism slowdown 1½ years ago, Disney's Florida parks now face even smaller crowds with the prospect of war with Iraq so close.
That comes on top of an attendance dip in February blamed on the federal government's decision to raise the terrorist threat to Code Orange and snowstorms that shut down airports in the Northeast.
Industry watchers say there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
``Any other recession or gas problem didn't last this long,'' said Steve Baker, an Orlando-based theme park consultant. ``The problem with this is there are so many uncontrollables. ... It's difficult to make plans or projections since everything is in limbo.''
Walt Disney World spokeswoman Rena Callahan said she couldn't comment on attendance figures. But in the year following the Sept. 11 attacks, international visitors to Walt Disney World declined by more than 20 percent. The four parks saw attendance drop to 37.5 million last year from 39.5 million in 2001, according to Amusement Business, a trade magazine.
Disney's Florida parks, where about two-thirds of visitors come from out of town, imposed a hiring freeze and cut back workers' hours last month. Disney's California parks, Disneyland and California Adventure, have fared better since about two-thirds of their attendance comes from local visitors.
The attendance drop at Walt Disney World has been most noticeable at Epcot, a theme park devoted to technology and world cultures. Four of the eight general admission turnstiles were shuttered last Sunday, usually the busiest day of the week. There were no waits for any rides. Many of the theme park's plazas were empty. Only a quarter of the Les Chefs de France restaurant in the France section was occupied during lunchtime.
Disney's other theme parks, Magic Kingdom, Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom, were much more crowded but still below what is considered normal for March, one of the busier times of the year because of spring break.
``Someone told me before I got here that I would be waiting in lines,'' said Felix Isaac of Dallas. ``I sure haven't done that.'' His longest wait was 15 minutes at The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, one of the most popular rides at Disney-MGM. The ride can have waits of more than an hour on busy days.
The slowdown on Disney's Main Street has been felt on Wall Street. Analysts at Merrill Lynch lowered their 2003 fiscal year operating income estimate for Disney's theme parks by $205 million to $1.1 billion, a 6 percent decline from the same period last year.
The terror threats and possibility of war have had the greatest effect on keeping away international visitors, who generate more than a third of the operating income of Walt Disney World in Florida, according to the Merrill Lynch analysts.
The other major theme park operators in Orlando, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando, haven't had to cut back workers' hours, but they attract a larger percentage of local visitors than Disney and have smaller work forces.
SeaWorld Orlando general manager Jim Atchison said local visitors have compensated for the downturn in out-of-town visitors who stayed away because of the threats of war and terrorism.
``I think what we're seeing is a kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop,'' he said.
