Reopening Disneyland

[fctiger]

You’re listening to someone who doesn’t even live in California and has probably never ever visited either.

Where did you get the idea that Disney will “abandon” their parks for Disney+?

He's been saying stuff like this for months now while predicting DLR may not open again although it's clear Disney has every intention to do so, it's simply out of their hands for now.

And WDW just announced their big 50th plans and sounds like pretty much most of their plans pre-covid will still happen, simply delayed due to everything.

People always think such short terms on the internet. Disney+ is new and one of the few things that proved to be resilient against the virus (probably one of their few businesses that actually benefited from it). And seeing how fast they have gotten to nearly 100 million subscribers in just over a year, when they were predicting it would take four times as long, made them realize the potential goldmine they are sitting on. So of course they want to invest more.

It doesn't mean the parks are being abandon. Basically every major new land and ride from Anaheim to Hong Kong is still happening and being worked on literally as I type this. Yes things have shifted, others delayed, but I don't get the doom and gloom either. The parks will still be a huge focus going forward as they should be.

But as I also type this, it's just been reported that now over a half a million has died in America due to Covid alone. Let that sobering number sink in. A year ago, only 2-3 people have died from it around this point IIRC.

Here is an even more sobering point for people, but Covid-19 has now become the number one leading cause of death in America. It has managed to kill more people who die of heart disease which was the leading cause for literally decades now. And Covid beat it in just one freakin year and even with all the crazy restrictions and shut downs we did. Imagine where we would be today if life just continued on as usual. Millions would be dead right now. People saying 'this is just the flu' have been proven wrong over and over again.

I understand people don't like so many things had to close and our way of life altered, but things would've been more altered in ways I don't think people would've been prepared for if the world just pretended this virus was much ado about nothing. But hopefully we are turning a corner soon.

 

[BuzzedPotatoHead89]

Unfortunately, it remains to be seen if he will be recalled.

Once again, @Disney Irish, can you weigh in on Newsom's alleged deliberately uncaring attitude? Also, can you weigh in on whether Disney will abandon its parks in favor of Disney Plus?

To be clear, in case you ascertained this from my comments, I never said Disney is “abandoning” the parks. To the contrary, the parks will be a necessary vehicle for cross promotion (hence the “symbiotic relationship” reference).

Where I do think there’s a “risk” is where some “less contemporary” properties exist in the parks that cannot lend themselves to cross promotional opportunities. The company will be more sympathetic to spend cash on opportunities to promote D+.

It’s why IMO we’re seeing both rumored and confirmed film projects film projects on “original park IPs” like JC, HM, BTMRR, and Space Mountain, and also why “dated” &/or non-Disney IPs like Splash/SoTS and Twilight Zone are likely targets for “swaps”.

 

[TheDisneyDaysOfOurLives]

It will be more than a year. Perhaps many months more.

And yours isn't the only mind that is blown over that.

That some folks here, and in Sacramento, think that's perfectly fine blows even more minds.

So true. It probably will be many months still.

 

[fctiger]

To be clear, in case you ascertained this from my comments, I never said Disney is “abandoning” the parks. To the contrary, the parks will be a necessary vehicle for cross promotion (hence the “symbiotic relationship” reference).

Where I do think there’s a “risk” is where some “less contemporary” properties exist in the parks that cannot lend themselves to cross promotional opportunities. The company will be more sympathetic to spend cash on opportunities to promote D+.

It’s why IMO we’re seeing both rumored and confirmed film projects film projects on “original park IPs” like JC, HM, BTMRR, and Space Mountain, and also why “dated” &/or non-Disney IPs like Splash/SoTS and Twilight Zone are likely targets for “swaps”.

Even if that's true, how is that any different from what they been doing for decades already? Half of DCA is just filled with all their IPs, mostly Pixar. Every new land, literally every new land being built in every park around the world are their IPs: Star Wars, Marvel, Frozen, Pixar and on and on. I don't think Disney+ is going to be some special thing they will focus on their theme parks, simply whatever is popular enough on it to give some kind of space in the parks. But that's always been happening.

They are going to cross promote anything that will make a profit, even some things that don't like Tron and which will be in two parks. Disney+ is of course all encompassing because every movie, show, documentary they ever done will end up there. But they been 'swiping' stuff for a long long time now. The original Submarines for Nemo's Voyage the biggest in DL in the last decade but also adding Jack Sparrow to POTC or even characters in IASW.

I think it's weird to think it's going to be some big shift to Disney+, it's just the thing with a lot of popular properties on it. It being there or not isn't changing what they been doing a long time already.

 

[Tamandua]

At best, it's a tacit acknowledgement that Six Flags assumes the political winds are blowing strong enough now for Gavin Newsom to reverse his position from October, 2020 and allow SoCal theme parks to reopen this spring regardless of Science & Data.

Newsom should be proud. He's joining a very, very exclusive club. Only a few gubernatorial recall efforts have ever made it to the ballot in our nation's history. You have to really, really people off to make it this far.

 

[fctiger]

Especially after a year of being closed.

That still blows my mind.

It's pretty funny reading this because I just reread a series of posts me and you exchanged debating when the park was going to reopen in that original Disney shutting down thread from last year. You were convinced they were going to open April or May the soonest. I was fiercely against that idea and made the case it's no way they could open that soon but it was pretty sure it was going to happen waaaaaaaaaay down the line....like June or July lol.

In other words we were both wrong!

It's funny how I got pegged as a 'shut it downer' here but I only expected DL to be closed 4 months tops at the time. Even back in April I was still convinced they would get it open by July or August the latest. But once the state shut down their July reopening plans, I knew all bets were off and yet I still thought it would open probably by the fall then. So even for me, this is still pretty shocking too. I accepted it long ago obviously but if someone told me back when all of this started, I would've called them nuts if they thought the park would be shut down even half a year, much less an actual year.

 

[BuzzedPotatoHead89]

Even if that's true, how is that any different from what they been doing for decades already? Half of DCA is just filled with all their IPs, mostly Pixar. Every new land, literally every new land being built in every park around the world are their IPs: Star Wars, Marvel, Frozen, Pixar and on and on. I don't think Disney+ is going to be some special thing they will focus on their theme parks, simply whatever is popular enough on it to give some kind of space in the parks. But that's always been happening.

Yes and no. As we know, DCA didn’t begin that way. Additionally with D+ there are even more opportunities to explore the “lore” of Disney owned properties.

I can only assume the parks would be a perfect canvass for said promotion, particularly for current attractions/properties that aren’t current “film IP” by creating a new adjacent IP that meshes with the goal of D+ cross promotion.

In furtherance of my point here’s a recent article on the Magic Kingdom/S.E.A. projects in the works for D+.

Magic Kingdom TV Universe in the Works at Disney+ (Exclusive)

'For All Mankind' creator Ron Moore is readying the first of a potential franchise of projects that will explore characters from Disney parks and classic films.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[Tamandua]

It's pretty funny reading this because I just reread a series of posts me and you exchanged debating when the park was going to reopen in that original Disney shutting down thread from last year. You were convinced they were going to open April or May the soonest. I was fiercely against that idea and made the case it's no way they could open that soon but it was pretty sure it was going to happen waaaaaaaaaay down the line....like June or July lol.

In other words we were both wrong!

It's funny how I got pegged as a 'shut it downer' here but I only expected DL to be closed 4 months tops at the time. Even back in April I was still convinced they would get it open by July or August the latest. But once the state shut down their July reopening plans, I knew all bets were off and yet I still thought it would open probably by the fall then. So even for me, this is still pretty shocking too. I accepted long ago obviously but if someone told me back when all of this started, I would've called them nuts if they thought the park would be shut down even half a year, much less an actual year.

I thought for sure they'd be open before the end of May last year. People have a hard time remembering what things were like at the time. They moved the goalposts so many times, and so gradually, that we went from thinking covid had a 10% mortality rate that warranted shutting down for two weeks, to knowing it had a far less than 1% mortality rate and staying shut indefinitely. Recall that Disneyland closed voluntarily, and on their last day (March 13th) the official policy for dealing with the virus that was statistically killing 10% of people in Italy at the time (based on limited testing) was to NOT WEAR MASKS. Don't forget that Fauci was on TV explaining how wearing a mask was more risky because it causes you to touch your face and doesn't really help protect you.

I've lost faith in humanity this year.

 

[fctiger]

Yes and no. As we know, DCA didn’t begin that way. Additionally with D+ there are even more opportunities to explore the “lore” of Disney owned properties.

I can only assume the parks would be a perfect canvass for said promotion, particularly for current attractions/properties that aren’t current “film IP” by creating a new adjacent IP that meshes with the goal of D+ cross promotion.

In furtherance of my point here’s a recent article on the Magic Kingdom/S.E.A. projects in the works for D+.

Magic Kingdom TV Universe in the Works at Disney+ (Exclusive)

'For All Mankind' creator Ron Moore is readying the first of a potential franchise of projects that will explore characters from Disney parks and classic films.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

You're right it didn't, but the changeover happened really fast though. DCA went from a non-character park basically to one starting down the IP road beginning with A Bug's Life back in 2002, just a over a year after it opened and never looked back.

I guess I just don't understand how Disney+ in itself will be something for a major cross promotion when it just seems like it's all the stuff on it that they already been cross promoting for years, if not decades already? Will they find a way to cross promote the Mandalorian, sure, but it's a huge international hit and Star Wars (partly why it's such a huge international hit ), they were going to milk that cow if it aired on ABC or Freeform. Will they promote WandaVision in Avenger's Campus, probably so, but every new Marvel film or show is going to be promoted in that land regardless where it originated. That's literally why it's there now, because it's Marvel. So the biggest stuff on D+ are not surprisingly their biggest IPs that's already been around; they were going to always going to be promoted regardless.

All of this stuff is pretty exchangeable at this point. D+ is simply the platform for it. But they are literally not anything differently they haven't been doing for decades now. D+ is just the latest shiny new toy.

 

[Disstevefan1]

I completely disagree with the assessment that Newsom has an "uncaring attitude". Just because someone may disagree with how he handled the pandemic doesn't mean he was "uncaring".

Also Disney is NOT abandoning the Parks. They may be switching focus of the company to have Disney+ be a driver of future revenue. But that doesn't mean Disney is completely abandoning its theme parks division.

Totally agree about Disneyparks VS. Disney+. TWDC will do whatever (they think) is in the best interest of their shareholders at any moment in time period. None of our opinions matter, although it is interesting to discuss.

As for Newsom, there may be a different words to describe it, but Newsom’s wonderful life goes on in his mansion, while the shutdowns he arbitrarily orders crushes others lives. Feel free to label that with any word you like.

 

[Disney Irish]

As for Newsom, there may be a different words to describe it, but Newsom’s wonderful life goes on in his mansion, while the shutdowns he arbitrarily orders crushes others lives. Feel free to label that with any word you like.

You could say the same thing about most political figures throughout history. There will always be opposing views that "they" sit up in their gilded cage while the peasants down below suffer. It literally is a tale as old as time. However that doesn't mean that "label" is true of this situation.

Newsom has been damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If he literally opened up everything and people started getting sick and die everyone would be blaming him for not doing enough to protect people. If he closes things down and slowly opens it back up people claim he's not doing it fast enough. If he closes X business then that group would be unhappy, if he opens Y business then another group is unhappy. Point is I don't envy the man for trying to direct this ship during this pandemic, its a thankless job. California is the largest state in the union, one with 40 million different opinions on how things should be run. And it appears opinions from others outside the state on how it should be run.

And I'm sorry but there has been no perfect solution during this pandemic in this country, from either side of the aisle. Each have had their successes and failures.

 

[fctiger]

I thought for sure they'd be open before the end of May last year. People have a hard time remembering what things were like at the time. They moved the goalposts so many times, and so gradually, that we went from thinking covid had a 10% mortality rate that warranted shutting down for two weeks, to knowing it had a far less than 1% mortality rate and staying shut indefinitely. Recall that Disneyland closed voluntarily, and on their last day (March 13th) the official policy for dealing with the virus that was statistically killing 10% of people in Italy at the time (based on limited testing) was to NOT WEAR MASKS. Don't forget that Fauci was on TV explaining how wearing a mask was more risky because it causes you to touch your face and doesn't really help protect you.

I've lost faith in humanity this year.

I been back and forth on a lot of this stuff in the last year. I have always sided with the side that saves lives and I still do! The fact is even if the mortality rate wasn't as high as they originally thought, the fact that Covid 19 is now the number one cause of death in this country in just one freaking year says it all. So I truly understand why, even now, people want to be cautious. Yes there were many misperceptions from the start, on both sides. The main reality never went away and that is it can spread like wild fire and because it's so contagious it created a lot of problems. That's still the biggest issue, not even so much who dies from it, but the fact it's so transmissible. If this was AIDS then nothing would've changed at the level it did. And I was around when the AIDS virus started and people were freaking out even though in reality it was pretty hard to get through regular interaction....but this isn't. Just the opposite.

But yes, THAT said, I have always maintained as long as people just do the simple things like wear the masks, stay apart from each other as reasonably possibly, then a lot of these places can stay open. And Disney has proven for the most part it's been pretty safe although several other parks like Paris and Hong Kong has shut down again a few times, but not due to issues of the parks themselves, just higher cases in the cities they dwell in. So I do think it's an overreaction, but same time I understand the overreaction when you are worried it takes one major outbreak to reset all the positives. That's why you see places like Hong Kong shutting things down in a heartbeat even when they get just a new dozen cases because they know that dozen can shoot to thousands in a week.

But sure, I agree, I do think DL can be open now. But then people act like wearing a mask is akin to martial law and it was reported half of people were not wearing them regularly in the country. And I won't even talk about the last guy in the White House who made it worse in so many ways. I have asked this on another board, but if we could open up every thing 100% like before, but it would also require that 100% of the population wore masks at all times, could we do it? And we know the answer to that and why this is so frustrating.

Again, if we did the things we should've did the first three months, things would probably be a lot different today. Not perfect and not completely back to normal, but much better. Especially in the fatality count. So many countries are mostly back to normal now, including where all the other Disney parks are located. And that's for a reason.

 

[TheDisneyDaysOfOurLives]

It's pretty funny reading this because I just reread a series of posts me and you exchanged debating when the park was going to reopen in that original Disney shutting down thread from last year. You were convinced they were going to open April or May the soonest. I was fiercely against that idea and made the case it's no way they could open that soon but it was pretty sure it was going to happen waaaaaaaaaay down the line....like June or July lol.

In other words we were both wrong!

It's funny how I got pegged as a 'shut it downer' here but I only expected DL to be closed 4 months tops at the time. Even back in April I was still convinced they would get it open by July or August the latest. But once the state shut down their July reopening plans, I knew all bets were off and yet I still thought it would open probably by the fall then. So even for me, this is still pretty shocking too. I accepted it long ago obviously but if someone told me back when all of this started, I would've called them nuts if they thought the park would be shut down even half a year, much less an actual year.

I honestly never imagined we would shut down a vast majority of the country for a year. I thought we could get to a point of containing it and the time when we were shut down (a month to six weeks max) would allow us to get supplies in place so we could return to life.

This was never what I thought would happen.

 

[Tamandua]

I been back and forth on a lot of this stuff in the last year. I have always sided with the side that saves lives and I still do! The fact is even if the mortality rate wasn't as high as they originally thought, the fact that Covid 19 is now the number one cause of death in this country in just one freaking year says it all. So I truly understand why, even now, people want to be cautious. Yes there were many misperceptions from the start, on both sides. The main reality never went away and that is it can spread like wild fire and because it's so contagious it created a lot of problems. That's still the biggest issue, not even so much who dies from it, but the fact it's so transmissible. If this was AIDS then nothing would've changed at the level it did. And I was around when the AIDS virus started and people were freaking out even though in reality it was pretty hard to get through regular interaction....but this isn't. Just the opposite.

But yes, THAT said, I have always maintained as long as people just do the simple things like wear the masks, stay apart from each other as reasonably possibly, then a lot of these places can stay open. And Disney has proven for the most part it's been pretty safe although several other parks like Paris and Hong Kong has shut down again a few times, but not due to issues of the parks themselves, just higher cases in the cities they dwell in. So I do think it's an overreaction, but same time I understand the overreaction when you are worried it takes one major outbreak to reset all the positives. That's why you see places like Hong Kong shutting things down in a heartbeat even when they get just a new dozen cases because they know that dozen can shoot to thousands in a week.

But sure, I agree, I do think DL can be open now. But then people act like wearing a mask is akin to martial law and it was reported half of people were not wearing them regularly in the country. And I won't even talk about the last guy in the White House who made it worse in so many ways. I have asked this on another board, but if we could open up every thing 100% like before, but it would also require that 100% of the population wore masks at all times, could we do it? And we know the answer to that and why this is so frustrating.

Again, if we did the things we should've did the first three months, things would probably be a lot different today. Not perfect and not completely back to normal, but much better. Especially in the fatality count. So many countries are mostly back to normal now, including where all the other Disney parks are located. And that's for a reason.

Saying Covid is the number one cause of death is sort of misleading. It may be a comorbidity for a large number of deaths in the last year, but there wasn't a distinction in most cases of dying from covid or dying with covid. Not everyone who ever got covid was tested for covid, but pretty much everyone who died was tested, or in many cases when tests weren't available early on, they were assumed to have covid. That makes the mortality rate look a lot worse than it is in reality. That's not to say it isn't dangerous for some people... But... It's really only life threatening for a very small percentage of the population, and if we had just quarantined the vulnerable and let everyone else get it and get over it like chicken pox or something, we'd be in a much better situation. I would argue that we'd have fewer covid deaths overall because the pandemic wouldn't have been drawn out over such a long period of time allowing more opportunities for at risk people to get it.

As for masks... I say wear them if it makes you feel better, but there's a reason why you're being told to wear multiple masks now. Masks aren't very effective. At least not the ones everyone are wearing. If you wear one mask, they estimate 50% efficacy. Two masks: 75%. Three masks: 90%... If you can still breathe with four masks on, then even better. If you walk into a Disney park and can smell all the smells through your mask (like I did at wdw this month), then you know droplets are getting through. In and out through the mask. I don't know why people are in such denial about masks. People have been severely brainwashed this last year. My dad got covid and his friend couldn't believe he survived. It barely affected him but the media has so many people convinced its a guaranteed death sentence.

 

[fctiger]

Saying Covid is the number one cause of death is sort of misleading. It may be a comorbidity for a large number of deaths in the last year, but there wasn't a distinction in most cases of dying from covid or dying with covid. Not everyone who ever got covid was tested for covid, but pretty much everyone who died was tested, or in many cases when tests weren't available early on, they were assumed to have covid. That makes the mortality rate look a lot worse than it is in reality. That's not to say it isn't dangerous for some people... But... It's really only life threatening for a very small percentage of the population, and if we had just quarantined the vulnerable and let everyone else get it and get over it like chicken pox or something, we'd be in a much better situation. I would argue that we'd have fewer covid deaths overall because the pandemic wouldn't have been drawn out over such a long period of time allowing more opportunities for at risk people to get it.

As for masks... I say wear them if it makes you feel better, but there's a reason why you're being told to wear multiple masks now. Masks aren't very effective. At least not the ones everyone are wearing. If you wear one mask, they estimate 50% efficacy. Two masks: 75%. Three masks: 90%... If you can still breathe with four masks on, then even better. If you walk into a Disney park and can smell all the smells through your mask (like I did at wdw this month), then you know droplets are getting through. In and out through the mask. I don't know why people are in such denial about masks. People have been severely brainwashed this last year. My dad got covid and his friend couldn't believe he survived. It barely affected him but the media has so many people convinced its a guaranteed death sentence.

I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole. The point is a half million people are now dead where as a year ago we were told it was going to just go away soon. It hasn't gone away. It's the complete opposite in fact.

As for masks, they are more effective versus not wearing them at all. Again, there is ample evidence of that and why six months ago the White House literally became a super spreader event to the point the President even got it because they weren't mandatory to wear.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Saying Covid is the number one cause of death is sort of misleading. It may be a comorbidity for a large number of deaths in the last year, but there wasn't a distinction in most cases of dying from covid or dying with covid. Not everyone who ever got covid was tested for covid, but pretty much everyone who died was tested, or in many cases when tests weren't available early on, they were assumed to have covid. That makes the mortality rate look a lot worse than it is in reality. That's not to say it isn't dangerous for some people... But... It's really only life threatening for a very small percentage of the population, and if we had just quarantined the vulnerable and let everyone else get it and get over it like chicken pox or something, we'd be in a much better situation. I would argue that we'd have fewer covid deaths overall because the pandemic wouldn't have been drawn out over such a long period of time allowing more opportunities for at risk people to get it.

As for masks... I say wear them if it makes you feel better, but there's a reason why you're being told to wear multiple masks now. Masks aren't very effective. At least not the ones everyone are wearing. If you wear one mask, they estimate 50% efficacy. Two masks: 75%. Three masks: 90%... If you can still breathe with four masks on, then even better. If you walk into a Disney park and can smell all the smells through your mask (like I did at wdw this month), then you know droplets are getting through. In and out through the mask. I don't know why people are in such denial about masks. People have been severely brainwashed this last year. My dad got covid and his friend couldn't believe he survived. It barely affected him but the media has so many people convinced its a guaranteed death sentence.

Well, as with any infection to some degree, it's the roll of the dice, which could be exacerbated by pre-existing conditions, etc. But if 500,000 deaths, most of which could have been prevented with better messaging and policies, is nothing to you than I don't know what to say.

I'm happy your Dad got over it, and I know a few people who've gotten covid and recovered with no long term consequences. But I also know people who have lost parents and grandparents in the past week because of covid. Someone else I know is in the hospital as we speak having serious covid complications.

Just because you personally haven't seen anyone you know experience the worst possible side effect of covid doesn't mean it's all bunk.

 

[Tamandua]

But if 500,000 deaths, most of which could have been prevented with better messaging and policies, is nothing to you than I don't know what to say.

This is a point I don't agree with. 500,000 of the most elderly or unhealthy people dying over a year in a country of about 332,000,000 people isn't exactly a huge amount of people. You don't know how many of those people would have died within that year period anyways. I do know of people who died from covid... They were in their 80s and 90s in the local senior living facility. If covid hadn't done it, the flu might have... Or anything else. 500,000 sounds like a large number but in context it's really not that big. Not enough to ruin all of our lives for more than a year.

 

[castleparker]

You don't know how many of those people would have died within that year period anyways. I do know of people who died from covid

Yeah... we kind of have this thing called excess mortality that measures the "normal" amount of people who die a year. The number of excess deaths is way above this benchmark during 2020. What do you think all these excess people died of? Mask induced hypoxia?

 

[Tamandua]

Yeah... we kind of have this thing called excess mortality that measures the "normal" amount of people who die a year. The number of excess deaths is way above this benchmark during 2020. What do you think all these excess people died of? Mask induced hypoxia?

How much is "way above"?

 

[PiratesMansion]

This is a point I don't agree with. 500,000 of the most elderly or unhealthy people dying over a year in a country of about 332,000,000 people isn't exactly a huge amount of people. You don't know how many of those people would have died within that year period anyways. I do know of people who died from covid... They were in their 80s and 90s in the local senior living facility. If covid hadn't done it, the flu might have... Or anything else. 500,000 sounds like a large number but in context it's really not that big. Not enough to ruin all of our lives for more than a year.

Well. "All 500,000 those people were going to die soon anyway because they were old or weak humans, actually so it's totally cool really" is definitely a take.