Don’t jump to conclusions based on someone’s speculation! I saw on the local news this morning a report where a financial expert claimed that it would take a full year for Walt Disney World to be running at capacity once again. The report caused many people to assume that meant that Walt Disney World would not open for a full 12 months! Please, when you hear something, don’t jump to conclusions. The financial expert was making a guess in unprecedented territory.
Remember that the financial expert was not speaking for Disney. This was a third party, stating an opinion. People in this area are eager for a date, because we have been hit hard. The news story was trying to give viewers an educated guess, not a fact. The expert never said that the parks wouldn’t reopen earlier, the story was about crowds. That didn’t stop people from deciding on their own that the parks will be closed until 2021.
The truth of the matter is that no one knows what is going to happen. We don’t know if the parks will reopen next month or next year. All that we can do is to watch to see what is happening in the rest of the world. This includes seeing what is going on at the Disney Parks overseas.
Shanghai Disneyland was the first to close. It shut down back in January. The theme park remains closed as I write this, but Disneytown, Wishing Star Park, and the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel are running with limited capacity, and they have been for a month now. I am not saying that when things open here in Florida that we’ll have a month or more like that, but I do think that things will open slowly. We’ll most likely see some hotels and restaurants open before the parks.
When Walt Disney World does open, there will most likely be extra precautions, at least for a while. Bob Iger said that one of the things that they are looking into is temperature checks. I know that people can carry coronavirus without having a temperature, but at least it’s doing something. I think that it would also stop some people from traveling with sick family members. Each year I see families at the parks with at least one member who is obviously sick, but they didn’t want to cancel their vacation. Not allowing people with fevers into the parks might make some people think twice before infecting others with anything, not just coronavirus.
When you hear something about the parks that is supposed to be “fact”, check the source. It’s easy to figure out if something is from Disney, or if it’s just a guess. Please, don’t jump to conclusions. That’s only going to make it harder to know the truth.