I took this the first day at the parks were closed In a press conference today (May 15), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis mentioned the reopening of the theme parks. No date was given, but he did outline what needs to happen from the state’s perspective before they can reopen. Said DeSantis:
“Amusement parks; parks can submit reopening plans to the state. They should identify the date certain that they believe that they can presume safe operations. They have to provide how they’re going to do it, how they’re going to accommodate the guests, how they’re going to protect the staff, and then they need to have an endorsement from the relevant official in their locality, Orange County mayor, wherever you’re talking about. I’ve watched, I was watching during the middle of March, when Disney and Universal were still operating. They determined that they were going to close, but they said ‘we’re going to keep people here through the weekend because the people have nowhere to go’. I fully supported that decision, but they were doing a lot of stuff even then, to promote hygiene and distancing, and so I know that they’ve been working on this a lot, and that Disney’s got a run going on in Shanghai. My goal on all this is let’s keep safety first, but let’s work and innovate to get to yes on this stuff. So I can’t tell you when this is going to be, but I think that we need to say ‘Come up with your plan, show us what you got, work with your local officials, and then we’ll see what we can do.'”
This is encouraging to me. In the press conferences that I’ve watched in the past, the theme parks were all but ignored. We know that Disney and Universal are indeed working to come up with those plans. Here’s hoping that they will come up with a date and submit the plan soon.