Disney World Reopening Talk: True Hope Or Just a Mirage?

In this post, we discuss Florida Governor DeSantis’s recent comments about Disney being “ahead of the curve.” Ahead of the curve on what? Well, that’s sort of the issue…

Update: In the ten minutes since I wrote this post, of course there’s been another “development” which is that the Florida Task Force is meeting to discuss the tourism industry.

All Those Disclaimers Again (And a Chance at $50!)

There’s a headline floating around (we’ll get to it) that I think is giving a bit of context-free hope to people. And while the irony of writing hundreds of words about how we shouldn’t be speculating about these things is not lost on me, I felt like with the buzz already out there, I could weigh in.

If you’re here, it’s hopefully because you want to see a little more than a bare report of what someone said. You’re here hopefully because you like to leave posts thinking “I know even less than when I started, but at least now it’s lunch time.”

But you also should recognize that the additional commentary from me is of limited value. I get why sites just run “So-and-so Said This” stories, because they’re literally just reporting what someone said. But I hope you’ll allow me freedom to go a bit beyond that while also accepting the limited value of one person’s guesswork.

So, again, I can’t predict the future, and asking when the parks will reopen is mostly a guessing game (sometimes literally, play the guessing game at WDW Prep School for a chance to win $50 (closes April 24).

I also don’t have any “insider” knowledge. But the conversation about this is ongoing, and people continue to ask me for my thoughts on it on social media. And while I wish we could all find the temperament to remain silent about it, that isn’t happening, so I’d like to at least throw a lot of context at you to make up for the lack of context found elsewhere.

If you’re just looking for our guesses on when the parks will reopen, we have a separate post about that. This post is more of a “this issue is still super complicated, don’t let one headline change that” reminder.

DeSantis Said WHAT?!

Following an appearance by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Fox News, the Disney fandom community was abuzz over what he said about Walt Disney World:

Let’s start with a few things. Most sources are reporting this as something like “DeSantis Says Disney Ahead of Curve On Reopening” (emphasis mine), which isn’t really what he says (in my opinion). Here’s what he says (all emphasis mine):

It’s amazing the ideas that the business are already thinking about. They’ve been thinking deeply about this for weeks and weeks. There’s a lot of great ideas that I’ve already seen put on the table. I’m in discussions with places like Disney. They are so far ahead of the curve. And I think everyone wants to make sure that we do it safely.

It’s perhaps a slight distinction, but the discussion isn’t about being prepared to reopen, it’s about having ideas for how to safely reopen.

That distinction matters for two reasons. First, it says nothing about taking actual steps toward reopening, like making a final decision about new protocols, recalling staff (which obviously we’ll hear about), or testing operations.

Second, being ahead of the curve on ideas is expected from a company that (1) traffics in creative ideas and (2) has the most concentrated expertise on guest experience in crowded situations. From day one of the closure I’m sure Disney was ahead of the curve in this regard. This isn’t new, it’s expected.

Unfortunately, that situation that demands the best ideas from them is also reason to fear they’ll be one of the last places to reopen.

Two Important Asides

Before I go on, I wanted to quickly add in this recent Universal (not Disney) survey that was going around that discussed theoretical changes to their parks when they reopen. I won’t be talking much specifically about these ideas, but I wanted you to have them in your mind as you read on:

This post also isn’t going to discuss whether Disney could effectively keep COVID-19 out of the parks with testing. That’s another complicated issue (arguably more important than the issues in this post). As DeSantis goes on to point out in that interview, the tests can have false negatives, so parks at least need to be somewhat prepared for that.

You can run through your head what kind of testing and what volume of testing would be required and how that would impact whether guests want to visit, and thus how that impacts the business case. Different testing protocols have different costs and benefits.

Then you’d need to consider, given the risk of false negatives (that is, of someone infected getting through your chosen protocol), how much of the rest of this post still matters once you have the appropriate testing protocol in place.

You might decide you want multiple blood tests over several days. No one will come to you park, but you also won’t have to care about the rest of this post. If Disney theoretically could reopen before smaller business, it would be because they have the ability to efficiently control who accesses their parks.

You might decide you can’t test at all. Then you have a whole host of challenges to deal with, which we’ll now discuss…

An Incomplete List of Challenges Disney Has

My initial reaction when I saw the DeSantis interview reported, but didn’t watch the video, was “DeSantis is bonkers. There’s no way a theme park can be ahead of the reopening curve. WDW has hotels, restaurants, bars, stores, concerts, mass gatherings, and sometimes almost mosh pits, all in one. That’s not to mention the issue of ride queues and the rides themselves.”

Having watched the video, I now feel like I was harsh on DeSantis, but the rest of that remains. Sure, the hotels, restaurants, bars, and stores can maybe all be dealt with. Society will reopen and those places will have plans, and those plans can maybe work at Walt Disney World as well as anywhere else.

And again, there’s at least a path to be carved whereby Disney can efficiently regulate who enters its parks better than other restaurants / hotels / stores, and thus has some advantage on them when it comes to reopening. But that’s the other issue I said I wouldn’t discuss.

Then there’s WDW entertainment, which will maybe be cut, and crowds. This is where things get tricky.

Let’s take a step back up the list. Hotels, restaurants, bars, and stores aren’t “minor” parts of a theme park—that’s where they make a lot of their money. Hotels in particular at Walt Disney World (see how much a Disney World vacation costs), but part of the reason FastPass+ and virtual queues are good for theme parks is because they keep guests walking around shopping, eating, and drinking rather than in lines.

So you make some modifications to those and then you get to entertainment, where again, things get tricky. As a public health measure, cutting entertainment is obvious. Entertainment is just an excuse for people to pack in side-by-side.

In many of the streetmosphere performances the performers spend an inordinate amount of time telling guests to pack in closer in order to keep walkways open. And don’t even get us started with how close people will get during parades and fireworks shows.

When you start cutting entertainment, though, you start to hurt the viability of the business. Do you hurt the viability of the business so much that it’s not worth opening the parks at all? Probably not.

But remember, the business case is already in a tricky position. If an outbreak is tied to Disney World, they have a serious PR problem. If an outbreak hits their Cast Members…I don’t even want to think about how awful we should all feel about the possibility of that happening (the huge business impact aside).

So when you take a business that would be taking a risk reopening and then lessen the value of that business by cutting entertainment and limiting how much (and how many) people can dine and shop, you’re putting the business in a problematic position.

That is to say, these are all issues on the margin. Things like testing protocols, changes to entertainment, and changes to ride operations might all look like solvable issues individually, but each time you solve an issue you keep a few more people away from the parks, and eventually you’re keeping enough people away that it isn’t worth reopening yet.

And we haven’t even gotten to ride operations. Here’s just a list of thoughts on that…

Anything that slows boarding keeps people in queues longer. Queues are bad because they’re crowds.

Anything that spaces out queues pushes people back into traffic corridors. I’m not sure, but I’d think traffic corridors are maybe worse than queues because you’re getting passed by hundreds of people instead of standing between the same few and passing the same few in your snake queue every few minutes.

Anything that keeps people out of queues keeps them in common spaces. If you have virtual queueing, you still need people to be somewhere. So do we all just sit in the hub six feet apart? Or will we all just be in the stores fondling the same merchandise for hours on end.

Even with virtual queues, you still wind up in a queue. Whether it’s FASTPASS or FastPass+ or boarding groups, you always arrive to a small line when it’s time to ride. That short line might be easier to manage from a health perspective (e.g. you have fewer handrails to sanitize), but you’re not going

Kids are huge spreaders of disease. Kids are an essential part of society and the key demographic for Disney, but they’re also disgusting (that’s an epidemiological term, I think). They touch and lick everything. They’re the “wild card” in this Vegas-style “guess what’s gonna happen!” adventure.

The Politics of It All

We can sort of put a huge political discussion about the economy and public health to the side here by acknowledging one point: if a politician pressures a business to reopen, the politician probably won’t accept any of the blame if an outbreak is later tied to that business.

While I initially (again, before watching the video) thought the Governor’s comments were pressuring Disney, I felt differently after actually watching. As I’ve said, I understood him to be talking about ideas for how to safely reopen, not a scheduled plan for actually reopening.

That said, if the Governor thinks it’s time to get business going again, I would expect him to pressure the largest employer in his state to get things moving.

The political differences between California and Florida are part of why I explained Disneyland and Walt Disney World might reopen at different times.

And I was intentionally coy as to how those differences cut for exactly this reason, it’s tough to know whether how public health, the short-term economy, and the relative weighing of public health vs. the short-term economy will play out in these two states.

It’s All Still Complicated

But politics isn’t business, and I expect Disney to weigh the business issues more carefully than the Governor is interpreted to have done in an off-the-cuff interview remark. I don’t think Disney is some public health savior, but I do think they have incredibly strong business reasons to care about the health of their guests and Cast Members.

It’s worth diverting here to say that people in the “anyone who wants to go to the parks can take the risk if they want to!” crowd seem to often forget about the position Cast Members are in.

Many Cast Members are elderly. Traditionally, these Cast Members are in positions that put them in constant interaction with guests. Obviously I hope Disney finds a way to rework this arrangement, but in any case the people working on the front lines probably aren’t facing down a panoply of ways to put food on the table these days. It’s important to empower them to do their jobs in a safe manner.

The business case for reopening with any set of protocols is way complicated. It’s more complicated than Governor DeSantis—who wants to get his state safely back to work—or a guest (like me)—who really wants their Magic back—can appreciate.

We get It. We Really Do.

I sort of diverged from my original point of this post, which was something like “Disney World’s restaurants ain’t reopening before all the other restaurants.” But I had to do so because everything about the “when will it reopen” discussion is buried in layers of “If I’m right about X but wrong about Y then it’s probably Z unless I’m wrong about W in which case I might have been wrong about X.”

The “problem” as I see it is that the Governor goes on TV, praises Disney’s creative problem solving, and then people start messaging me on instagram asking if this means their June trip is definitely okay.

And we get it. Most of you reading this want the chance to go spend money at Disney World. I want the chance to make money again, because blogs about Disney World don’t really make money while Disney World is closed. So I’m definitely on your side of eager to get the parks open (that says nothing about how I’d weight the public health side of it, just that I too am on the edge of my seat).

But unless it comes from Disney, or unless someone—a politician, a news host, a tweeter, a blogger—presents an explanation for how Disney might manage, from the standards they’ll set to the barriers to entering the parks to how things will look inside the parks—no one has offered an explanation of where we are in the reopening process.

So, until the next “news” “breaks”…

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All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

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