Disney theme parks have been closed around the world since March, but it looks like the first park to close is now going to be the first one to re-open. Disney Shanghai closed in January, but is now going to be opening again on May 11th.
The opening was announced at a Disney Second Quarter Earnings call. They revealed that it has been a tough quarter for the company, with the park closings seeing the company lose $1 billion. Now, it looks like they are going to start and earn that back with the first re-opening.
It won’t be completely business-as-usual though, as China has asked that the park limits attendance to just one-third of its capacity so that social distancing can still be practiced by the patrons. It was revealed that the park’s capacity is 80,000 – information that Disney has never shared about one of its parks – so that means it will be only about 24,000 let into the park at a time.
Disney said, however, they would be holding attendance down to an even lower number just to be safe.
Furthermore, guests and cast members will have to wear masks. The only people not wearing masks will be those dressed up as characters, and they will be kept at a distance, so no pictures will be taken with Goofy.
There was no official word given about the other parks re-opening, but given the time-frame of Shanghai, we could expect our own theme parks to open up again in June.
As we see countries around the world start to open up a little bit, theme parks are sure to be the last businesses to do so given the amount of people in attendance. Even with limited capacity, there are still going to be some of the biggest crowds.
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