“Business as unusual…” Disney in the Fall of 2020
But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like
You’ve been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?”Basille “Pompeii”
(Kent Phillips, photographer)
The Fall Is Coming
With a reasonably busy Labor Day holiday weekend fading in the rearview mirror, Central Florida’s theme parks are starting to hunker down again. Walt Disney trimmed the operating hours at its four theme parks on Tuesday. Last month, Universal Orlando parent Comcast temporarily closed two of its on-site hotels and six of its least popular theme park attractions ahead of this seasonally slow time of the year…
None of these companies turned a profit at their theme parks this summer, and they aren’t going to fare any better now that kids are back in school. Without the big-ticket Halloween events at Disney and Universal that typically save autumn from an even worse fate, the next few months will be rough. With initial hopes of a pandemic-licking vaccine out as early as late October dimming quickly, the industry is bracing for a challenging climate…
Munarriz added, “Disney, Comcast, and SeaWorld Entertainment will make it out alive, but nothing comes easy at this point.”
So how do we remain optimists in the midst of all this “stuff.”
The good news is that the major theme park operators aren’t going away anytime soon. Disney and Comcast have much larger media businesses that are picking up some slack for their struggling theme park and movie studio businesses. Disney and Comcast will turn out healthy overall profits this year… It’s not business as usual; it’s business as unusual.
Photo: Disney
