Florida Gov. Heaps Praise on Disney World For Successful Reopening While Criticizing California
Though Florida has made the news this week for inching ever closer to having 1 million COVID-19 cases statewide, Governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference today (Monday November 30th) where he praised the theme parks’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
As we previously reported here at MickeyBlog, Florida theme parks closed back in March due to the pandemic eventually reopening 4-5 months later. Upon reopening the theme parks implemented a host of new policies and procedures including mandatory temperature checks, face mask requirements, social distancing and caps on theme park capacity.
“Everyone now acknowledges that theme parks have not led to any type of major outbreaks,” DeSantis said. According to a recent piece in USA Today the governor added that Disney World, SeaWorld and Universal “have done very well” at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.
DeSantis continued, “We knew because of the way it’s done, they had precautions and all that. It’s outdoors, all these other things.”
Photo: Disney
DeSantis then went on to contrast the success of Florida’s theme park reopenings with the fact that theme parks in California remain closed indefinitely. According to USA Today he called measures to keep businesses closed in America, “totally overboard.”
When it came to the subject of relief packages for laid off theme park works, DeSantis did level a bit of criticism against the federal government saying that they “should’ve done a relief package months ago.”
“You know, the reason why a lot of people are unemployed is because of federal policies with the 15 days to slow the spread,” he said. “Unemployment is really on the federal government because I think they’re the ones that caused it. So they should do relief. Hopefully they’ll do it over the next month or two.”
Image Credit: Disney
On Thanksgiving Eve, the news came out that the Walt Disney Company would be letting an additional 4,000 workers go at the start of the 2021 fiscal year. This is in addition to the 28.000 cast members that Disney announced would be laid off from the parks division back in September.
Earlier today, we here at MickeyBlog also shared the news that Hong Kong Disney is following Disneyland Paris’ lead and made the decision to close their theme parks effective immediately due to the continued spread of COVID.
We will continue to follow these stories closely. Readers are encouraged to keep checking in with us for further news and updates!
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Source: USA Today
