Disneyland Reopening Must Wait While California Sporting Events Get Less Restrictions
Courtesy of movieweb.com:
Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, and other California theme parks will remain closed for the time being. California Governor Gavin Newsom, along with Director of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, offered a revision on Newsom’s original proposed plan for opening theme parks and sporting events this afternoon. With that being said, theme parks in California are going to have to continue to wait, as they remain in the “minimal” category of Newsom’s reopening, which is pretty much impossible at this point in time.
With the minimal tier, businesses can open with some modifications, but the county needs to have less than 1 new case, per 100k and only 2% of positive tests. Meanwhile, sporting events will allow for lower capacity under the moderate tier. Gavin Newsom and Mark Ghaly say that theme parks like Disneyland provide “random large scale mixing,” and have “tens of thousands of visitors from a broad geographic base.” This was the basis that they made their decision on, despite getting good data from their visit to Walt Disney World in Florida.
As it stands, Disneyland and California Adventure have been closed since the middle of March. Disney, along with the other California theme parks, including Universal Studios Hollywood, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain, have been fighting with Gavin Newsom to reopen their doors. They all have said the governor’s requirements “would effectively keep parks closed indefinitely.” For now, it looks like cases are spiking all over the United States and parts of Europe, so even if they were allowed to reopen, they might have to close again before the end of the year.
Earlier this week, mayors of California’s largest cities sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom asking him to relax his guidelines for reopening theme parks. “The guidelines put forth by your Administration were released within the framework of prioritizing public health and safety for guests and employees. This is the right focus,” says the letter. “However, economic and public health are not mutually exclusive goals.” The letter goes on to say that the longer the parks like Disneyland remain closed, the longer that it will have an impact on hundreds of thousands of jobs, thousands of small businesses, and billions in operating revenue for our cities.
As of this writing, Gavin Newsom does not seem like he is willing to budge on his original guidelines for reopening Disneyland and the rest of California’s theme parks. Downtown Disney is currently open, along with a portion of California Adventure, which does not include any rides. The area is jam packed with visitors every day and it hits capacity nearly every day too, which just shows how popular Disney is to the residents of Southern California. With that being said, it’s going to be a while before any theme parks in the state are able to open their doors. Deadline was the first to report on Newsom’s new orders.
