Disney Park Employees Rightfully Worried About Reopening
By George Robbins
This upcoming month is a huge one for a number of different industries, but maybe none more-so than the entertainment industry. The movie industry is kind of at a crossroads right now because many movies have had to have their theatrical release dates pushed back even further. Beyond just that, movie theaters have had to delay their reopenings to try and chase after the movie release dates because they need the new content to actually open up. Without any new movies until the end of July, many theaters will not be opening their doors until the middle or end of July in order to save themselves a lot of hassle. Like every other business, they have restrictions limiting the number of people they can sell tickets to and on top of that, they only have older movies to show that people can just watch some other way.
The movie theater industry is in hot water right now simply due to the fact that everything else is going down the drain due to a new surge in virus cases. This new surge is one that is sweeping across the nation causing many officials to start shutting some businesses down again. This doesn’t bode well for studios that want to maximize profits by releasing theatrically because no one would be able to go out to the movies. Plus, if businesses are being shut down, it wouldn’t make sense to put movies out in theaters if they will be shut down almost immediately afterward. There is also the fear in people’s minds about what kind of damage can be done if we aren’t smarter about the way we handle things going forward. This sentiment is shared by a lot of people throughout the entertainment industry as well as government officials who have the duty to try and keep people safe.
Disney is a massive part of the entertainment industry and those same fears are starting to present themselves as time goes on and they plan the reopening of their parks. Due to the spike in cases, Governor Newsom called for more restrictions to be put in place in California which changed the plan for Disney to reopen Disneyland to a new undetermined date. Although the date for the reopening of Disneyland has not been officially decided, the date that Disney World is meant to start reopening has not changed. the Disney World parks will begin the reopening procedure on July 11th and over the course of a few days all of the Disney World parks are meant to open to the public. It seems that this has all become a cause for concern and outrage from employees that will soon have to go back to work in the parks.
With California among the states that have had the largest surge in cases recently, it is no surprise that employees at Disneyland are concerned about what will happen. There will be a Park Pass system that is meant to be put in place to limit the number of guests entering the park, but there is no guarantee that this could work as intended or that it would even be set up for Disneyland. Also, even though guests are supposed to wear masks, there is no way of policing them well enough in the park to keep them from walking around without them. This combined with the fact that Disney has no plans to test any of their employees has created a lot of anger among the workforce that must go back to work dealing with people that could endanger many people’s lives. It is no wonder so many employees are bringing these issues up before an official reopening date is decided.