Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

Disney is easily one of the largest companies worldwide and probably takes the top spot for the largest entertainment business there is in the world. They have there hands in just about everything that is related to the entertainment industry which has given them the ability to gather large crowds of fans over the years. Starting as just a small animation company, Disney became popular because of the extremely detailed work that they put into making their animated movies. What most people may not even know is that the company almost ended up going under when they just started. If not for Walt Disney not giving up and putting all of him money and property on the line, then they never would have finished their first film, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’

After the release and smash success of their first film release, they were able to expand upon the foundations which were now laid out and Disney was able to expand. Next, we saw the creation of countless films which would make the Disney company capable of taking on larger projects and building up a fan base that would continue to last for many years. With the continued success that their animations brought in, Walt Disney decided to open up a theme park in order to play off of the popularity of the animations. This is how we ended up with the inception of Disneyland in Anaheim, California and eventually, the building of the massive multi-park location known as Disney World. While initially not that huge, both locations have built themselves up tremendously over the years while staying up to date.

Not only did they create a Disney Parks division, but they continued to put out stunning films that have managed to create a bunch of different generations of fans. They built up their fan base and then sold them on going to their Parks which would further play on what they loved about the films they had seen. This tradition has continued even today and is responsible for bringing in a countless number of people in an effort to keep getting bigger as a company. Obviously this tactic worked wonders because they eventually managed to become one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. Although they had rocky beginnings, they were able to spend many years creating something that other companies have been trying to do for years.

There was a reason why the “Happiest Place on Earth” and the “Most Magical Place on Earth”(Disneyland and Disney World respectively) were given those nicknames in the first place. The overall purpose of the parks was to make people feel comfortable in the parks and be happy with everything they find in the parks. In truth, this was widely considered to be an accepted fact that people were usually just happier in general while they were in the parks. While this continued to be the case over the years, it started dawning on the parks that customers were losing satisfaction more quickly than before and expectations have changed from customers as time has gone on. Now, customers expect to get what they see online from the Parks and it has hindered customer happiness over the past couple of years.

Despite the lack of overall happiness that people experience in the parks, the fact remained that people still like going to the Parks because it has still brought them overall happiness over the years. The enemy of progress is nostalgia, and in this case, it is also the enemy of true happiness as people only go because of the nostalgia they get from seeing their favorite things before their eyes from their childhoods. If people wanted to be happy with where they go on vacation it should be a place that they have always wanted to go and they should plan it properly. Instead, many will continue going to the Parks because they grew up loving the content showed off in the parks growing up. When they capture a child’s attention with their films, they create fans for life and that has worked well for them over the years.

This has always been their method of making the most amount of money over the years and it has allowed them to renovate and expand on a number of occasions to always keep things fresh for guests both new and old. Regardless of when a person and their family members may go to the parks, they can find some kind of happiness in the parks, especially if other people around them feel the same way. As of late, they have not been able to bring anybody in because of the Covid-19 pandemic shutting down pretty much every facet of all of the Parks. With that currently happening, Disney Parks division has been suffering tremendously and have been trying their best to reopen to some degree, but it is just too risky at the moment. There is no telling when they will actually be able to reopen to any degree in the future, but with things the way they are now, we shouldn’t expect it to be any time soon.

When the pandemic began back in the middle of March earlier this year, all Disney Parks worldwide had been shut down like every other business. In an effort to keep as many people as possible from getting infected, non-essential businesses like entertainment businesses and, subsequently, theme parks closed their doors and gates to the public. This was to be expected because the theme parks are easily one of the largest factors in someone getting infected. After all, it is a massive location with countless people all huddled together or stuck in line together for hours at a time. Since the danger was ever so clear, they knew immediately that amusement parks would be among the last businesses which would get to reopen to the public at large.

Everyone knew that the pandemic was not going to be over any time soon, but people were hopeful about businesses being able to reopen to the public once again in the near future. Unfortunately, this would be a much harder feat to pull off than initially anticipated because the pandemic has gotten worse as time has gone on. Eventually, the Disney Parks division was able to reopen to the public once again in Hong Kong and Florida, but they have been very rocky re-openings at best. Just like every other business, they had to wait their turn to reopen as it was based upon the local governments as well as the overall number of new cases reported. Thus, they have reached a point where they can’t even reopen in certain locations because things are still far too dangerous.

The Disney Parks division was trying their best to reopen Disneyland in California back in July but this became a bit of an impossible task due to a rampant wave of infection. Back over the summer, their was a massive surge in newly reported virus cases and because of this, some governments started shutting some businesses down again. Even if they didn’t shut down some businesses, the governments would make it even more difficult for those that were opened to stay open. This is why Disneyland was not able to make its reopening when they originally planned for it and now they have reached a tipping point that will be hard to come back from. In California, for them to have even been able to reopen, there were set guidelines created by the Government of California which had to be met before parks like that were able to open again.

The new guidelines put in place by the state government were seen as being unfair by the Disney Parks division because they made it so that a certain threshold of new cases had to be under a certain amount before places like that could reopen. This wouldn’t be seen as too terrible by some companies if not for the fact that the State of California is very strict about the number of new cases and the threshold it would take for certain businesses to reopen to the public. They have to have an extremely low number of new cases before they are actually allowed to reopen to the public which has led to many companies getting upset that they are being so strict. Fortunately, this has paid off a bit because we are now facing another massive wave of the virus and it would be too dangerous if they reopened anyway, so they would have had to shut down again anyway.

With the initial fact that they could not open they made the decision to lay off a total of 28,000 employees who they could not afford to continue paying as they already lost billions this year. With so much money being lost, it was a surprise that it took as long as it did before they finally laid off their employees. Unfortunately, nothing else could have been done and they were already catching flak because they allowed employees that tested positive to go back to work in the Parks that were open. As an employer, they have the duty to keep both their customers and employees safe so in terms of safety this was a good reason to lay them off as well. It would seem that they did not do enough though because they are now talking about laying off another 4,000 employees early next year.

The ongoing closures and loss in revenue is the reason as to why the company has made the announcement of the next round of layoffs. Layoffs will be primarily in the Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products divisions of the company and there is no feasible way for them to keep their employees on. This is an unfortunate side effect of the current pandemic but there is nothing that can really be done in the meantime as they are still losing a lot of revenue overall. Disney is easily one of the largest companies out there which has both its advantages and its disadvantages. The advantages are mostly based around the fact that Disney now owns a large number of intellectual properties that are easily recognized by people all over. The disadvantages are the incredible cost that is incurred by the fact that they are no longer functioning at full capacity.

Disney now owns so many streams of revenue that it is easy to forget that if one of them fails, then they are going to have a hard time getting enough money elsewhere to cover it. This pandemic has been a huge pain for everyone, especially since people are now losing their jobs because of it and this isn’t bound to get better as time goes on. Hopefully, the vaccines being developed will work the way people are hoping for, but this just may not end up being the case which means the pandemic will be going on for a long time still. As such, companies are going to be having a hard time making up for lost revenue especially if things continue getting worse as predicted. Disney is a pretty good example now of how the pandemic can definitely affect larger companies.

While the Parks division may not be the most profitable of their revenue streams, it is easily one of the most important and this is seen as a bad sign. Not only is Disney losing money from that source of revenue, but they are also losing money because they cannot properly release their new films. With theaters the way they are now, it is no surprise that they would have a hard time getting their films out there. It is because of this that they pushed back the release dates of a vast majority of their films and they won’t see release dates any time soon. All of this has gone to show that even the biggest corporations out there and the people working for them are all being affected heavily by this pandemic. Hopefully things will not stay this way for much longer, but we have no way of knowing this for sure.