Disneyland Is Annoyed With California’s Reopening Guidelines
By George Robbins
The coronavirus pandemic is bar far one of the most difficult situations the world has found it self in within recent times. That is not to say that there are not plenty of other issues in the world, but there are plenty of issues that have recently arisen. Most importantly, many of the issues that we have been seeing crop up as of late have to do with the reopening of various businesses and education institutions. With that in mind, it is kind of difficult to think about the next steps in place for us moving forward as we have no idea how things are going to go with the pandemic. It is still the pandemic which has a lot to do with how things are happening these days and how we are all moving forward.
Among the bigger businesses, they are a lot more talks than there would usually be in regards to how they are handling their reopenings. The main discussion for all of this is the fact that companies are not quite sure how to react to a lot of what is currently going on. For instance, movie theaters are trying their best to get people to come in and pay to watch movies. Unfortunately for them, these plans are kind of just going by the wayside because they have no idea what it is that they need to do to get people to come in. Many people are now being extremely wary of everything that is going on in the world and are not so keen on spending time in such public places.
Movie theater companies like Regal have even taken to shutting down all of their locations because they are not sure about what they should do. They have been losing money hand-over-fist since they reopened their doors and no matter what films release, they are not seeing any kind of money come in. So to prevent themselves from having to shell out even more money unnecessarily, they have shut their doors for the unknown foreseeable future. They are not the only big name company to suffer from something like this as there are numerous theater companies suffering in a similar fashion. These other companies are still trying their best to remain open but with no new movies on the way they are kind of in trouble.
The biggest reason for the fact that theaters now have no new movies to show to the public is because of the failure of a big release recently. The movie ‘Tenet’ seemed like it had a strong start in theaters and then it had nothing going for it after just a few weeks. Considering the fact that this was a new Christopher Nolan blockbuster, people were expecting the film to go on to make a fortune in the box office. If things were actually going the way that they normally were, then there would have been no issue and the film most certainly would have made a killing. The pandemic was in theater owners’ minds when they reopened and prepared for that film’s launch, so they made plans ahead of time. It just turns out that these plans were not enough to draw people in.
In fact, theaters made up their plans to try and draw back customers months ago, the problem became the fact that people are just far too wary of returning to theaters at a time like this. Public places in general are still a major topic of discussion for people who don’t want to take any risks because it would jeopardize their health. Therefore, after the failure of a release that was had, many other studios immediately recognized that they will not be able to release their films any time soon if they want them to be successful. In the meantime, many companies have been trying to figure out what it is they want to do to try and bring in revenue. Many different practices have been taken to heart, but some companies just don’t have the luxury to pick what they want to focus on.
One such company that does have the luxury to change up their focus whenever they want is Disney since they have their hands pretty much dipped into everything. Disney is a multi-media empire now and they have control over the numerous ways in which they can move forward with trying to bring in revenue. One of their biggest strategies currently is to focus on their movie releases which they have, like many other companies, pushed back into some time next year. Unlike other companies though, they have a format in which they can actually get some of their films out there with, Disney+. Their premiere streaming service has become a massive hit since its release almost one year ago and it has managed to make them a decent amount of revenue.
Disney has even recently announced that their streaming end of things is going to end up becoming their main focus for the future. They have also said that they will not be shying away from theatrical releases though and that they will have a board decide on which of their future releases should end up going from one medium to the other. In other words, they will have people deciding on whether or not future releases are worth waiting to put into theaters or not, otherwise those films will be going straight onto their streaming service. This has been their way of bringing in the most revenue since this whole thing began, but there are many aspects to the Disney company to account for.
One division of the Disney company that has always been a huge part of their success has been the Disney Parks division. All Disney Parks across the world are under the control of this division of the company and while many parks have actually managed to reopen to the public, not every single one has. Even the parks that have opened up have only been met by ridicule by people who felt they reopened to the public at the wrong time. Although they were losing a lot of money by not being open, there were a lot of people who agreed that they should stay closed for the time being. In order to try and compensate for what was happening, they even came up with new safety guidelines in accordance with government mandates. Just like all other public businesses, they had rules they had to enforce if they wanted to reopen.
The Disney World Parks in Florida opened up their gates once again with these rules in mind back in July and this spawned a huge amount of criticism ever since. During that time it was put forth that they were doing things that were much more focused on making as much revenue as they could as opposed to protecting the public’s health and safety. Among those things was the fact that they were apparently allowing employees to work even if they tested positive for the virus. This only made the government even more strict with them in the long run and it affected them heavily as they still haven’t been able to reopen their main Disneyland park in California yet. Disney has even been trying to put the blame on the state of California itself for their not being able to reopen.
Disney Parks has already stated that due to delays caused by the state of California and the new safety guidelines, they have had to lay off over 28,000 employees. California is a high risk state for the virus so it should be no surprise that they have been trying to keep ways of spreading infection down. As such, they have decided to keep places like Disneyland shut down until they reach the lowest tier of risk, which would apparently be yellow tier risk. Disney Parks are saying that this is extremely unfair as it would mean that a county must have a seven day adjusted average of less than one case of Covid among 100,000 people. With this in place, there is no telling when the famed park will once again be able to be another source of revenue for the company again.