We have a surprising amount of Disney news for you today. The parks may be closed and the world unraveling around us, but here we are with a lengthy update filled with Disneyland news and photos! There’s also hours of multimedia content for you below and some new resources to help keep you entertained while sheltering at home . . .
Disneyland Closure Extension Confirmed
We all knew it was coming, rates of infection in Anaheim are just now starting to take off, but Disneyland delayed confirming an extension to their park closures until the last minute (the parks were previously announced to reopen on April 1st). But, as of Friday, Disneyland Resort (as well as all the other closed Disney properties in the United States) will remain closed until further notice. They aren’t bothering with promised reopening dates at this point due to the rapidly changing situation.
Why did Disney wait so long when other theme parks began extending dates earlier last week? There are a few reasons. First, Disney’s operations are much larger and more complicated than other parks, in part due to multiple different union contracts and obligations.
Tensions Rise for Disneyland Cast Members and Scheduled Guests
Disney was also waiting for additional information from the Federal government in regard to both disease progression and fiscal stimulus & unemployment remediation. But union demands that workers be notified about their schedules (or lack thereof) and guests with vacations still booked for April 1st, pushed Disney to make a decision a little more quickly than they might have liked.
At this time, it appears that all company communication has been pulled to the corporate level so messages can be consistent and unified across Disney’s American properties.
About Cast Member Pay and Job Security
Although there is no set date for the reopening of the parks, and the federal recommendation is now that all Americans continue social distancing through the end of April, Disney has only committed to paying hourly cast members through April 18th. After that date, it is unclear what will happen to non-essential cast. However, new Federal programs seek to supplement state unemployment to provide near full pay for unemployed workers, so it is quite possible that Disney may ultimately furlough some workers and advise them to file for unemployment until the parks reopen.
Under the new 2 TRILLION federal stimulus package, unemployed workers will be paid an additional $600 per week, on top of what they would normally receive from state unemployment, for up to four months until July 31, 2020. The package outlines an additional 13 weeks of aid beyond the end of July, providing up to 39 weeks (or nearly 10 months) of financial assistance in total.
Given Disney’s difficult financial situation during the shutdown, they may wish to have some of their workers take advantage of state and federal unemployment programs until parks, hotels, and stores can safely reopen.
It remains to be seen what will ultimately happen, but Disney has some slack until April 18th to work with the various unions to create a plan.
UPDATE: Disney’s cost-cutting begins, with deeper pain alluded to:
Disney’s $6 BILLION Debt Offering and Growing
We recently told you about Disney raising $6 billion in debt offerings to pay for company operations and pay off other debt obligations. Well, they’ve just raised an additional near one billion in debt from the Canadian market. That’s just about $7 billion on the company credit cards they’ll have to pay back when the economy turns around. Meanwhile, the parks, hotels, shopping centers, and Disney Stores are shuttered and they are unable to release films into theaters. That’s a massive financial blow to the company at a time it is paying off its $71.3 billion dollar purchase of FOX, and mounts daily losses in its streaming businesses, Disney+, HULU, and ESPN+.
We hope the $7 billion is enough to get Disney through these dark times. But Disney is theoretically better positioned than many of their competitors in the theme park business, cruise line industry, and film industry to weather a storm of this magnitude. Once theaters, parks and hotels recover, Disney has a tremendous amount of potential revenue in unreleased films, theme park tickets, and merchandise sales. That is . . . unless the economy goes to hell in a handbasket . . . which Disney has warned the SEC about in their recent debt offering filings:
“Our businesses could also be impacted should the disruptions from COVID-19 lead to changes in consumer behavior,” the company wrote. “There are certain limitations on our ability to mitigate the adverse financial impact of these items, including the fixed costs of our theme park business.”
Frozen in Time
For the health and safety of its cast members and contractors, all projects in the parks have been suspended. The parks are currently being maintained and protected by a very small core group of essential employees.
Security is the largest crew and responsible for making sure that the entire Disneyland Resort area is locked down and that only essential staff are on site. The Disneyland Fire Department is also maintaining a presence. Although none of the construction, refurbishments, or maintenance is going on, there are still a small number of folks from various departments making sure that the parks remain in good condition.
Horticulture is watering plants and maintaining gardens. Maintenance is making sure that water filtration, refrigerators, electrical and other essential facilities remain functional. Chefs show up from time to time to make sure that food, which can be stored, is maintained within acceptable parameters. A handful of custodial staff continues to clean everything. And, with the core crew in the parks working, there needs to be first aid as well. But, essentially, the park looks and feels empty.
The US Sun via Kameraone shows an empty Main Street USA.
Permits Predict the Future
Could Food and Wine Festival be extended into fall? Disney has that option as the City of Anaheim extends the Festival permit into early September. Other permits explain the torn-up pavement from the Hub to the entry of Frontierland. While that project remains an abandoned mess, the permit foretells a bridge expansion. There’s also an interesting permit for the Haunted Mansion. You can read more about it below:
Disneyland News – Possible Food and Wine Extension, Haunted Mansion Enhancement, & More
When Will the Parks Reopen?
It’s hard to guess when the parks may be able to reopen. Information fluctuates from day to day about federal and state measures on social distancing and how long this crisis may last. We know that the United States intends to extend social distancing through the end of April. So it’s a safe bet that the parks won’t open before then. But, with this crisis growing daily and new predictions about millions of potential infections, it’s highly likely that the parks will remain closed into May and perhaps beyond.
The following offer from Walt Disney World may hint at a Date Disney feels safe booking their hotels. Anyone who had to cancel a Walt Disney World vacation on March 1st or after qualifies for a special package that includes dining. The package begins booking on June 1st. So there’s our clue. The parks may very well reopen before that date, but Disney doesn’t feel safe promoting dates before June 1st.
If you are one of those folks who had to cancel, our travel partners at Get Away Today can assist you, even if you didn’t originally book through them. They have all the details and are prepared to get you the best deal and something for your family to look forward to!
Use our vacation request form to receive a callback: MICECHAT WDW VACATION INFORMATION REQUEST FORM – HERE
UPDATE – Disney confirms our hypothesis above in a note from Disney Travel to travel agents this morning:
At this time, the Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort call centers will not be taking any new bookings for the months of April and May. New bookings for Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort and Aulani Resort will be available for stays starting June 1, 2020.
As a reminder, Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks, Disney Resort hotels, the Disney Springs area, Downtown Disney and Aulani Resort are currently closed and a reopening date has not been identified. For guests who are interested in modifying their existing travel dates or making a new reservation for a future vacation, reservations are currently available for travel dates June 1 and later. As always, Guests are able to modify these bookings if Walt Disney World, Disneyland or Aulani Resort opens before or after that time.
Passholder Payments
Many passholders are curious about how Disney is handling their payments and loss of access to the parks. First, it’s important to note that Disney doesn’t have to do anything for passholders at all. The contract that passholders sign clearly states that there is no compensation for park closures. However, Disney is compensating passholders by extending their passes by the number of days the parks are closed.
However, the longer this shutdown continues, the more problematic a simple extension becomes for some passholders. In the last few weeks, the number of people losing their jobs in America has skyrocketed to the highest level since records were first kept in the 1960s. Just in the last week, jobless claims increased more than 1,000 percent to 3.3 million (and there are indications that number is undercounted). With so many families now worried about their financial stability, we’d like to see Disney do one of two things (or both): 1) Allow anyone who can no longer afford payments to cancel their pass without owing the remaining year. 2) Rather than extending dates for payment plans, Disney should stop payments altogether until the parks reopen. Passholders can decide if they want to renew at the end of their pass. But not everyone with a pass can either use the extended dates or afford to keep paying under recent circumstances. 3) Those who paid upfront for their pass shouldn’t be forced to lose value and should continue to have their dates extended. We hope Disney can make some changes in a good-hearted gesture to their passholders.
Magic Happens Parade video from Disney
After a couple of weeks of near silence, there’s finally some interesting content coming out of the Disney Parks. Yesterday, they released a beautiful video of the Magic Happens Parade.
Grab a seat on the virtual Main Street, U.S.A. curb and get ready for our new Magic Happens Parade. And be sure to check back regularly for more #DisneyMagicMoments. pic.twitter.com/6nhXw7GbbA
— Disneyland Resort (@Disneyland) March 29, 2020
Disney has recently begun sharing news and video from Disney’s Animal Kingdom as well. Our own Chloé fills us in on their recent newborns:
MicePod Live video
We’ve also been busy here at MiceChat. We recorded our first MiceTube Live video on Friday (where we discuss the recent park closures and SeaWorld’s dire situation) and will record another one today. If you aren’t following our YouTube, we encourage you to do so: MiceChat Youtube
MiceChat Podcast
Looking for more Disney content? Our latest MiceChat Disney Podcast brings you over an hour of probing discussion about the current Disney Parks situation and what the future may hold.
Disneyland Photos!!!
Since we couldn’t go to the parks this week for our usual photo update, we reached out on our MiceChat Facebook Group and asked you, the readers, to submit your favorite Disneyland photos. You answered our call and we received over 300 submissions! We couldn’t use all of the photos submitted, but we have kept them all in hopes to use them in future updates. Thank you to all who looked through their camera rolls and shared their favorite Disneyland memories with us!
Here are some of the photos that were submitted to us this week:
(Our thanks to Logan Collins for processing and watermarking all these photos)
Main Street U.S.A.
Let’s begin our journey in the logical place . . .
Only on a virtual trip like this can we warp from Christmas . . .
. . . to the Main Street Electrical Parade.
Just like you stepped into the Music Man . . .
Fantasyland
The happiest land of them all awaits our return.
We had an article about a predecessor to Storybook Land yesterday . . .
Adventureland
Adventure is around every corner . . . and really bad jokes . . .
Look not into the eyes of the idol . . .
New Orleans Square
And just around the river bend . . .
Critter Country
Drop on in to the country . . .
Tomorrowland
After all, tomorrow is another day . . .
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
Thanks again to all those that provided us with photos! To see more photos from our readers and interact with the MiceChat audience, be sure to join our MiceChat Facebook Group.
Next week’s mission . . .
For next week’s update, we are asking for photos that fit the theme “Tomorrowland: Past and Present“. We are looking for your best Tomorrowland photos. We love seeing any incarnation of the land, but we’ll give bonus points to those with vintage Tomorrowland pics to share with us! Be sure to let us know who to credit the photos to and if there is any interesting backstory. You can email us at [email protected] or by visiting our Facebook Group.
Create Magic for Your Family!
SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS – Our travel partners at Get Away Today are here to help you with your theme park shutdown concerns and rescheduling plans. We’ll get through this difficult time together. And when this challenge has passed, you’ll have earned a nice vacation. Lock in current low rates and give your family something to look forward to by putting a vacation on layaway today (for as little at $175) with Get Away Today- HERE
Let’s Hear From You
We’re not quite sure how we are able to keep these updates going in such challenging times, but we are SO very glad to be here with you. My heartfelt thanks to the hundreds of you who sent photos, and to the tens of thousands more who will read this update.
Did anything in our update today strike a nerve with you? Should annual passport payments be suspended during this crisis? How much longer do you think Disney will be able to continue paying hourly cast before sending them off for unemployment until the tides turn? If you had to make an educated guess, when do you think the parks will reopen?
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