It seems Walt Disney World was being a tad presumptuous when they reopened in the middle of a pandemic, just as Florida’s cases started to spike. People did not, in fact, flood back into the Happiest Place on Earth, and thanks to the smaller crowds, the theme park will cut back on hours. I can only imagine this will keep happening until all that’s left are three sad, masked Mickeys.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that starting on September 8, the Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios will close an hour earlier, and Epcot and Animal Kingdom will be open for two fewer hours. Disney got slammed by the shutdown—as did basically every single small business with less cash in their coffers than the giant conglomerate, but I guess that’s besides the point—and lost $3.5 billion in their fiscal third-quarter.
Disney does have a new reservation system in place, one that caps visitors and, as Bloomberg speculates, might keep the park practically empty by design. On the other hand, I just looked at Disney’s reservation calendar online, and it looks about as booked as my personal calendar, i.e., not at all. Between that and the scaled-back hours, it kind of seems like reopening hasn’t done much but put staffers in danger and let a few diehards ride Pirates of the Caribbean as much as they want.