Disney expects Disneyland and California Adventure to remain closed until March 2021, an executive said in a recent call with analysts, CBS Los Angeles reports.
What’s going on?
Christine McCarthy, Disney’s senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in a recent call with analysts that the company doesn’t expect the parks to reopen until “at least the end of the first fiscal quarter.”
- “We currently anticipate Disneyland resort will remain closed at least through the end of the fiscal first quarter,” she said.
- McCarthy said that means the theme parks will remain closed until March 2021.
Context:
Disney has reopened some parks, including Walt Disney World. But Disneyland Paris had to close down to the COVID-19 surge in France.
The big factor:
California released reopening guidelines earlier this fall for Disneyland and other major theme parks. The guidelines are based off of case level in various counties across the state. Experts don’t expect Orange County in California to be ready for reopening until 2021, as I wrote about for Deseret News.
Flashback:
In April 2020, UBS analyst John Hodulik, who often comments on media investments, said that he didn’t expect Disney parks to reopen until January 2021, which I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- “(T)he economic recession plus the need for social distancing, new health precautions, the lack of travel and crowd aversion are likely to make this business less profitable until there is a widely available vaccine.”
- He said the theme parks may “regain their recent operating cadence in (about) 18 months, coinciding with the earliest expectations for a widely available vaccine for COVID-19.”
Disney World ended up reopening over the summer. Disneyland remains closed due to the pandemic.