Disneyland will reopen sometime in “late April,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said at an investor’s meeting Tuesday, Deadline reports.
- Chapek did not give a specific date for reopening. But the “late April” timeline gives Disneyland fans an opportunity to see when the park could open its gates.
Context
California released new reopening guidelines for theme parks within the state last week, per The Los Angeles Times. The guidelines allow parks to reopen beginning on April 1.
- However, parks are only open to California residents, and they are required to have limited capacity based on their county’s COVID-19 numbers.
Orange County — where Disneyland is located — could move down to the red tier soon, per KABC. That would allow the park to have 15% capacity, as I explained for the Deseret News.
Flashback
Chapek recently said Disney wants to “maximize” Disneyland in the near future, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.
“Everything we do, the first lens we look at is to exceed guest expectations. And it’s very tough when your park has more demand than supply, we have to put limits on it. Well, as you know, we have a wide variety of (profit) margins depending on the nature of the guest and how they visit and when they visit.”
“So with a lens toward maximizing the guest experience, we are now able to essentially reset many pieces of our business. Both on the cost and revenue side of the business in order to say, if we had a blank piece of paper, how would we set up our parks business and be a little bit more aggressive than we typically might be able to be without the impetus of, unfortunately, a year-long closure. So we’ve had a lot of time to think, particularly at Disneyland, about what could be.”
One more thing
Chapek also said in recent comments that mask mandates and social distancing limitations will remain in place at all Disney theme parks until 2022, as I wrote for the Deseret News.