In a press conference this afternoon, California Governor Gavin Newsom praised Disneyland’s decision to not reopen.
You may have seen some information that came out, or rather, the report that came out that Disney has not, now, decided to move forward next month opening up their theme park. I want to just compliment Disney and their team for making that determination.
It was referenced in their press release that the state of California had paused on providing guidelines in that space. That is an example of the data informing the decision-making.
Earlier today, Disney confirmed that while they have had to abandon their reopening plans for the Disneyland theme parks, they intended to continue with plans to reopen the Walt Disney World Resort theme parks and more hotel complexes in the coming weeks and months.
Disneyland had previously announced that they had proposed an opening date of July 17th to the state government. Of course, Disney later had to indefinitely postpone their reopening, issuing the following statement.
We previously announced a proposed phased reopening of our theme parks for July 17, pending government approvals. We developed enhanced health and safety protocols for both cast and guests at Shanghai Disneyland Resort, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort that have been approved, allowing us to reopen in a responsible manner and bring our cast members back to work.
The State of California has now indicated that it will not issue theme park reopening guidelines until sometime after July 4. Given the time required for us to bring thousands of cast members back to work and restart our business, we have no choice but to delay the reopening of our theme parks and hotels until we receive approval from government officials. Once we have a clearer understanding of when guidelines will be released, we expect to be able to communicate a reopening date.
Our Downtown Disney District will reopen on July 9 as previously announced with health and safety protocols in place for our cast members and guests. The opening of our Downtown Disney District has been previously approved in line with restaurant and retail openings throughout California. The Master Services Union, which represents our retail cast at this location, previously signed an agreement for members to return to work.
In order to reopen our theme parks we need to negotiate agreements with our unions to return employees to work. We have had positive discussions and are very pleased to have signed agreements from 20 union affiliates, including the Master Services Council, which represents more than 11,000 of our cast members. The signed agreement details plans that include enhanced safety protocols that will allow us to responsibly reopen, and get thousands of our cast members back to work.
We thank our cast and guests for their patience during this unprecedented time while we await approval from government officals
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com for the latest Disney Parks news and photos. We’ll continue to bring you news and photos, where possible, through the Disney Parks closure due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) and will resume our normal coverage once the parks reopen to guests on July 11th!