Disney held its Quarter 2 earnings call today, and the big announcement to come out of that was that Shanghai Disneyland will reopen May 11 (and no, you probably can’t visit yet). In this post, we’ll talk about this announcement and then discuss what little information we heard about the US parks on the call.
Storybook Castle at Shanghai Disneyland
Other Disney Parks Closure Coverage
Shanghai Disneyland Reopening
Bob Chapek announced that Shanghai Disneyland is anticipating reopening on May 11, which would make the length of the closure 107 days, the park having first closed on January 25. Since I know people want to know—even though I don’t think it’s necessarily comparable—a 107-day closure of the US parks would take them them to around July 1.
Chapek mentioned that the park will use a reservation system to control capacity. This isn’t surprising, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar in the United States. Importantly, Disney will need to work with hotel partners if it decides to pursue something similar in the US.
Other healthcare protocols will be in place when Shanghai opens, and while these were mentioned in passing on the call and detailed more in a press release. Some of the protocols are:
Controlled attendance with a limited number of tickets available each day
Some interactive attractions and experiences, such as children play areas, and theater shows will remain closed
parades and nighttime spectaculars will also return at a later date (lesser, temporary shows replacing these)
Close interaction and close-up photos with characters will be suspended during the initial phase of reopening
frequency of sanitization measures will be increased
Health QR Code (an official China health monitoring tool) required
Temperature screenings on arrival
Mask required except when dining
Increased social distancing in queues, restaurants, ride vehicles and other facilities throughout the park
Bob Chapek said the capacity for Shanghai Disneyland is 80,000 (this detail being announced is itself a departure from norms, FWIW). China is allowing them 24,000 people, but they are going to start “far below” that in order to test their new procedures.
When the park reopens on May 11 you can count on social media filling us in on some of the details, and it will be interesting to see how the protocols change over the coming few weeks.
Little / No Guidance on US Reopening
Alongside the Shanghai announcement, Disney Parks Blog ran a post featuring Disney Parks Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pam Hymel. That post mentions a few things like social distancing and enhanced sanitation, possible virtual queues, but not much else.
I suppose I understand Disney wanting to get ahead of the inevitable “What about the US?” questions, but this was another nothing burger of an announcement that is perhaps going to generate more headlines (clicks) than it merits.
Probably the only real guidance we got about the US parks came during the Q&A portion of the call, when Bob Chapek explained that they are looking at using dated tickets to regulate capacity.
This aligns with what Shanghai Disneyland is doing, and in that case even annual passholders are required to reserve slots in advance.
One other takeaway from the call was that we can expect cuts to new projects. As these things go, we probably won’t ever see a list of exactly what projects are getting cut, we’ll just stop hearing about new developments.
What Shanghai Might Mean to US
Besides the call itself, we might look at what the Shanghai park is doing and see how it impacts how we view the situation in the US.
Shanghai Is In a Different Phase of Recovery
I made the mistake of wandering onto twitter and saw a lot of people who seemed to think Shanghai Disneyland reopening May 11 was comparable to a US park reopening May 11, but that’s not at all the case. China was hit earlier responded more harshly, and is further into the recovery than most US locales.
Shanghai was a “ghost town” in response to the virus as early as February 18, a month before the US theme parks closed, and on April 7, China had its first day of no new deaths from the virus.
Whatever your skepticism about official statistics from any government, you can see just from following real people on the ground in China—and Shanghai in particular—that they certainly aren’t at the same part of the epidemiological curve as the US.
107 Days Isn’t a Magic Number
First of all, I don’t put any weight in the length of the Shanghai closure when it comes to predicting the US closure. They might wind up being similar, but keep in mind that, for example, we’re already expecting the Disneyland Paris closure to go into September (due to a large gathering ban).
You’d have to make a very compelling case to convince me why the US parks will look like either of those. Disneyland Paris closed around the same time as the US parks, and the beginning of September is about 170 days since the closure—a 60% longer closure than the 107 days of Shanghai.
Maybe things in Paris change. Maybe things in the US are like one or the other. Or maybe they change too. The situation is just a lot more complex than any one data point.
A Look “Back” At The Shanghai Closing
We’re not done with the Shanghai closing yet, but we have a scheduled end date. It might be instructive to look back at the past few weeks as a reminder for how complex a reopening can be.
This is not at all to say the US will follow the same timeline. But there’s a long road to reopening that includes developing procedures, putting them physically in place, testing them, and getting back workers for when the opening actually occurs.
The very first parts of Shanghai Disney Resort to reopen were the hotel and shopping district on March 9. That was followed on April 20 with a report of CMs testing spacing of indoor theater seats.
On April 22, pictures of social distancing queues outside the park made rounds. And today on May 5 they announced a May 11 reopening.
That’s three weeks from April 20, the first report I’ve seen of operations being tested, to May 11 the actual reopening date.
Again, there are lots of reasons things in the US might not look like Shanghai, but it’s important to recognize that there will be signs the parks are preparing to reopen well before we get an announcement that they’re reopening. And those signs will likely lag the actual reopening of the park to guests by weeks, not days.
Would You Visit With These Changes?
China still has essentially banned international tourism, so while I still decided to look at flight prices, I won’t be heading to Shanghai anytime soon. (Sorry, you probably can’t visiting Shanghai Disneyland right now, either.)
But it’ll be interesting to see how guests respond to some of the changes being implemented. In particular, note these:
Some interactive attractions and experiences, such as children play areas, and theater shows will remain closed
parades and nighttime spectaculars will also return at a later date (lesser, temporary shows replacing these)
Close interaction and close-up photos with characters will be suspended during the initial phase of reopening
These are only confirmed for Shanghai Disneyland, so we don’t know if they’ll be implemented in the US parks, but now it seems we have to at least consider the possibility.
Character interactions are a huge part of many people’s experiences at the parks. Theater shows are a huge part of days in the Florida parks, where you absolutely need to escape the heat on occasion. And no day at Magic Kingdom is complete without Happily Ever After or the Festival of Fantasy Parade.
While there probably will be perks to visiting when the reopening is in its infancy—like mandated low crowds—you’re also walking into a strange situation…a Disney park unlike anything you’ve seen before. We’ve written before that 2020 looks too messy for us to recommend it for a trip.
Shanghai Disneyland is itself mostly a locals park. It’s a train ride away from the city proper, and it currently only has two Disney hotels and a few other non-Disney hotels nearby.
Because of that, I’d expect the initial response to mostly be positive. The first people to go are going to be die hard fans who are just thrilled to be in a Disney park again. But that experience doesn’t directly translate to how people planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip would feel.