No doubt you are anxiously waiting to get back to Disney World as soon as possible, but the latest from Wall Street is that it could take up to 2 years for the Disney parks to recover and get back to normal once they reopen.
A recent Variety article explains how Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall downgraded the Disney stock with doubts surrounding Disney World and Disneyland to get back to full operating capacity anytime soon. In fact, he points out that the parks aren’t likely to get “anything close to full capacity until testing and/or vaccines are far more ubiquitous.”
Cahill lays out that he believes Disney will have “zero park attendance” from the parks for the rest of the 2020 fiscal year. Since Disney’s fiscal year ends in September, he is essentially saying he doesn’t believe Disney World will reopen before September, and the parks will remain closed throughout the summer.
“We see the limiting factor as healthcare technology as assets like Walt Disney World will either need to operate with social distancing in-place – significantly limiting capacity – or a vaccine will need to be widely enough available that the population will again feel safe in such a gathering,” he wrote. “Testing may also improve, allowing customers with immunity/antibodies to behave a bit more freely.”
So in order to get the parks to open back up, Disney would either need to greatly limit capacity or wait until a vaccine is ready.
“While the healthcare community is working hard we think it’s overly optimistic to expect either a widely distributed vaccine or large parts of the population being immune in the next 12 months,” added Cahall. “As such our attendance forecasts are a best guess with a precipitous decline followed by a ~12-month recovery.”
So 2 12-month periods of time before the Disney parks are back on their feet completely. Because, even if they were to reopen the parks, and get significant safety measures in place, who knows when guests would feel comfortable enough to come back in the attendance numbers that Disney is used to seeing.
This story comes just a day after Bob Iger stated Disney World could start requiring guest temperature screenings before allowing them entrance into the parks as one measure of safety. You can read the details of that below, plus the procedures we think are most like when Disney World reopens later on in the article.
News Source: Ziggyknowsdisney.com