Disney to layoff 28,000 in US theme parks

My social media feed is absolutely heartbreaking today.

Abigail Disney has a high opinion about her, uh, opinion, but it's based on little other than her name. There's no question that it all sucks, but you can't indefinitely pay tens of thousands of people while making a fraction of your normal revenue. I'm confident that Disney's executive team knows exactly how bad this is for the company.

An agreement has been reached for the unionized portion of the Walt Disney World workforce

Union Announcement

I guess it could have been worse. I doubt the local economy can absorb all of those people who lost jobs, which makes me wonder if some portion of the population will leave. If they're doing it now, you wouldn't know it by the rent rates and the house inventory.

This is kind of sad. Hopefully the quality and service that the parks have will not worsen. I wonder if ABC7 in LA and their other ABC owned TV stations were affected by the layoffs? We shall see...

We just reupped another year on our lease. But I am still working full time, though my Girlfriend and Roommate are both not. But really there isn't anything for us elsewhere either so no reason to move.

Friends of ours though have been moving out of FL left and right. Still surprised at how many are sticking it out but I know a few that are just waiting on their leases to end then moving back home, whether they have jobs then or not

I see several acquaintances on Facebook that I worked with 10+ years ago that have been down here for a good 12-15 years jumping ship. Folks in their 30s with spouses and kids moving back to their hometown to ride this out.

The staffing shortages were certainly visible this past weekend. At Epcot a good majority of the retail outlets in World Showcase were closed. Of course there were few foreign cast members to be found (notably there were a handful in Japan...and I'm guessing they are US residents.

I'm sure they are pulling in cast members from wherever they can get them. I asked one cast member to direct me to wherever I could find chicken tenders and fries. She directed me to the Electric Umbrella (though she could not remember the name). That location has been closed since at least the beginning of the year. She was working a Food & Wine booth in Mexico. Come to find out, the quick service location in Mexico has chicken tenders.

In any event, I think the cast members were doing the best they could do under extraordinary conditions.

The Disney fan sites and social media groups are reporting that today the full casts of Hoop De Doo Review, Finding Nemo The Musical, Festival of the Lion King, Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor and all of the Citizens of Hollywood at Hollywood Studios have been laid off.

Yeah, and includes the street people too, the stilt walkers and such. I imagine the Equity people will at least get something out of it.

I certainly don't blame Disney for doing so but that hurts. Nemo, Lion King, and MILF (yep) were all excellent and I'm sure the talent required to run those shows is not easily replaced. It's interesting that they can and chose to run Frozen Sing Along but not those others. Don't get me wrong, I (not so) secretly LOVE the Frozen Sing Along, but DHS is already a super high demand park...or is that the very reason they needed more stuff to do there?