Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

My oldest is a senior and if you went by his ACT and GPA he looks great and all the Ivy’s have been relentless with the mailings. But he is on the spectrum and has maturity and other executive functioning issues. Even a CC would chew him up and spit him out right now. Fortunately he is eligible for 5th year of HS and will likely need to stay home with us for at least a few more years.

Edit: Back on topic.

Some deans are looking at fall semester already.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/03/30/coronavirus-miami-...933473001/

sirloindude said:

We should. I hear their students finnish strong.

That pun was shocking...Oh crap, wrong pun thread.

Here is our official statement...

Virginia is now stay-at-home until June 10th.

Park news wise, I'm guessing it's safe to assume BGW and Dominion will be delayed until this point (or after).

Wow. Do you mean stay-at-home for schools or for everyone? We just bumped our shelter-in-place order until May 3rd and I can't even imagine that at this point.

Maryland/DC/Virginia stay at home orders:

Both the Maryland and Virginia orders took effect Monday. Maryland’s has no end date, Virginia’s extends until June 10. The District’s order takes effect Wednesday and will last until April 24.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/stay-at-home-maryland-virginia...story.html

Disney buys about 26 acres west of Magic Kingdom. So not all is shut down at Disney.

https://www.slashfilm.com/disney-buys-more-land-in-florida/

I'm not sure why everyone is reporting that. It happened months ago. It's not far from my neighborhood.

And they buy land often so I don't know why it has to be "news" every time it happens, especially in amounts as small as 26 acres.

With all of the parks closed, people who make a living following the parks are looking for something to report. Check out sports channels and sites. Other then cancellations they are struggling for content. Final Four would have been this weekend.

I know a blogger in the N Ky, Cincinnati area who makes a nice living participating in then reporting on travel adventures, both nearby and far away. (Sounds like a great gig, doesn’t it?) I spoke to her yesterday in regard to an item and asked how she’s getting along. She said she’s definitely having to find a way to keep her posts positive while pivoting her content, as nobody cares about travel right now. She recently did a nice little series on bike rides and nature hikes that people can take as a safe and interesting local getaway, but now she’s further hindered by the Kentucky governor’s request that people stay on their side of the line. (She lives in Covington) That’s hard to do in that region (N Kentucky makes up a good portion of metro Cincinnati) so she’s faced with further, challenging adjustments. I’m interested to see how that goes for her. She has quite a following and I’d think in light of people staying home, and naturally closer to social media, she still stands to benefit if she can find a recipe for lemonade that’s just right.
There’s going to be a new trend in things everywhere. I was cast in a play for this summer, but I’ll be surprised if the season goes forward. Our first cast meet and read-though is scheduled for this week, but virtually via zoom. Entertainment artists are finding ways to reach their audiences via new channels but I doubt something like that would work for us- where’s the money required to stay afloat? We aren’t rich celebrities. Even television shows that we are relying on for entertainment these days will finally disappear as production everywhere has closed. In addition to reruns (Sports reruns are just sad to me, but they’re happening), I think there’s going to be a lot of digging out and reconsidering content that was already in the can somewhere. Hey everyone in the industry can hope they have at least one Tiger King of their own, right?

I think we're seeing a lot of that already in the way of pushing up releases: Frozen 2 to Disney+ early, Onward to digital release and Disney+ early, multiple theatrical releases straight to streaming or digital download, ESPN is moving up a multi-part Michael Jordan documentary from June to April (after saying for weeks that they wouldn't). The late-night hosts have switched up their content delivery. I think we'll see more self-produced celebrity content like John Krasinski's good news video podcast (which was brilliant and I'm not just saying that because I'm a fan of his).

RCMAC said:

Sports reruns are just sad to me, but they’re happening.

I'm the opposite. The NBC Sports Channel in Chicago has been broadcasting classic games from the 1996 Bulls, 2010 Blackhawks, and 2005 White Sox. It's much better than the current versions of those teams.

If they can coax Pete Twinkle and Greg Stink out of retirement to run commentary, I will be there.

^^ ah the 2010 Blackhawks. Finally one of my teams won!

Dr. Acton is seemingly pessimistic that we will have a normal summer. I appreciate her honesty but if everyone is going to be stuck indoors that's going to drive people batsh!t crazy.

I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's April 2 and I already feel like this month is dragging.

My biggest worry is that as the weather gets nice, idiots who have been cooped up all winter will start having barbecues and parties which will keep the whole petri dish going longer.

Various states are moving their shelter in place orders to May, and potentially June. I'm calling it now, this summer's season will be very abbreviated, if the regionals open at all. Not sure how you can have a hiring fair, training, and get up to speed to open, if you can't leave your house until June, and you stop daily operations third week of August. I can't imagine the protocols in place for a mass hiring event, post covid-19 short of a universal vaccine. That isn't happening in the next two months, so i'm calling this season kaput. Focus on October Haunt maybe, or just start planning for Winterfest; or just bail on 2020 completely. Maybe just write-off this year, don't waste the money to unwrap the parks for this year, and come back in 2021.

2021 Capex plans are already being slashed. I called it early in this thread, but don't expect any large capex for 2021, as those contracts and financings would need to be in play shortly, and all of the parks are going to continue to be in cash hoarding mode. No bank is going to expand financing now given the uncertainty for a seasonal theme park operator with no foreseeable revenue in the short term.

You can leave your house, you just can't get close to other people. My neighborhood is buzzing every night with people keeping an appropriate distance from each other.

I don't see a world where regional parks open this year. I don't see how it could be a safe activity.

Yes, there will be pent-up demand for outdoor entertainment, but the logistics and protocols won't be there to allow it.

I would say this would be the final push for virtual queuing, with every park migrating towards it. However, the problem remains, where do you put 1,200 people in a virtual queue for a coaster, if you don't want them within 6 feet of one another. Even if you went to virtual queue for everything, a technically feasible but silly proposal prior to this, you still can't have 35,000 people wandering around inside a park waiting for their turn.

How do you run World of Color, or Fantasmic without hordes of people standing on top of each other?

This world will be a different place once we get through this.

Industrial engineers (park flow designers, etc) are probably losing their minds right now.

GoBucks89 said:

... Final Four would have been this weekend.

I hope this event means the end of "x number of billions of dollars of productivity is wasted during March Madness" articles. I'm sure that Coronavirus will introduce some perspective that there are far worse productivity killers.

CreditWh0re said:

This world will be a different place once we get through this.

Assuming "get through this" means creating enough immunity to not have to worry any more about Coronavirus than we do any other virus, then there's absolutely no reason for anything to change.

But people are generally scared and reactionary, so you're probably right.

I'm just amazed at how many people are already willingly accepting this idea.