Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/10/disneys-phased-reopening-vid.html
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Ok, non-USians out there, just how stupid do we look to you right now with this Disney stunt?
(I mean, I think we look stupid too)
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Mouse should stay in the house and so should everyone else.
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I understand why they feel they have to re-open, but it still seems like a a very bad idea. I was at Disneyland at the end of January, and as wonderful an experience as it was the memories are now always slightly tinged with a feeling of “boy, I really dodged a bullet there”.
[Dies Irae as arranged by Wendy Carlos could imbue the Main Street Electrical Parade or Toontown with a sense of dread]
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I think the best comparison I can come up with is Nero fiddling as Rome burned, but it’s not great.
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That was some solid 1970s despairing sci-fi tunage right there.
Edited to add:
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It’s money, right? I mean, I can’t think of anything else.
Florida is the epicenter of the current portion of the wave. There’s zero reason to get near Florida, even if you live there.
Disney made $11 billion from movies alone last year. They can easily afford to pay every single employee to stay at home until the end of the year without touching one tenth of that money.
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Speaking of 1/10, I never understand why people pay thousands of dollars to go to the Orlando parks, when you can go somewhere that your kids will have just as much fun for a few hundred bucks.
My sis lives in Orlando and gets year-round passes because my amazing niece loves the place (so do my sister and brother-in law) so they sometimes just go there for an evening out. I get that because there’s no hotel or gift shop. They were even kind enough to host my daughter for a few days once!
But if you had to pay airfare, hotel, restaurant, admission, fast-pass, incidentals…I’d rather take my kids to somewhere interesting in Europe.
Oh wait, I guess that’s off the table for now…
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I won’t lie, it barely even registers.
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I agree with you - these smaller parks are more fun. We used to take my kids to a place around us called Santa’s Village (still around, just smaller and different - https://santasvillagedundee.com/) that I went to as a child. Much cheaper, drivable, and a great full day activity.
Disney is fun to go to as a special event, but they have made a conscious effort over the past decade to change it from a “once in great while” marketed visit to a “come every year!” type of vacation.
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Yes! Exactly. We have one of those up here in NE, too:
Kids have fun and don’t really care that Mickey isn’t there. Parent’s aren’t worried about having to pop out a small loan so instead they can spend vaca money on treats, and the kiddos get to sleep in the car on the way home instead of having to setup in a hotel.
Which I wouldn’t do nowadays anyway. There is no amount of disinfectant you can use to make me feel safe. And I’ve heard enough horror stories about hotels to know that I’ll only stay in them if I have to for work.
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Ave, CEO, morituri te salutant!
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Um, not to detract from your larger point, but no they can’t. $11B was net income for the whole company of 223,000 employees. $1.1B (1/10th their net income) is around $5000/employee. Just the Disney world resort apparently has 77,000 employees by itself and a payroll of over $3B. So that 1/10th number would even pay 6 months of payroll for just the florida park, not counting all of the other employees they have in their other divisions, many of whom are also unable to work at the moment.
Yes, Disney has a lot of money. And they have a lot of revenue that is continuing or even increasing during the pandemic. They could afford to keep their parks closed longer and pay their employees at least part of their salary. But pretending it is a “trivial” amount of money even for a company like Disney is not correct.
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I concede that you did the math I did not…I’m surprised it is that much.
Still, even if it costs $3B, can we remember just how much money that is? Even if it’s half of the $11B to cover other employees, which again is ONLY the profit from their movies last year, not video sales, park money, etc, they’d still have $5.5B left.
As a reminder of just how mind boggling much money that is, if someone then gave you a billion dollars and you spent $1,000 each day, you would be spending for about 2,740 years before you ran out.
They’d be fine. And they’d have ENORMOUS karma from it. People would worship the brand.
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Um, anyone know the creepy music being used in the first Tweet? (My Shazam and my brain aren’t working for me.)
Dies Irae from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (as arranged by Wendy Carlos for The Shining).
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I’ve sometimes found just the ride-queues there a bit dystopian.
Disney’s phased reopening video made to sound dystopian
lol.
i expected heavy phasing in the mix.
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