Walt Disney World has a problem with the state of Florida. And so does Universal Orlando and any other tourist destination that usually depends upon out-of-state visitors for a majority of its business.
In a pandemic, maintaining trust is everything for a business that asks people to leave their homes. While Disney and Universal have tried to build that trust with aggressive safety and public relations campaigns, they have been undercut by a state government that, frankly, has zero credibility in addressing the Covid-19 disaster.
A Florida newspaper detailed the problem today, writing: "Throughout the COVID-19 crisis in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced."
The report details the Florida administration's attempts to downplay or ignore the severity of the deadly virus, including cherry-picking data, ignoring scientific research and advice, and ordering spokespersons not to issue public statements about the virus in the weeks leading up to the recent election.
Part of Disney's and Universal's case for visiting their theme parks during this pandemic has been to note that no outbreaks have been traced to exposure in the Central Florida parks. Many people have looked at that statement with skepticism, given the lack of comprehensive contact tracing across the United States. But this report casts further doubt on the credibility of the Florida Department of Health under Governor DeSantis' leadership.
Ideally, the federal government would support contact tracing so long as people are traveling across state lines. But within states, local officials need state help to trace infections effectively with people freely traveling across counties. Local officials in Orlando can declare the parks free from community transmission all they want, but without a credible state effort supporting investigations, those claims mean nothing.
The hard truth is that we do not know whether people have caught Covid-19 when visiting or working at the Orlando-area theme parks or not. And that undercuts Disney's and Universal's campaigns to build public trust in their safety efforts.
Disney in particular has offered commendable transparency about its efforts to consult with medical professionals to develop new procedures that minimize the risk for Covid transmission, including mandatory mask usage, physical distancing, and the use of more clear plastic or glass barriers in queues, restaurants, shops, and attractions. But Disney cannot control what happens off its property. If people are going to leave their home to visit Disney, they need to feel safe along the way.
That is where aggressive and competent state and federal responses can help. If everyone in America operated their businesses the way that Disney has operated its parks in Florida, I suspect that we would not be experiencing nearly as bad an outbreak as the nation is now. If America's federal and state governments consistently practiced contract tracing, supported science, and communicated honestly with the public, we might have found even better ways to contain this pandemic as we await a vaccine.
But that did not happen.
I am sure that Disney is happy that Governor DeSantis allowed its theme parks to reopen. But failed leadership across the country — such as that offered in Florida by DeSantis and documented by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel today — has worsened and perhaps prolonged this pandemic, furthering the damage to Disney and the entire travel industry. Bad leadership has encouraged people to travel and gather without taking necessary precautions, turning off responsible consumers who might have been enticed to visit an Orlando-area theme park if so many other people had not been acting so recklessly in the state of Florida.
Disney, Universal and theme park industry deserved better than they got from Ron DeSantis and government officials like him. So did all of us.
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Editor's note: While we are happy to provide a forum for readers' reactions, first-person experiences, and - in this case - frustrations, we do not wish to provide a forum for misinformation, especially on an issue as important as the pandemic. Therefore, we have deleted several responses and closed the comments. Thank you for reading.
I'm going to take a wild guess that we will likely not see this site post an article called "Disneyland's California" problem that bashes Governor Newsome in the same light. Nice to see no political bias here, but I digress
@Carlos Quinones - False equivalence. Newsom's team hasn't lied about the pandemic data (as far as we know). DeSantis' administration lied repeatedly.
To quote the Florida newspaper: "Throughout the COVID-19 crisis in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced."
Reporting on reality is not political bias. Lying about a deadly pandemic for political gain is political bias (and highly immoral).
@Beacher. I'm not defending DeSantis. He's made his mistakes. But if we call out one why not the other? Wasn't he not practicing what he preaches while many are struggling? Road goes both ways. Oh and Newsome hasn't exactly been transparent on the team that was sent to Orlando to get a perspective on safety precautions. I don't think Newsome is so innocent either but of course crickets from this site
Thanks for the article, Robert. As for CA / Newsom: there have been plenty of articles on this site indicating pros and cons to politics, safety, and Disney Resort or other parks being allowed to open. The articles - as well as comments - have included the comparisons and contrasts between DLR and WDW; how or why museums, zoos, and aquariums have opened but theme parks cannot; and the ridiculousness that dining and shopping can open but rides (especially outdoors) cannot open. Florida and it’s governor created the reasons for critique - no bias required.
Leaders period have to accept their share of criticism, including Governor DeSantis. And although other articles show both the pros and cons as Force500 has referenced, this article in particular is really a complete undressing of the Florida governor. Yet, if you were to really look at the numbers, is Florida really that much worse off than California? And Florida has had much less restriction than California.
My point being is that you can write a similar article about Governor Newsome and his mishaps during this pandemic and its impact on the industry. Fact is there is a bias and that is unfortunate. People go to their politics way too much and will defend or prosecute those that align with their own personal views. Unfortunately that is why you have a lack of progress. No one works together and everyone blames the other side.
Case in point, why can't further stimulus get passed. Because republicans and democrats refuse to give the other side a win. And who pays for this nonsensical bickering...Us.
I respect Mr. Niles opinion and there are some very valid points. However, I feel that although some mishaps are acknowledged here and there (more so from comments than articles), it comes nowhere near the criticism thrown at the republican Florida governor. People have died in California. Businesses are likely to shut down for good. People are leaving the state in droves. There are plenty of problems going on in California that can be directly tied to the Governor's decision making. Florida isn't the only place these things are happening. Yet, we are unlikely to see that kind critique in the form of article referencing California problems. Looking at only a single perspective solely limits any progress.
Ahh yes. Tu quoque. Or shall I say, whataboutism.
Thank you, Robert, Mike and Beacher. Thank goodness there's a light at the end of this dark tunnel and new Sheriff in town to police these self-centered charlatans.
“New sheriff in town to police these self centered charlatans”
First of all, he isn’t in town, not yet. Second, what policing will he really do? Not much more than what we have already. Third, we’re not self centered, we just don’t blindly do what people tell us
@Sammmmy: I work for UPS, an essential service, I've seen the effects of shutdowns and also the son of a teaching nurse seeing effects of people dying needlessly. At the least, leaders openly taking the science of it seriously rather than push "It's no big deal" for months would have been so much better to cut the spread down.
It would have been much more surprising to me if an article came out saying Desantis had told the truth lol. Dude got elected riding the Trump train and now he's on the election fraud bandwagon, what do you expect?
We canceled our June trip to WDW because Florida’s Governor is a moron. Robert hit it on the head.
The Trump morons are still denying Covid and the idiot himself has engrossed himself in wanna -be dictator shenanigans too busy to deal with one of the country’s biggest disasters in modern times. . I’m sure every single country including China and Russia are all in on the conspiracy too - yeah right. It’ll go away miraculously, believe me, it will really the most beautiful thing, you’ll see- ????? Leadership.
Desantis may have been too reckless and Newsom too careful but since there has been no national leadership this is what you can expect.
I have to agree with @Tiptop22. The issue with governors is that there has never been anything close to logical leadership on this from the highest levels. Again, our President got Covid himself and brushed it off as "no big deal" and that was months after the entire mess started. When he clearly had no plan or any way to deal with it, that left the governors to implement their own measures to varying degrees. Some sort of regular message and coordinated efforts would have been far better than the "state by state" handling that aided the spread.
Good work here. People keep using "Florida can openly safely so Disneyland can too" ignoring how different dynamics in the states. It also illustrates that if we'd had full coordinated efforts months ago, we could have theme parks and movie theaters, etc open and much better numbers.
What also would have helped is governors and certain elected leaders who even when they get Covid themselves don't continue to downplay its dangers and "we can't live in fear." Human stupidity was a factor few of us took into account when this all started.