Disneyland — the second busiest theme park in the world — and its next-door California Adventure theme park are shutting down for the rest of the month because of the coronavirus.
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Disney announced the two California parks will close starting Saturday, while the hotels will remain open through Monday as visitors make travel plans to leave. The closures come amid a flurry of cancellations in the entertainment industry, although Disney said no one has yet tested positive for COVID-19 at Disneyland.
Universal Studios Hollywood is also following suit, closing Saturday and anticipating to reopen March 28.
On Thursday, California recommended canceling gatherings of 250 people or more across the entire state. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis took a similar tone, encouraging people to avoid “mass gatherings.”
Disneyland will close after a history of what had previously been a fractured relationship between the theme parks and the Anaheim community. Shutting down Disneyland is likely a move that was meant to not damage the political goodwill that’s been built up, said Robert Niles, who covers the industry for themeparkinsider.com and the Orange County Register.
“With everything else closing, you look socially irresponsible if you’re a huge destination and you do remain open,” Niles said especially after cancellations around the country, including the NBA, NHL and the NCAA basketball tournaments. “You have to respect that. Disneyland read what was happening in the state and just decided the best move as a citizen” was to close.
Added Niles, “It’s truly uncharted territory” especially as Disney has unprecedented issues to handle, such as how it assures visitors the theme parks are safe once they reopen.
Disneyland’s closure came on the same day that Disney also said it was temporarily waiving a $50 change fee for people to postpone their Disneyland and Disney World vacations for later in 2020. The policy only applies to people who book their packages directly through Disney or with Disney’s network travel agents, not third-party agencies.
News also broke Thursday that six fire personnel at Disney World’s government are staying home for 14 days as a precaution after they attended an EMS Conference in Tampa where someone had tested positive. Another firefighter is also self-quarantining after he traveled to a pandemic area.
Simple Plan, a rock band that had some hits in the mid-2000s, also canceled four shows from Friday through Monday at Epcot’s International Flower and Garden Festival concert series.
Disneyland was the second busiest theme park in the world in 2018 with an estimated 18.7 million visits. That put it just shy of the Magic Kingdom at nearly 21 million visits, according to a report last year by the Themed Entertainment Association/AECOM.
Meanwhile, Disney California Adventure was No. 12 with just less than 10 million visits.
Those employees will continue to get paid this month despite the two parks being empty, the company said.
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