Florida has slowly been reopening its economy; starting with select businesses and gearing up to its flagship theme parks. Both the Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Orlando Resort have announced their reopening plans, and everything is currently moving forward. However, is it too soon? Is Florida at risk of another curve spike causing everything to shut down again?
Related: CONFIRMED: FL Gov. Approves Disney World Reopening Plans
Currently, the state of Florida has seen a 97% decline in tourism tax revenue in April compared to the same time last year. This impact has spread throughout the state, trickling down all the way to the unemployment crisis Florida is currently dealing with.
Deanna Allbrittin, reporter for @WFTV in Orlando, shared a post on social media sharing these grim facts. She stated:
JUST IN: @OrangeCoFL only collected $765,900 in Tourist Development Tax revenues in April. That’s a 97% decrease from April of 2019. For context, this is about the same amount of tourism tax dollars collected in 1980 when the only parks were Sea World and Magic Kingdom.
JUST IN: @OrangeCoFL only collected $765,900 in Tourist Development Tax revenues in April. That’s a 97% decrease from April of 2019. For context, this is about the same amount of tourism tax dollars collected in 1980 when the only parks were Sea World and Magic Kingdom.
— Deanna Allbrittin (@deannaTVnews) June 3, 2020
Because the theme parks are reopening, this impressive drop in revenue could be temporary. However, with the crowd-drawing nature theme parks have, a new curve spike is very possible in Florida.
Related: Disney Springs Met With Eager Crowds and Enforced Safety Protocol on Reopening Day
According to a document reviewed by Yahoo News, federal authorities are worried about new coronavirus outbreaks in a number of counties, including in states that have eased lockdown restrictions, like Florida.
The CDC ranks the top nine counties and one independent city with rising infection levels. Most of those counties are either in the Midwest or the Southeast, where mostly Republican governors have been quick to reopen their states.
There has been much questioning regarding the validity of Florida’s health crisis data. The state’s data scientist, Rebekah Jones, was terminated after allegedly refusing to manipulate the statistics.
Related: 740 New Cases; Will Florida Continue To Increase Once Theme Parks Reopen?
So, if the situation in Florida is worse than we are being informed, can its economy truly recover if choosing to reopen the biggest portion of the tourism industry, its theme parks, is being done prematurely? What happens if another massive wave of cases spikes because of jumping into this reopening too soon? Only time will tell.
Will you be visiting the theme parks soon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!