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Credit: Alice S.Five years ago today, The Walt Disney Company made a historic decision.
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The Disney theme parks have undergone tremendous change since they originally opened, with both the Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts receiving significant upgrades, reworks, and updates over the last decade.
Disney plans to keep these changes coming, announcing several large-scale projects are currently in development, some of which have the potential to change the way guests look at Disneyland and Walt Disney World as a whole.
However, few decisions will be quite as monumental or as historic as Disney’s decision to close its theme parks in 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19, which occurred exactly five years ago.
Disney Closes Its Theme Parks
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On this day five years ago, Disney officially closed Disneyland and Walt Disney World, announcing the decision earlier in March 2020, shocking both hardcore Disney fans and the general public.
Disney theme parks are notorious for being left open throughout the year, through cold and warm weather, and even during natural disasters. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 was different; it was unprecedented, and Disney had to make unprecedented decisions regarding its parks.
Disney announced on March 12 that the Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World Resort, and Disneyland Paris would all be closed starting March 15. These closures were expected to last through the end of the month, but guests now know they would end up lasting much longer.
While Walt Disney World would open four months later, Disney’s original California theme park resort would not return until April 2021, over an entire year later. This marked the longest closure any of the Disney theme parks had ever seen and has had lasting effects on both the resort and The Walt Disney Company.
These closures affected much more than rides like Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, with hundreds of thousands of employees being put on indefinite unpaid leave.
Walt Disney World employs 75,000 workers, making it the biggest site employer in the country. On April 20, 2020, over 100,000 Disney theme park employees had been indefinitely laid off.
Disney Drops Anchor
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Alongside Disney’s theme parks, the company also suspended its cruise line operations. These closures even extended to Aulani, Disney’s private resort in Hawaii.
A lot of things were lost in the COVID-19 shuffle, with the world still feeling the effects of the pandemic today. There were certainly far more important things lost in the metaphorical fire, though many feel the Disney parks lost a lot of their charm.
Multiple rides and attractions, like Primeval Whirl, Stitch’s Great Escape, and Voyage of the Little Mermaid, never returned following the parks’ reopening post-COVID. Fans are particularly upset about the various features that were also lost, like Magical Express, free MagicBands, and the cutback on hotel room service.
A recent post on Reddit highlighted some of the things that have since disappeared from the Disney theme park experience.
5 Years Ago Today, Disney announced that Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Disneyland Paris would be closed beginning March 15, marking the first time that all six Disney resorts worldwide were closed
byu/Ytisoiruce indisneyparks
The Walt Disney Company is heading into 2025 with a bold plan to transform and revitalize some of its oldest locations and attractions. Beginning with Disney’s Animal Kingdom, DinoLand U.S.A. has already been marked for demolition, with one-half of the prehistoric land closing permanently back in January.
The rest of the land will shut down in early 2026 as work begins on creating a new land inspired by South America in its place.
The Disneyland Resort is set to receive its own version of Pandora – The World of Avatar, an expansion that has proven to be incredibly successful for the Walt Disney World Resort, though the plan to bring it to the West Coast has left fans divided.
Did you visit the Disney theme parks in 2020? What was it like?