Disneyland Officials Talk Closure Fallout, Anaheim Stores Hurting

ANAHEIM, CA — Disneyland Resort is the fuel that runs most local businesses, such as the Subway restaurant across the street from Disneyland Resort's main gate. On a typical October afternoon, the line for custom 6-inch and foot-long subs would wrap around the building for guests of area hotels, perhaps awaiting entrance to Mickey's Trick-or-Treat Party, or returning for a rest and refuel before nighttime fireworks.

This Subway franchise owner Rick Cerney once boasted that this was the highest performing location in all of Orange County. Today, he is at the bottom of that list, having lost 86 percent of his business since the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Cerney is down to employing nine people at present. He's been forced to cut hours for all and let many workers go to make ends meet. He put a second mortgage on his home to make ends meet, according to an interview on Reopen OC Now, but he knows that's a band-aid, and those extra funds won't last forever.

Businesses— like Cerney's Subway and the nearby Castle Inn —were dealt a heavy blow Tuesday with the reopening news. Closed since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, Disneyland Resort has battled hard to make a case for a safe reopening.

That plan was pushed further away with theme park reopening guidelines released Tuesday.

Recently, Walt Disney Co. officials took the governor's staff on a private tour of the Magic Kingdom in Florida and behind the shuttered Disneyland's main gates to view the plans and practices put into place to keep guests and cast members safe.

A coalition of unions representing thousands of Disney cast members have told Gov. Newsom that they are satisfied with the health and safety measures Disney Resort has put into place, the New York Times reported.

According to Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's health secretary, the health practices established by Disneyland Resort aren't enough.

"They came back (from the Magic Kingdom) with lots of valuable lessons," he said. "Things that we saw that we were very reassured by were great management of how lines were managed, keeping separate groups apart while in a line, while on a ride. Really great lessons learned there. But also some things that raised some concern —the level of mixing even without masks that seemed very random and concerning to us. So those different areas of information were really assimilated and guided where we landed with this guidance."

According to Orange County Health Care Agency Director Clayton Chau, that statistic will be challenging to achieve, but hopefully would be attainable next summer. He repeated, "hopefully."

Anaheim Mayor and city spokesperson shared that after seven months of closure, businesses who have staked their futures on Anaheim's tourism industry, fed by the Disneyland Resort and Anaheim Convention Center, are starting to fail. Working families and small businesses in Anaheim are suffering, Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu says.

"As painful as this is, Disney and the city of Anaheim will survive," Sidhu says. "But too many Anaheim hotels, stores, and restaurants will not survive another year of this. Many are family businesses. The jobs they provide support other families."

Sidhu adds that "we can safely and responsibly open our theme parks and convention center soon. The unions of the Disneyland Resort agree and support the reopening of the theme parks in Tier 3 — not Tier 4 (the least restrictive tier), which would wipe out jobs in our city and destroy lives."

As it stands, the Anaheim Convention Center sits idle. We are looking forward to hosting shows in 2021, city spokesman Mike Lyster tells Patch. We are all in a difficult position, as planners are making decisions about booking events in 2021, and we don't have clear direction from where we sit now.

All further hurts the fragile economy of Anaheim.

Ghaly conceded that there is no way to predict when major theme parks such as Disney or Universal might reopen since the decision will be dependent on countywide coronavirus numbers under the guidance.

He drew a distinction between theme parks and sporting events that were allowed to begin reopening at 25 percent capacity in many areas. Ticketed sales at sports stadiums allow for more control and location of crowds to prevent mixing, he said.

"Part of what has guided this is this notion that there's higher-risk settings and lower-risk settings," Ghaly said. "Over the last many weeks, we've been talking to you about that difference ... the fact that some settings can be modified significantly to reduce risk and others are harder to modify just by the nature of the activities."

Awaiting the lowest risk setting translates to devastating losses for Anaheim's business community. The state's reasoning to delay reopenings for many more months has flummoxed both Disneyland Resort's president and the president of Universal Studios, Hollywood.

Ken Potrock, president of Disneyland Resort, said the company has proven it can open safely with proper health protocols.

"Nevertheless, the state of California continues to ignore this fact, instead mandating arbitrary guidelines that it knows are unworkable, and that hold us to a standard vastly different from other reopened businesses and state-operated facilities," Potrock said. "The guidelines from Sacramento will keep us shuttered for the foreseeable future, forcing thousands more people out of work" and leading to more business closures."

Karen Irwin, president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios Hollywood, said forcing the park to wait until the county reaches the "yellow" tier "makes no sense," mainly since other businesses such as indoor shopping malls are open.

"It ignores science, reason, and the economic devastation this will bring to the thousands of our employees, the indirect businesses that rely on us and our industry overall," Irwin said.

"The health and safety of our guests and team members has always been our top priority. We have designed detailed health and safety protocols that allowed us to open our theme parks in Orlando, Osaka, and Singapore. We have collaborated with L.A. County health and government officials on a comprehensive plan to move forward safely here, and we are prepared and ready to open."

Meanwhile, Cerney's Subway restaurant is ready and willing to ramp up business as soon as things turn around. For him, there is no other choice.
"We were asked to put things on pause, and we did so because we needed to," he says. "But I think it's time we lean forward and press the play button."

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Disneyland Reopening Schedule, Delays Threaten Nearby Businesses