Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Postpone July 2020 Reopening

Disneyland and Disney California Adventure will not be reopening its gates on July 17 after failing to receive the green light from the State of California.

According to a statement released by the company, the local government will not be issuing any guidelines until after July 4. The park will need some time to regroup its thousands of cast members, so a reopening date can only be announced “[o]nce we have a clearer understanding of when guidelines will be released.”

In addition to the absence of California theme park guidelines, the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions — a 17,000-strong group composed of workers at Disney parks and resorts — had sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom asking him to postpone Disneyland’s reopening out of fear of catching the Coronavirus (COVID-19). The letter was penned just before California logged a record-high of 7,149 new infections on June 24.

While the parks will remain closed until further notice, the Downtown Disney District in Anaheim and Walt Disney World in Orlando will push through with its reopening dates of July 9 and July 11 respectively.

Read Disney’s full statement below.

We previously announced a proposed phased reopening of our theme parks for July 17, pending government approvals. We developed enhanced health and safety protocols for both cast and guests at Shanghai Disney Resort, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort that have been approved, allowing us to reopen in a responsible manner and bring our cast members back to work.

The State of California has now indicated that it will not issue theme park reopening guidelines until sometime after July 4. Given the time required for us to bring thousands of cast members back to work and restart our business, we have no choice but to delay the reopening of our theme parks and resort hotels until we receive approval from government officials. Once we have a clearer understanding of when guidelines will be released, we expect to be able to communicate a reopening date.

Our Downtown Disney District will reopen on July 9 as previously announced with health and safety protocols in place for our cast members and guests. The opening of our Downtown Disney District has been previously approved in line with restaurant and retail openings throughout California. The Master Services Union, which represents our retail cast at this location, previously signed an agreement for members to return to work.

In order to reopen our theme parks we need to negotiate agreements with our unions to return employees to work. We have had positive discussions and are very pleased to have signed agreements from 20 union affiliates, including the Master Services Council, which represents more than 11,000 of our cast members. The signed agreement details plans that include enhanced safety protocols that will allow us to responsibly reopen, and get thousands of our cast members back to work.

We thank our cast and guests for their patience during this unprecedented time while we await approval from government officials.

Elsewhere in travel, airline companies will ban alcoholic drinks on flights due to COVID-19.