A team from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration traveled to Florida to inspect the reopening protocols of Walt Disney World ahead of issuing COVID-19 health and safety guidelines for Disneyland and other California theme parks.
Newsom commented on amusement parks reopening guidelines during a news conference on Monday, Oct. 12. Newsom administration officials went to Florida last week to visit Disney World and other Florida theme parks.
“We sent health officials to open and operating theme parks out of state last week, independently of operators, to assess the health safeguards in practice,” according to California Health and Human Services Agency spokesperson Kate Folmar. “These visits will help inform our pending theme park guidance.”
Disneyland and other California theme parks remain closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic while they await long-promised reopening guidelines from the state.
The purpose of the Florida theme park visit was to help Newsom’s team answer a key question: What can California learn from other states that have successfully reopened sectors of the economy?
“I have a whole team that spends their time not only getting the answer to that question, but asking those same questions,” Newsom said during the news conference. “And so this week, as a proof point of that, we have supported an effort to actually find out directly by sending our own team to these sites, as relates to theme parks, to get a better sense of what’s going on. While we absolutely take people’s word for information that they provide us, we want to see things for ourselves.”
Newsom’s team looked for best practices during the Florida theme park visits.
“We’re trying to get a better handle on what we’re being told, what we’re reading about, and our own concerns and our own environment as it relates to what makes our theme parks distinctive and unique,” Newsom said during the news conference. “What’s worked in their states and what hasn’t worked in their states as it relates to guidance, as it relates to mandates as it relates to messaging.”
The “stubborn research” done by Newsom’s team in Florida will help inform California theme park reopening guidelines.
“I want folks to come back and tell me what they saw, what their own experience was,” Newsom said during the news conference. “Because this is serious.”
Newsom said last week he was in “no hurry” to reopen Disneyland and other California theme parks a day after his chief medical officer said state officials plan to issue theme park reopening guidelines “as soon as possible.”
The seemingly conflicting statements symbolize the limbo California’s theme park operators find themselves in as they seek reopening guidelines from the state.
