COVID-19 & Coasters: Coronavirus Impacts on the Amusement Industry

[Mushroom]

And still not a damn word about it in Virginia. California was the one coming out the gate with extreme phase steps. I think the financial losses made them reconsider a few things. I guess BGW and KD don't have enough clout with the governor.

I’m not a huge Northam fan, but in his defense here, he did say that Phase 2 would last 2-4 weeks and that parks can open in Phase 3. So I reckon the only reason we haven’t seen a concrete opening date for VA parks is because that date is still up in the air, and could range from just a couple weeks to almost a month from the start of Phase 2, depending on how things go.

 

[tursiops]

I totally agree with everything you said, I just think some bigger parks have pushed their openings into earlier phases. But literally every state is different with little rationale for why. Whos got the best strategy? Nobody knows!

 

[rswashdc]

I would consider indoor seating in restaurants, salons, and gyms to all be higher risk activities than most the attractions at KD or BGW. The not having sway with the governor argument is probably closest to reality where they just don’t have the administration’s ear in any meaningful way.

 

[Zachary]

None of us know what the conversations behind the scenes are like so we really probably shouldn't be drawing any judgements.

 

[Nicole]

KD sits on the Governor’s Business Task Force.

It seems more likely that experts and available science are guiding the Virginia opening plan. Whether those data match a lay person’s gut instinct about what is the safest or most logical approach doesn’t seem relevant.

 

[rswashdc]

None of us know what the conversations behind the scenes are like so we really probably shouldn't be drawing any judgements.

It is correct we can’t see behind the scenes, but we can see what actually comes out in policy to see winners and losers, with KD and BGW being losers in my mind compared to other business groups. If you look at gyms, they get to reopen, despite indoor transmission being about 18x more prevalent than outdoors, and note that some gyms are huge (e.g. the St James) negating size arguments.

Compare parks in VA to MD where they are opening at roughly the same time as other businesses. This is likely due to the influence of the eastern shore business community on Hogan’s office. In OH, Cedar Fair had to file a lawsuit to get the governor to budge on opening even though zoos and aquariums were allowed to open.

It‘s nice to think the policy decisions are being made in a technocratic manner based on science and expertise, but what we’re seeing in actuality is still largely political and lobbying based.

 

[Zachary]

Here's the rub with your theory: Outdoor amusements—the things Hogan is reopening on Friday can already reopen in Virginia. GoKarts Plus has been in full operation for a few days now. I'm confident GoKarts Plus doesn't have an aggressive lobbying arm that can work to force the governor's hand.

We have no idea what is happening behind the curtain. For all we know KD and BGW already know the date they should be able to reopen and they're waiting on the governor to announce it publicly—that date could even be before many other parks with announced reopenings that we already know about. We just have no actual data to work with here. Trying to reverse engineer said data and then criticizing the thought processes leading to the strategy you have arbitrarily decided exists is a really bad look if you ask me.

 

[Jonesta6]

Would a legit question be to look for large-scale hiring events for either park to get an indication of when they may reopen?

 

[warfelg]

Would a legit question be to look for large-scale hiring events for either park to get an indication of when they may reopen?

I'd think so.

So I was thinking in part with what @Zachary wrote up there though: I think scale of the park has something to do with it. Aren't KD and BGW much bigger than SFA? Compared to parks allowed to open in VA already they are certainly bigger. They both have the strange combination of indoor and outdoor venues to worry about (and before someone says "but outdoor malls" they are individual businesses that rent space, not one big business). They've got massive work forces that continually change through a day.

 

[Nicole]

The simple fact is that no one (as far as I know) has any direct knowledge of the decision making taking place in VA, MD, FL, OH, etc. Apparently, that doesn’t stop some people from weaving conspiracy theories and/or drawing conclusions from a very limited set of facts. I find this tiresome, to be honest.

It is fine to debate opinions (stated as such), but endlessly asserting dark conjecture as fact and propping up rhetorical straw men for the apparent purpose of knocking them down contributes absolutely nothing of value to the larger discussion (other than possibly letting the rest of know whom to ignore).

Sorry to be so blunt, but after literally months of this nonsense, I am over it.

 

[tursiops]

I want trying to imply any conspiracies when I first brought it up. I was simply stating two things, 1. I don't believe amusement parks provide as much to Virginia's economy as those in other states, such as CA and FL, therefore they are not being pushed to the ahead ( not implying that's good or bad). Our state doesn't live or die based on two regional parks opening. 2. There is no consistency between states or even within states sometimes in how they ate going about reopening. Again, I'm not saying anyone is doing better or worse, just pointing out that it's very erratic when you look at the country as a whole. There wasn't any intention of starting arguments.

 

[rswashdc]

Here's the rub with your theory: Outdoor amusements—the things Hogan is reopening on Friday can already reopen in Virginia. GoKarts Plus has been in full operation for a few days now. I'm confident GoKarts Plus doesn't have an aggressive lobbying arm that can work to force the governor's hand.

We have no idea what is happening behind the curtain. For all we know KD and BGW already know the date they should be able to reopen and they're waiting on the governor to announce it publicly—that date could even be before many other parks with announced reopenings that we already know about. We just have no actual data to work with here. Trying to reverse engineer said data and then criticizing the thought processes leading to the strategy you have arbitrarily decided exists is a really bad look if you ask me.

Virginia specifically stated amusement parks can't open in phase 2. In MD, Six Flags and Jolly Rogers can re-open at the same time as indoor restaurants and other phase 2 re-openings.

I agree that we can't know what's going on behind the scenes in the VA governor's office, but we can see that neither BGW or KD have a prospective re-opening date and haven't started re-hiring, whereas Six Flags America has started hiring.

 

[warfelg]

Not exactly a fair assessment.

 

[bill s]

With some parks opening, it's a good time to wait and see.

 

[Nicole]

I want trying to imply any conspiracies when I first brought it up. I was simply stating two things, 1. I don't believe amusement parks provide as much to Virginia's economy as those in other states, such as CA and FL, therefore they are not being pushed to the ahead ( not implying that's good or bad). Our state doesn't live or die based on two regional parks opening. 2. There is no consistency between states or even within states sometimes in how they ate going about reopening. Again, I'm not saying anyone is doing better or worse, just pointing out that it's very erratic when you look at the country as a whole. There wasn't any intention of starting arguments.

I wasn’t directing my comment at you. Sorry or the confusion!

 

[BGWshowfan]

This was posted directly in Entertainment on the BGW pages. But thought people outside of BG might enjoy it also.

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[Mushroom]

I agree that we can't know what's going on behind the scenes in the VA governor's office, but we can see that neither BGW or KD have a prospective re-opening date and haven't started re-hiring, whereas Six Flags America has started hiring.

This isn’t true, at least in KD’s case. The park has continued to hire new employees throughout the pandemic.

 

[Unagi]

ResortTV1 is live vlogging from SeaWorld on reopening day right now.

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[VonDerrick]

Honestly this entire situation is very scattered. The biggest concern I think most people have is the determination of what businesses are able to operate following what type of procedures. Since the federal government is refusing to do any help with the situation at all, it is up for individual states to make the determination on what businesses can reopen, and what restrictions are most appropriate. Typically, that should be decided by science and logic; however, in some cases Governors may use their personal agenda as a guide as well. With that said, no government is going to openly allow someone to operate if there is no doubt that the situation will only get worse.

In Florida's case, the Governor did want to push businesses to reopen as quickly as they could. However, he wouldn't approve reopening unless he believed they could still manage the pandemic reasonably. One of the ways you can do that is by implementing temporary preventative procedures. Florida required theme parks to submit a full reopening plan that had to be approved not by the state, but also by the locality. This means, a reasonable plan to manage the pandemic while being open had to be approved as an effective plan by the county and by the state.I believe, this process helped to ease many fears people may have of reopening.

On the flip side, I have not heard of a similar approval process being replicated in any other state. In fact it seems as though states are just arbitrarily saying parks can reopen, but are not requiring any preventative procedures other than possibly capacity limits. This is actually more scary for me. Even if in Florida the reopening of parks process is just for show, at least it had people thinking about being preventative. This is another reason why it should be applauded that Virginia is taking so long. If they are not going to require BGW and KD to go through an approval process detailed the preventative measures taken, then I would rather wait to open them when you can be certain that they can operate relatively safely.

 

[rswashdc]

This isn’t true, at least in KD’s case. The park has continued to hire new employees throughout the pandemic.

KD made their determination not to open well before their planned opening so they didn't have to go do mass furloughs, though they hadn't really onboarded many employees either for the upcoming season. BGW closed right before member preview day, so they had to furlough a large portion of their employees.

While both parks are most likely hiring as they always do, a better signal will be once those seasonal employees are actually onboarding and getting the parks ready for a re-opening. Neither park has given any signal in this manner and considering the corporate parents are rapidly opening parks in other states, they are probably uncertain when they will be able to do so in VA (1 week, 1 month, 2 months, etc.). This leads me to believe both parks are in the dark with the governor's office on when the official date will be, which will further lengthen the time it will take to get them up and running. Based on Northam's phase signalling before, the parks may get less than a week's notice on re-opening; contrast that to FL where the parks could get plans approved with the state concurrently while working to re-open the parks.