COVID-19’s Impacts on BGW
- Thread starter WDWRLD
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I dunno, I think this is going to have a slight trailing effect where there's going to be a time where families still might not go out. Travel and entertainment tend to be some of the last industries that pick up after recessions.
Yeah, so much of this is a question of what the economy looks like when this is all over. There won’t be much pent up demand at all if people are cutting out non-essentials.
True. Forgot about that. The best hope is that it re-opens in early April but with how the current executive branch is handling it this virus that might be a stretch.
I don’t think you can infer that right now. It’s certainly not a necessity to anyone and there’s the potential for serious economic damage to be done to the tourism industry worldwide.
Well... I don't know what thread to put this in, but its applicable here.
Ideally, we don't want the healthcare system to be spiked like Italy where everyone is sick at once. So best case scenario is that we as a country get slowly sick and slowly better. But for non-essential services and luxuries, that's about the worst situation you could ask for. Especially coming out of the winter months with having zero business.
Ideally, we don't want the healthcare system to be spiked like Italy where everyone is sick at once. So best case scenario is that we as a country get slowly sick and slowly better. But for non-essential services and luxuries, that's about the worst situation you could ask for. Especially coming out of the winter months with having zero business.
There were people on this very forum saying they were going to ignore the experts and go to BGW if it was open today. You can only blame the Fed govt so much when people are going to do whatever they want to anyways.
That's what they announced yesterday. They said they would be closed through the end of March. This coincides with VA schools being closed for 2 weeks.
I don’t think we should put much faith in currently-advertised opening dates. People simply don’t know what will happen over the next two weeks.
Here's a question: How long can BGW last like this? Is there a chance that it becomes financially impossible for them to remain closed? How much runway do we think regional parks like BGW have?
Everyone is looking at this from the other angle—when it will be safe/wise to reopen. Is there a situation where that wouldn't be what triggers a reopening?
(PS: I know this is wildly unlikely. I thought it an interesting thought experiment though.)
Everyone is looking at this from the other angle—when it will be safe/wise to reopen. Is there a situation where that wouldn't be what triggers a reopening?
(PS: I know this is wildly unlikely. I thought it an interesting thought experiment though.)
I think that there is definitely a point where theme parks will have to reopen or they might never be able to. It is interesting to think about at what point that would be because at a certain point the options will be either lay off everyone and start from scratch or reopen and hope that you can make some money to cover your costs.
It's an interesting economic dilemma. There are fixed costs associated with operating the park that they will have to pay regardless. I could see a scenario where parks reopen but with a fixed limited capacity to reduce the amount of people in the park.
Ultimately though I think that is only a discussion that wouldn't need to be had for several months anyway and I'm pretty hopeful that most places will be back open before that happens.
It's an interesting economic dilemma. There are fixed costs associated with operating the park that they will have to pay regardless. I could see a scenario where parks reopen but with a fixed limited capacity to reduce the amount of people in the park.
Ultimately though I think that is only a discussion that wouldn't need to be had for several months anyway and I'm pretty hopeful that most places will be back open before that happens.
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To be clear, this comment wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. I have just noted several comments across the Forum that seem to assume a 1 April opening day, based on current statements.
My personal own take here: I don't think it can last too much longer than mid-April. Just my personal experience in the past with early spring openings, it's not super crowded and rides aren't really run with full capacity in mind. Assuming that there's no returns needed ASAP on "Music in the Park" days then they should be ok for a little while. I would expect that all parks, including Disney and Universal, have a line of being financially impossible to rebooting anything. I think that they have a date that's already been passed around within the corporate structure that has a +/- so many days around it to open by.
My $0.02 take on this is that there's going to be a feeling of safety when there's a 'break' in the curve and we're in the downside of need of care exceeding ability of care. Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Zika....all that stuff is still around. We're just much much better at understanding and preventing the spread. That's what I somewhat expect here too. I think the situation that could trigger a block for a move back is if they discover that just because you have had it doesn't mean ou are immune to catching it again.
Assuming basically no revenue coming in, SEAS has enough cash and receivables to go about 3-4 months if they didn’t make major changes (they are much worse off cash wise than Cedar Fair or Six Flags and have the operating expense of the animals which isn’t trivial). Assuming in a month they furlough everyone that’s not key and cut expenses to the bone, they probably go another 2-4 months. After that if they have any line of credit, which would be very questionable at that point, they would probably be drawing from that. Last option is capital injections from the market or a white knight buyer which are going to be at terrible prices.
Between BGW and KD, I think KD and Cedar Fair would be more likely to survive a war of attrition in VA, though this would be a lost season type scenario.
The only problem with advertising a potential April 1 opening; if it doesn't happen, it becomes an ill-conceived April fool's joke.
If we look at Disney Shanghai for guidance, they’ve been closed for about 2 months and only have opened up a few shops and restaurants to limited guests under a lot of restrictions. That’s not a pretty future to contemplate for the parks.
Even if the virus gets under control, social distancing almost certainly will still be in effect to avoid new outbreaks. That would probably mean limited guest capacity, rules on entry, and a lot of sanitizing going on.