I understand where
@BGWnut is coming from with the skepticism about it opening near the start of the season (or even in 2021 at all) insofar as he's right that there is a scenario where the park realizes that some combination of the current challenges—attendance caps, hiring struggles, etc.—make it so leveraging a major attraction doesn't give them the value it's supposed to.
But for me there are two other factors that we don't fully understand, but which the park will be heeding at the same time. The first is the issue that
@warfelg is working to articulate, which is the unrest among members who were sold on "early access" to Pantheon for 2020, savvy enough to know when the ride is testing/basically complete, and aware that the park is choosing to sit on it. I don't know if this will on its own be enough to convince the park to open Pantheon as soon as it's ready, but I think that once we enter summer there may come a point where the park feels like they've already spent over a year risking their very valuable membership base with some muddy customer service policies, and the cost/benefit of that could kick in.
The second factor, though, is what happens if the park is able to raise capacity as vaccination rates increase but there is still a struggle to draw guests to the park. We don't yet fully know what the demand will be for theme park experiences at a point where a critical mass of people in Virginia and nearby states are vaccinated. There's reason to believe that it will be high, and in that scenario the park likely won't need Pantheon to hit what will likely remain restricted capacity through the end of summer. But if the financial strain of the pandemic limits consumer spending habits, or people continue to limit their travel for whatever reason, there is a theoretical scenario where BGW feels like they need to open Pantheon to cut through some continued reluctance from a large swath of the general public to visit the park.
In other words, I don't think we know enough right now to say for certain that we won't see Pantheon open and operating this summer. It's pretty clear that Spring is off the table, but it's not a simple decision, and I also don't think that the decisions in Tampa/Orlando—who are more concerned about convincing tourists to get on a plane—are going to necessarily give us an indication of BGW's thinking on this.
