Big news just announced! Disney’s CEO, Bob Chapek, announced during Disney investor call on November 12, that Disney will increase capacity to 35%.
Previously, Disney has been running at a 25% capacity window. During an interview on October 13, Chapek said Disney would remain capped at 25% for all of their theme parks. A month later and it looks like there will be a bump in capacity. Chapek did say on the call that 6-feet social distancing guidelines from the CDC will still be followed.
BlogMickey shared the quote from Chapek as follows:
…our operators, which you know are the best in the world are becoming much more efficient and effective in operating under COVID guidelines. And we’ve been able to pretty materially increase our capacity and still stay within the guidelines that local governments are giving us, for example, 6 foot be social distancing, and this is happening across our parks across the world. In fact, Walt Disney world, which was at a 25% capacity constraint which was our industrial engineering estimates to keep 6 foot social distancing, now has been able to increase to 35% of capacity. So, almost a 50% increase in the number of guests that we can allow in, and still adhere to the local guidelines and the guidelines that are stipulated by the CDC with the 6 foot social distancing.
The announcement follows the news that Disney Parks report a net loss of $2.4 billion in fourth quarter earnings.