Disneyland faces a drop in attendance of 32 million visitors over two years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but that pales in comparison to the nearly 100 million visitors that Disney parks in the United States could lose during that time. , according to a new analyst report.
A new report by Wall Street Cowen and Company analysts paints a bleak picture of attendance losses at Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division.
“With the accelerated spread of COVID-19 in the United States, we expect a prolonged impact on Disney parks,” according to the Cowen report.
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Disney theme parks in the US could see 97.7 million fewer visitors passing through their turnstiles in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, according to forecasts from the Cowen report and attendance data from the Thematic Entertainment Association.
Disney theme parks in Anaheim remain closed until further notice. The four Walt Disney World theme parks reopened in mid-July with strict capacity limitations.
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Disneyland officials rarely dispute the attendance or capacity of the theme park.
Cowen analysts don’t expect Disney’s theme park division to recover from the pandemic and return to profitability until 2025.
Other Wall Street analysts paint a more appealing picture of the Disney theme park bounce than Cowen and Company. Analysts at Goldman Sachs expect Disney theme park attendance and revenue to recover by 2022 or 2023.
Disneyland and Disney California Adventure have already lost 10.2 million visitors during the more than four-month coronavirus closure of Anaheim theme parks, according to TEA data.
The Cowen report forecasts that attendance at Disney theme parks in the US will decrease by 35% in fiscal year 2021, in addition to a 47% drop in fiscal year 2020 and capacity constraints are expected to continue. until mid-2021.
“We had previously assumed that the spread of COVID-19 would stop relatively with social distancing requirements significantly decreased in late 2020,” according to the Cowen report. “We have now extended that timeline until at least mid-2021. The situation is still very fluid and we do not rule out the possibility that the impact could last even longer.”
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Attendance at Disney theme parks in the US in 2021 is expected to drop to a third of 2019 levels, according to the Cowen report.
At Anaheim, Disneyland attendance could drop from 18.7 million in 2019 to 6.4 million in 2021, according to Cowen’s estimates and TEA data. DCA attendance could drop from 9.9 million in 2019 to 3.4 million in 2021, according to estimates by Cowen and TEA. Combined, Disney’s theme parks in Anaheim could lose 32.1 million visitors in two years, according to estimates.
That pales in comparison to possible attendance losses at Disney’s theme parks in Florida.
Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme parks lost 18.6 million visitors during the nearly four-month coronavirus closure of Florida parks, according to TEA data.
The four Disney parks in Florida could lose 65.6 million visitors in two years, according to estimates by Cowen and TEA.
Combined, Disney parks in the US could see a decrease of 97.7 million visitors by the end of September 2021 when the company’s fiscal year ends, according to the report.
That means that Disney’s American parks are not required to re-close like Hong Kong Disneyland.
“However, given the growing epidemic in the US, we believe the risk that parks will have to be closed again after any opening is increasing rapidly,” according to the Cowen report.
