Disney is to lay off thousands of employees, principally from its theme parks in the US.
The limited capacity permitted within the parks is the principal reason given, in addition to uncertainty about how long the parks would have to remain locked into that limiting factor.
The company closed all of its parks earlier in the year when the Covid-19 virus spread across the US. At this moment, only Disneyland in Anaheim, California, remains closed; the other parks are open to limited capacity and other protocols.
Josh d’Amaro, chairman of the parks, said: “We have made the very difficult decision to begin the process of reducing our work force at our parks, experiences and products segment at all levels.”
Most of the affected staff are part-time employees. So far there is no word of similar action at other Disney theme parks, including Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The latter park only reopened last week after a second shut-down.
The company lost $4.7bn in the quarter to June 27 with revenues from the parks sector down 85 per cent. D’Amaro said that the difficulties had been "exacerbated in California by the state’s unwillingness to life restrictions that would allow Disneyland to reopen".
