I saw a couple of news articles (opinions/predictions) by Wall Street types that the best case scenario is that the parks open back up on January 1, 2021. What do you think?
https://sports.yahoo.com/disney-analyst-downgrades-stock-projects-144959277.html
Disney sent info to their furloughed workers today that seems to indicate their worst-case scenario is about six months of closures. I don’t believe they want it to be any longer than it has to for a variety of reasons, but I’d be incredibly surprised if they don’t open back up this year sometime.
My issue is that everything we have been hearing is that there will be a decrease but to be prepared for another round next winter. Why would January be better?
Well considering that Wallstreet has predicted anywhere from June 1st to 18 months, I think that it will open anytime between those dates. 
I still think it will open in some capacity this summer, whether everything is open or not. The chances of a treatment breakthrough, containment, or sheer political will (on behalf of Florida’s tourism-centric economy) will cause at least WDW to open with whatever measures are necessary to reduce risk or perceived risk to an acceptable level. But it won’t be back “to normal” until the pandemic is under control, whatever that means.
I hope they are wrong! I really just want life to go back to normal (I know that isn’t a realistic expectation but I still want it)
Better levels of herd immunity and vetted treatments but until a vaccine is offered any date is really pretty arbirtary I agree.
My money is they’ll open this summer, but with various protection measures for the remainder of the year (temperature checks, enhanced sanitation, virtual queues, crowd size limits).
There would be a minimal benefit of opening in January rather than the fall. The important things are planning, training, and safeguards to be put in place for the future opening. The virus will be around somewhat consistently for the next couple years. My guess is a phased opening starting in September, all properties will be open by November. The capacity and controlling that is my big question.
I’m sticking with my June 2020 phased reopen with enhanced sanitation and “health security theater” such as temperature checks. Once seroprevalence testing is more widespread, based on some of the recent data that, if true, already drops that fatality of this virus way down…then add in that those recovered asymptotic people who are seropositive potentially significantly increase the pool of donors of convalescent serum. Bearing in mind the inherent issues with transfusion of blood products, if you have sufficient convalescent serum to treat the ICU bound portion of hospitalized COVID patients and this turns out to significantly drop their need for more intervention and mortality, while not an ideal effective treatment, we could conceivably end up with a case fatality rate around that of the seasonal flu. And herd immunity (R0<1) is the goal but all the infections that come before we reach that goal are moving the R0 in the right direction (ie. downward from 2.2). Again, with the assumption that infection conveys at least partial immunity, every person that has the virus and either recovers or succumbs to the disease is removed from the pool of those who can get infected and spread the virus and thusly slows down the spread at least a little until we get to the goal of <1
I have to admit that I’m sort of hoping that my mid-June reservation gets cancelled before my 30 day mark. Otherwise I’ll have to spend money to make the two tickets I bought for the kids into anytime tickets. Since we won’t be able to go until next summer I’m already going to have to deal with buying tickets since our annual passes are going to expire before we can go back. So, I’ll be a bit selfish and hope for after June 2020. The only good news is that my kids did not know about this trip, so the only people disappointed are myself and DW.
Florida’s governor created a Re-Open Florida Task Force. WDW’s President, Josh D’Amaro is a member. They started meeting this week. Unfortunately Universal’s representative was quoted by AP earlier today saying that reopening Florida’s theme parks with be a long, slow process fraught with lot’s of issues … whatever that means. Otherwise it is probably way too early for anything meaningful to come out of this task force yet. We’ll all just have to stay tuned
Fingers crossed. My first day is currently scheduled for January 3, 2021.
I suspect they may open shortly and close come Fall when the pandemic is expected to be significantly worse (the second wave).