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Billions of people visit the Walt Disney parks every year. However, that does not seem to be the case this year, as reported by Jaime Brown, an annual pass holder from Celebration, Florida. Brown recently told The Journal that she visited all four theme parks at Walt Disney World during the week of July 4 and “I couldn’t believe how light the crowds were."
Jay Scutt, the founder of the YouTube channel, Park Hoppin, visited the Animal Kingdom park on Sunday, July 9, a day after it was opened to the public. He told The Journal how the venue was almost empty:
“I walked on everything. I’ve never seen the park like this".
Netizens were quick to respond to the news of the park's lack of visitors. On Twitter, user @cvpayne speculated that the drop in footfall could be a result of the park's newer "woke" policies.
Why is there a shortage of attendance at the Walt Disney Parks? Netizens cite a variety of reasons
According to The Wall Street Journal, the drop in visitors at The Walt Disney parks could be due to the Magic Kingdom recently experiencing some ride problems. Additionally, exorbitant ticket prices can also be blamed. To add to that, earlier this year, Disney CEO Bob Iger increased the price of certain rides while imposing tickets on previously offered free attractions.
Furthermore, most netizen seems to be of the opinion that Disney's sudden "wokeness" might be the cause of this reduced attendance. Recently, Disney made lots of changes to its theme park as well as movies offered on its streaming platform. This has been done in order to cut down on previously shown stereotypes.
For instance, due to its rosy portrayal of post-Civil War plantation life, the Song of the South movie is no longer available for viewing on Disney+. The company also closed its Splash Mountain ride in the Florida and California parks, due to its ties to the movie.
More recently, the company announced changes to the popular Jungle Cruise ride, including removing the negative portrayal of "native people" and the addition of new components.
Social media users are now of the opinion that all of these reasons have contributed to the low attendance at theme parks this season. The comments section under @cvpayne's post was filled with netizens calling out the park's "woke" changes as well as pointing out other reasons for the closure.
"We stood up to Disney": What Ron De Santis said about Disney parks
American politician Ron DeSantis doesn’t think that the low attendance at parks has something to do with the broken rides or high ticket prices. On July 10, he appeared on The Clay & Buck Show, where he stated:
“Well, I’ll tell you, as parents of 6-, 5- and 3-year-old kids, my wife and I really believe that parents should be able to send their kids to school and watch cartoons without having an agenda shoved down their throat. That’s why we stood up to Disney with respect to our parents rights and education bill. And I think that it is impacting parents' willingness to want to take their kids to Disney stuff.”
He also went on to blame the "woke" executives of Burbank for the disastrous drop in foot traffic and ticket sales.
