A Walk Through the Park[s]:
An analysis of The Walt Disney Company’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic through an ethical lens
By: Michael Badillo, Zoë Benn, and Madison VanWinkle
Governments are put in place to protect the citizens they govern. With that in mind, we would expect to see the government taking every precaution necessary to slow down the rate of infection in the United States. Looking back, the government had made laws against alcohol when it was being abused. The government has put strict laws against the use of marijuana because it can impair one’s ability to drive. Shouldn’t the public expect the government to set laws to slow down the virus’s spread with this logic in mind? Most of the time, government officials are elected with the idea that they have the people’s best interest at heart. For the most part, this is true, and this can continue to stay true if the government would put the economic needs below the needs of the people it is put in place to protect.
COVID-19 has killed over one million people. With that being said, the government should be on the highest alerts to slow the spread of COVID-19. To slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, some sacrifice to economic growth must be made. To set a Stay at Home Order, people will not be outside buying anything, causing many stores to lose revenue, and the economy ultimately slows down. From an ethical standpoint, a decrease in economic positivity should not be weighted more critical than that of millions of Americans’ lives. Money should never be considered more important than human life. Human lives are irreplaceable, and money can be obtained in different ways later down the road. With this in mind, the government should be putting Americans’ lives ahead of the economy since it can be repaired later while the lost lives are lost forever.
The government took a step in the right direction after opening up essential businesses to live inside without running out of necessities such as food and water. However, after being scared about the economy not producing enough revenue, the government quickly opened up other options and let the definition of necessity stores vague to the point where people where a lot of unnecessary businesses opened back up shortly after there was a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. This opening up and allowing everyone to continue with their daily lives lead to a massive spike in people being affected by COVID-19. The ethical dilemma here is whether our government should be concerned about our economic welfare or our health.
The economic future of this country is one of the many priorities of the government. However, the government also has its duty to the people it governs. The real ethical dilemma for the government is, “which is it more responsible for?”. The answer is a lot more black and white than most would think. If most people are effectively killed due to the virus, there will not be many people left to fix the economy once the virus has been eradicated.
On the other hand, what would life look like for those who survive this pandemic? Without the economic stability we are used to, there would more than likely be a wave of people losing homes and jobs due to business owners not being able to pay their employees because of the shutdown economy. This would cause an even bigger financial crisis for those who survived the pandemic. There is an upside to slowing the economy; however, people are still available to repair the damaged economy. If the virus were to damage the population too harshly, there would not be enough people to work in the U.S. and not enough people to purchase and increase the worth of products. People are irreplaceable, and money is a resource that can be replenished later on in life with work.
Primary stakeholders in this kind of situation would be the involved people; the government cannot run without people, and as a country, we cannot survive without the collective support of others. People makeup businesses and make up the sole consumers of those products and services that businesses produce. The government should be looking out for the people since they pay taxes and move the economy along. If the government allows COVID-19 to spread and kill more people, there will not be people left to help rebuild small businesses, fill government offices, or support a country.
Life pre-COVID-19 often feels as though it did not exist; to begin to fathom that months ago 100 people could sit in a movie theater and not have to wear masks, and the thought that children were bumping into each other in a crowd of thousands at theme parks everywhere, feels like a foreign concept. There have been many significant changes to how we live in everyday life, and many of those stem from the fundamental social interactions we have with one another. In the entertainment industry, social interaction is key to the success of many large corporations that have boomed over time. While their popularity and financial prosperity have rocketed off the charts for years, COVID-19 has presented a new challenge: operating in a manner that follows government guidelines and state and local guidelines while simultaneously appealing to the masses and staying true to the companies’ ethics and morals.
Disneyland Resort, currently comprising the Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure Park, the Downtown Disney District, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa, Disneyland Hotel, and Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel, historically only had two unscheduled full-day closures, unrelated to weather, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The resort closed in 1963 for the national day of mourning following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and on September 11, 2001 (Knowles). Both closures were strategic and political as not participating in a national day of mourning could have been regarded as unpatriotic, and not closing following terrorist attacks could have been regarded as reckless. However, the Disneyland Resort took significantly longer to close their doors in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic than they did in these prior instances.
On March 12, 2020, the Disneyland Resort announced that while the resort had no reported cases of COVID-19, the company would close their two theme parks, Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure, beginning March 14, 2020 (“Update on”). The announcement came after California Governor Newsom announced that the Disneyland Resort and other California theme parks were exempt from an order limiting gatherings to two-hundred-and-fifty people or less (Roe). Initially, the company planned only to close the park until the end of March, but seven months later, the theme parks are still closed. There were approximately forty-eight hours between the announcement and the actual closure, which the company credits as a time for guests with pre-purchased tickets to be informed, have the option to change or cancel their visits, and make necessary travel arrangements. Notably, the company decided to close on its own accord; as previously mentioned, they were not legally obliged, at the time, to close or follow large gathering orders. One must question whether the delayed response time between announcement and closure aided the spread of COVID-19.
On March 11, 2020, one day before Disneyland Resort’s announcement and three days before the actual closure, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic (AJMC Staff). On March 13, 2020, the Disneyland Resort’s final day of operation, President Trump declared COVID-19 a national emergency and issued a travel ban on non-Americans who traveled to twenty-six European countries (AJMC Staff). Arguably, closing a theme park that hosts thousands of people from all over the world per day is not an easy task and rarely can be done overnight. However, on March 13, Disneyland was aware of the COVID-19 pandemic and saw it as a big enough safety concern to ignore the Governor’s exception and close on their own accord. However, they hosted thousands of people without mask regulations that same day, without advanced COVID-19 cleansing procedures, without temperature checks, and ultimately put their guests and employees at risk. Due to the limitations of COVID-19 mapping, it may be impossible to know if the Disneyland Resort remaining open on March 13 resulted in the coronavirus infection and spread. However, ultimately it spoke to the complexity of balancing logistics and running a huge business, like theme parks, while maintaining the health and safety of employees and customers during a pandemic.
The Disneyland Resort’s delay in closing their establishment and the continued extension of their closure has been primarily due to scientists’ ongoing research, such as those at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), political agendas during an election year, and public opinion. Ideally, governments would prioritize citizens’ health and safety and work to release public education campaigns to ensure all members of a nation are informed in the wake of a pandemic. However, President Trump has mostly been criticized for a slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic, withholding information from the public, and utilizing the virus as an opportunity for political gain. Historically, Donald Trump is not the first politician to respond to a public health threat in this manner. In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic saw American public health officials, insurance companies, and even doctors be poorly prepared to respond to an unknown, deadly infectious disease in an effective, confident manner, and ultimately, many people lost their lives to HIV and AIDS.
Similar to COVID-19, AIDS spread primarily due to individual behavior, such as unprotected sex and the use of dirty needles in drug use (Fox). COVID-19, while still being researched, is known to have a slower spread when individuals follow safety guidelines, but some individuals’ behaviors can be detrimental to slowing the spread. People have refused to wear masks, even going so far as to craft fake medical exemption cards, refused to stop hosting and attending large gatherings, refused to abide by social distancing, and have ultimately refused to follow state and local government regulations. While one person not following the rules may seem insignificant, individuals’ behaviors quickly can become collective group behavior that is dangerous. For example, “anti-mask” protests have seen large gatherings of crowds in public places with individuals who refuse to wear masks and practice social distancing. Analogically, one individual driving under the influence may result in no injuries or a limited number of casualties, but if every person in Los Angeles drove under the influence, there would be a mass casualty incident.
Community Leaders are crucial in public health crises. During the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan refused to speak on the illness as its relation to the LGBTQ+ community threatened the “good Christian” image his campaign was founded on (Fox). When he finally spoke on the public health crisis in 1986, he noted the epidemic as “…one of the highest public health priorities,” but he then proposed to cut the AIDS research budget (Fox). In this case, the morals of President Reagan and his campaign influenced his behavior. Similarly, President Trump, on many occasions, has been photographed without a mask, such as at the Supreme Court announcement where the President and many other politicians were seen not wearing masks and not practicing social distancing (Kreig). Also, similarly to President Reagan, President Trump proposed in February 2020, a time when he was aware of the growing concern of the coronavirus, to cut more than $693 million from the CDC and more than $742 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for the year 2021 (Krisberg). While running a country, especially during a pandemic, is no easy task and many ethical questions will arise, there is no question that a leader, such as the President, not following government guidelines, may encourage some citizens not to follow the guidelines either. As previously mentioned, individual behavior is critical in slowing a virus’s spread, especially when masks primarily protect others more than the mask-wearer (Bai).
Many public officials, including the President, have criticized the public health guidelines for closing non-essential businesses and asking people to stay home as detrimental to the economy. While it is true that unemployment quadrupled from January 2020 to April 2020, officials must decide whether economic stability or public health is more important during this time (Bauer). This ethical dilemma requires officials to question who their duty is, and it is even more complicated than stakeholders are affected by both issues, economic insecurity and public health threats, but the issues affect different stakeholders in different ways.
The leaders of the Disneyland Resort are, in fact, businessmen, but they still have ethical and legal responsibilities that prevent them from prioritizing profit over safety. For example, rides at the theme park are subject to safety inspections, and the park itself is subject to safety protocols such as fire exits, buildings that are up to code, and security checkpoints to prevent weapons from entering the property. To enforce safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Disneyland Resort could require guests and employees to follow the protocols of temperature checks, required face coverings over the nose and mouth, six-feet of separation from other parties, limited capacity of the theme park and all attractions, outdoor dining only, and limited operating hours to allow time for advanced cleaning procedures. However, it is highly unlikely all of these protocols would be strictly followed as they rely on individual behavior, and even with an increased security presence, it is likely that guests would come within six feet of other guests or a child may remove their masks, thus potentially resulting in the spread of the virus.
Even if, in an ideal situation, every single safety precaution was taken and followed, there could still potentially be a spread of infection, as COVID-19 is new, and scientists do not fully know how the virus works and mutates. In this case, one must ask what the Disneyland Resort can realistically do during a pandemic to keep their guests and employees safe? The most straightforward answer to this question is to keep the resort closed. If there are no people on the premises, then the virus cannot spread on the property. However, we have seen that the resort’s closure results in losing a job and income for thousands of employees. In theory, the Disneyland Resort could enforce new protocols requiring all guests to receive the COVID-19 vaccine when one is available and submit proof of the vaccine to the company before they can purchase a park ticket or reserve a hotel room. A policy like this could invade legal and privacy issues such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and may result in a massive decrease in customers as the policy may make guests uncomfortable. Some guests may not have healthcare access to get vaccinated, or a guest could even potentially be life-threatening allergic to the vaccine. The Disneyland Resort would also have to hire more employees solely to check vaccination records, which might not be financially possible. Ultimately, there is no foolproof plan to ensure all guest and employee health and safety, other than remaining closed, but this choice results in the loss of jobs.
While many former employees are struggling from being laid-off from the resort, many avid Disney fans and Annual Passholders are missing the theme parks. The company attempted to satisfy this craving by releasing “copycat” recipes of some of the famous dishes from the parks and hosting virtual events with animators, a similar experience to the Animation Academy in Disney’s California Adventure Park. The Disney Resort could utilize a strategy by their competitor Knott’s Berry Farm as the company hosted “Taste of Knott’s” in August, which allowed a minimal number of customers to attend an outdoor dining and shopping event in the theme park (“Outdoor Dining”). While face coverings were required, and there were no reported cases from the event, the Disneyland Resort may find Knott’s strategy a potential liability as guests have to remove their face coverings to eat. Ultimately, while the Disneyland Resort wants to reopen to continue to make money, provide jobs to the community, and continue to connect with fans, the leaders of the resort have to look at the long-term future of the business and how a COVID-19 outbreak on their property would result in a public relations disaster and potential lawsuits if it were deemed that the resort did not take proper safety precautions.
At the heart of the Disneyland Resort are the people who commit their time to make magic for the thousands of guests that stream in and out of the resort daily: the Cast Members. While there are more than 400 theme parks globally, the so-called “Happiest Place on Earth” sets itself apart from the others by providing an interactive and personal experience made possible by those who work there. With extensive training and long hours spent reviewing company policies, The Walt Disney Company functions effectively due to the constant evaluation of the Cast through the constant perusal of achieving its core values: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency, also known as the Four Keys. However, in a recent announcement made by executives at the Resort, there will now be Five Keys with the fifth being Inclusion (Abell); this announcement comes as a surprise to the Cast at the Resort who have known the same Four Keys for 60 years and feels contradictory to the latest news that 28,000 Cast Members are going to be laid off due to the impact of the Coronavirus on the theme park industry.
Large corporations are often notorious for their workers’ neglect, yet The Walt Disney Company is one of the most well-known companies for the incredible benefits the Cast receive beyond working at Disneyland. The expected quality of life for the workers at either the Disneyland or Walt Disney World Resort is that of a fairytale in the sense that there is a stigma behind working at the Resort; many assume that those who create the magic day and night are continually doing well due to the simple fact that they work for The Walt Disney Company, but this does not always hold true, especially in the face of a pandemic. Within the past few years, many instances have pointed to blatant neglect of individual workers and questionable choices made by the Company in general that have caused many to question the preached values of The Walt Disney Company.
The past two years have been crucial in understanding the Cast perspective of working at The Resort with multiple articles written or shared by Cast Members have revealed that a majority of the Cast is not happy. One situation that sticks out is the claim that there are many Cast members currently living out of their cars or in homeless camps; in December of 2019, a class-action lawsuit was filed, and “five Disney employees claim[ed] the company, worth $130 billion, has engaged in ‘unlawful conduct and unfair business practices.” (Fruen). The reasoning behind this lawsuit stemmed from issues regarding the wages that Disney employees were being paid and whether or not the amount was enough to be considered a livable wage. This lawsuit, while only being headed by five Cast Members willing to identify themselves, was “…on behalf of more than 400 hospitality workers.” (Fruen) who felt they were losing more than they were gaining from working at the Resort. While the Cast fought for basic compensation, a much larger problem would present itself in March of 2020: a global pandemic.
At all times, the world has its eyes on The Walt Disney Company and the decisions they make; a leader in the entertainment industry and a deity of sorts to the masses, Walt Disney curated a company that many look to for comfort, security, and guidance now because they are so familiar with this world that has been made just for them. When the gates closed on March 12, 2020, thousands of fans lost the experience of a lifetime, but hundreds of thousands of Cast Members would lose their primary source of income, and within the following seven months, 28,000 of them would lose their jobs. In a statement released by Josh D’Amaro, Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products, he stated that “..this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of COVID-19 on our business…” (Whitten) when addressing the layoffs and future of The Disneyland Resort. Whether or not the judgment call to layoff 67% of the employees who work for the Resort was “ethical” or not is debatable; with no plans to open as of right now based on the state’s guidelines, it is almost as if there were no other options for them to take besides being forced to lay off a handful of their Cast. While being backed into a corner is an excuse for why it was done, some questions arise regarding whether this was the best option for the Cast Members’ well-being. Some predict that the layoffs are a sign of progress in the sense that the next steps could be taken to figure out how to reintroduce the full cast back to the Resort once the total number of Cast Members is lowered. Could it then be said that the reason so many have their eyes on the Resort is because they function similarly to how our governments do? The executives at the top are making all the decisions for the Cast that work for them, and within that realm of reasoning, the question arises about whether or not the executives have the best interests of the Cast or the Company as a business at bay.
The closure of the Disneyland Resort and the Walt Disney World Resort came as a shock to many, given that the gates had only been closed five times since 1955 when they first opened. The avid fans of The Walt Disney Company and the Cast Members that work for them all go to the “Happiest Place on Earth” to forget the reality of the outside world and to relive some of the best memories of their lives and make magic for others. Walt Disney’s dream was to create a place that was “dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America…with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” and this is a dream that is not lost, but is being challenged by the nature of unforgiving circumstances.
