Though attendance is still fairly low at theme parks in central Florida due to capacity caps, there are still a number of exciting attractions set to debut this year across the state, including Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, Ice Breaker at SeaWorld Orlando, VelociCoaster at Universal Orlando Resort’s Islands of Adventure, and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at EPCOT.
However, with so many major theme park groups debuting much-anticipated new attractions, it may be frustrating to those planning a visit that none of them have opening dates yet. However, there is a good reason why these theme parks aren’t saying anything just yet.
Earlier this week Disney CEO Bob Chapek said during a financial results earnings call that many of the next steps for Walt Disney World will be determined by the rate of vaccination of the public. And with the vaccine rollout around the country going fairly slowly at the moment, many of these theme park companies may be waiting until a larger percentage of Americans have gotten the vaccine before committing to an opening date.
If one of the theme parks announced a major opening was happening tomorrow, there would be a lot of excitement, and of course, a lot of crowds, which would be tough to manage with capacity caps and social distancing measures in place. However, once vaccines are finally rolled out on a larger scale, we’ll finally see capacity limits raised, and social distancing measures eased, which will put theme parks in a better position to announce opening dates for new attractions.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to know exactly when that will happen, but recent reports seem to suggest that late spring may bring much higher rates of vaccination as more doses become available, which would be perfect for the summer travel season, which hopefully means we’ll start seeing confirmed opening dates for all of these attractions soon!
