Annually, Disney World in Orlando, Florida welcomes 58 million visitors to their parks. That works out to an average of nearly 160,000 visitors per day, raking in billions upon billions of tourism dollars for the Sunshine State.
Today, Disney World proposed a reopening date of July 11th. The park has been closed since March, but the plan to reopen has been approved by the Florida Governor and Orange County Mayer Jerry Demings according to multiple reports. The proposal has Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom parks reopening on July 11th, and Epcot and Disney's Hollywood Studios on July 15th. Numerous outlets report that guests and cast members will be required to wear face coverings and capacity will be limited to allow for social distancing measures to take place in the restaurants, shops, and the provided transportation to the parks.
What does that have to do with football you may be asking?
Well if one of the most popular vacation destinations in the world is being given the green light to come back, that has to be good news for high school football programs waiting to hear something from their state associations, right?
June 1 is just a few days away, and many states consider the start of June to be the start of the summer off season. Many states have recently received guidance on what type of procedures that they have in place to return to work with their teams, but even a few days away from that June 1st date, a number of states have not yet to offer guidance to their sports programs, and many coaches are wondering if they will have a fall season at all. I believe pretty much everyone was expecting an abbreviated summer schedule with our teams, so even if we're unable to return until after the typical July 4th dead week, most all coaches would take that and run with whatever restrictions we have to deal with.
As we've said many times before, our new normal is (in all likelihood) going to be much different than we're used to, but Disney's plan to reopen should be a sign of good news for coaches everywhere. Especially those still awaiting word from their state association.
...at least that's how I'm choosing to take it.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.