Disneyland Resort to Lay Off 11,500 Cast Members Due to Ongoing COVID-19 Closure

Jessica Figueroa

Buena Vista Street Storytellers statue

Disneyland Resort to Lay Off 11,500 Cast Members Due to Ongoing COVID-19 Closure

As additional news surfaces regarding Disneyland Resort and its Cast Members, we begin to get a bigger picture of the impacts brought on by its prolonged closure, including mass furloughs and layoffs.

According to the OC Register, over 11,5000 Cast Members from Disneyland and Disney California Adventure will be laid off. 8,724 of these layoffs include Disneyland union employees. WARN Act notices announcing the layoffs were filed on October 29 and will take effect on December 31. Disneyland had previously announced layoffs of nearly 3,000 non-union employees on September 29.

The tally of laid off Cast Members continues to grow, considering that just last week, 4,000 additional layoffs were revealed in an SEC filing from Disney, bringing the total to 32,000 across the domestic Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products division. Over in Walt Disney World, 18,000 Cast Members have been laid off so far.

Due to current COVID-19 reopening guidelines in California, it’s believed that Disneyland Resort and its theme parks may remain shuttered well into 2021.

Source: OC Register

5 thoughts on “Disneyland Resort to Lay Off 11,500 Cast Members Due to Ongoing COVID-19 Closure”

  1. This is sad but hopefully these guys already had a job lined up. It’s been over 8 months since Disneyland closed, plenty of time to think of the future.

  2. Darn…just called travel agent today about Disney trip. No mention of this. Guess we’ll choose somewhere else. Closing most of 2021 takes it off the list for us. Pity.

  3. Didn’t Disneyland’s workers refused to go back to work back in July or so, when Disneyland was planning to reopen? As a result, Disneyland backed off and decided to stay closed. So what are the workers expecting? Obviously if they didn’t want to work (due to Covid), Disneyland will lay them off. They can’t keep workers paid while not be allowed to open.
    As to the executives, they have to be paid in full so that they don’t jump ship and go somewhere else. You only need a few executives and many workers, and workers are far easier to replace and train than executives. But then of course, executives are more in control of their income than low wage workers.

  4. Unfortunately if California’s governor won’t allow Disney to open, the company has no choice but to lay people off like any other company would do. Hopefully there will be a Disneyland to reopen whenever these governors get their heads screwed in right

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