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Coronavirus: Impact on Theme Parks

streetmagix said:
1. That's not how Herd Immunity works, as it relies on a good percentage of the population being vaccinated. There is no working/proven vaccine for COVID-19 yet.
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No need for vaccine. I read about some "experts" who suggested infecting young healthy adults with the virus on purpose to make them immune to the virus. That'd of course be a really risky and insanely stupid idea. Can't find the source for that and I'm not going to spend longer than a minute to look for that stupid ****. But in the end the fact that a good percentage of the population already got infected might be the reason for the virus to go away. But we need to flatten the curve to be able to treat all those with serious effects, prevent the infection of the weak that are in real danger and of course get all other necessary medical care done. If we buy enough time we might get some vaccination ready, as well.
 
Other closures:

Universal Orlando
Efteling
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
Parque Warner Madrid (delayed opening)
Parque de atracciones Madrid (delayed opening)
 
Toverland closed between 14th and 27th of March. It is quite close to North Brabant, the province in The Netherlands that has seen the most cases of the virus and where the Efteling is located, which as mentioned above will be closed too (that one after this weekend I believe).

Rumours about Portaventura delaying opening but nothing decided at this moment going by their website.
 
davidm said:
^ the point about travel insurance is that I expect many (mine certainly does) specifically excludes paying out for costs related to WHO-declared pandemics. Its all about the small-print, insurance will always find any reason they can to not pay out!

I'd be down a couple of hotels and a whole bunch of pre-paid park tickets, but I'd assume if proper travel-bans happen I'd get flights refunded. Still an annoying amount of £ but hey its not the end of the world - oh, maybe it is. :(
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I work in travel insurance claims for certain banks across the UK. Most of the policies and claims I deal with don't necessarily focus on WHO, more on what the Foreign Commonwealth Office are advising in terms of travel. If you purchased your policy before Coronavirus was a thing, you should be able to make a valid claim if the FCO advises against travel to a particular country or region of a country. A lot of underwriters are under immense pressure to change conditions, for example, we are now considering claims if you are unable to get into a country due to a local authority denying entry.

If you booked through a third party it's also well worth checking what protection they have in place. For example, package trips will have ABTA protection and many customers will get refunded if the service they purchased was not provided. Although certain companies like Aviva are sneakily reducing cover, a lot of insurers (including the big banks) are looking for ways that coverage can apply under their travel disruption cover of their policy wording (they don't want to lose customers over this essentially).
 
Matt N said:
Barring the UK Merlin parks, pretty much!

I must admit, I'm staggered that no UK theme parks seem to have said anything yet.
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All UK parks are currently unaffected
EDIT* if you class Warner Bros Studio's Tour (the Harry Potter one in London) as a park then they have just become the first UK park to announce a closure
 
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Matthew Fair said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Coronavirus: UK could ban mass gatherings from next week

Many major events have already been called off by organisers concerned about the spread of coronavirus.
www.bbc.co.uk
Are theme parks classed as "mass gatherings"?
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Apparently they are doing this to reduce strain on emergency services, so considering emergency services don't often visit theme parks, I still wouldn't say it's a nailed on certainty that all parks in Britain will close.
 
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