With the exception of the Disney+ Streaming subscription there are not many bright sides to the pandemic for Disney.
The Cruise division is toast for the foreseeable future. There’s simply no way around this.
The parks are trying to open with limited capacity. This may be doable. What I would propose is a doubling of the price of a ticket. With less people in line a park goer will have a significantly better experience. And some portion of the population will be willing to pay for that improvement. This won’t get Disney anywhere near revenue neutral to pre-pandemic (hotels, concessions and merch won’t be twice as good and thus shouldn’t cost twice as much), but perhaps with less staffing it will take some of the sting away from the pain.
Major movie releases have been delayed and there’s no clear time table for when that will end. Even if theaters are allowed to reopen will anyone show up? If I were in charge of Disney I’d task my tech team at Disney+ to figure out a way to include digital watermarks that identify the subscriber into movies and then release them to Disney+ for an extra fee. Want to watch Mulan at home in July 2020? It costs $50 and it’s available to your Disney+ account for 48 hours. But if you record it and share it they’ll know.
There are certainly risks. For one what’s to stop the whole neighborhood from coming over and watching it with you? But this may be a new normal and we may be kidding ourselves that next year will be like it was in 2019. It’s time for companies to stop waiting and start acting like this may go on for a while.