While Florida’s theme parks begin to reopen following their months-long closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re now starting to see the economic impact that the closure had.

WFTV reporter Deanna Allbrittin posted on Twitter that Orange County only collected $765,900 in Tourist Development Tax revenues for the month of April, a 97% decrease from April the year before.

JUST IN: @OrangeCoFL only collected $765,900 in Tourist Development Tax revenues in April. That’s a 97% decrease from April of 2019. For context, this is about the same amount of tourism tax dollars collected in 1980 when the only parks were Sea World and Magic Kingdom.

— Deanna Allbrittin (@deannaTVnews) June 3, 2020

For context, Allbrittin added that April’s revenues was roughly equivalent to the revenues collected from 1980, back when Walt Disney World only had one theme park in the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT Center was still under construction, and SeaWorld was the only competition.

With parks and shopping districts reopening and employees beginning to head back to work, we can only hope this drastic dip is only temporary.

Matthew Soberman