2020 ended with a gift of hope unwrapped as two COVID-19 vaccines. But even if the vaccines work and we all get successfully vaccinated, the 2020 disruptions to many entertainment and service industries will continue as major changes brought on by necessity during 2020 become permanent. Below are my predictions based on my more than 30+ years in the entertainment and service industries.

Work from home will remain – The remote office concept rarely took off pre-pandemic. Some of the reluctance to embrace it can be attributed to technology issues. Some to social needs. The larger problem, however, has been leadership. Leaders knows how to manage employees they see. Pay per hour practices are ingrained in American work force expectations. Leaders had never, truthfully, figured out how to manage people they could not see. Necessity has forced them to confront the issue and they have, in many cases, been successful. I expect the remote workforce to continue expanding.

The movie theater experience will not die – Smaller films will go direct to audiences via Netflix and other home viewing networks. Disney+, for example, has already begun offering new Disney films. The movie theater experience will not, however, go away. We are social animals by nature. Many people want to both go out and share the experience. Comedies in particular lend themselves to a social gathering. Big budget, outer space special effects extravaganzas and other event movies require both a way to gather and a really big theater screen to watch. Movie theater chains, with less product to attract patrons, will merge. Older, worn theaters without modern amenities will close. Variables pricing will be put in place with those few films that everyone wants to see costing more to view. The add-on price for popcorn, sodas, etc. could decline to make the movie going experience a less costly gamble. It’s easy to turn off a bad movie at home but difficult to do so when you have invested 25-50 dollars in seeing it at the theater.

Concerts and other live entertainments will be different – People do want to experience their favorite artist performing in person. Some of that desire can be met with the TV network call-in experiences. The Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood 2020 Christmas special where viewers texted song requests and Brooks and Yearwood performed live from their home, created a personalized, intimate, satisfying viewer experience. Another intimate approach was demonstrated by Disney during the Christmas season with the Disney Holiday Singalong. Although not connected to viewers on-line, the performers talked and sang to the camera. The result was an appearance of being live and personal.

Stand-alone pay-for television channels will continue to grow and fail – The amazing success of Disney+ points the way, as do Amazon Prime Video and the original startup NetFlix. Many media companies are attempting to replicate those successes. HBO Max, Acorn, AMC+, Apple TV+, BET+, Britbox, CBS All Access, Curiosity Stream, Discovery+, Epix Now, Hallmark Movies Now, Peacock, PBS Passport, Smithsonian Channel Plus and many more are peddling their add-on services. Many will fail or remain small players. There simply isn’t financial bandwidth for most consumers to purchase and continue to pay monthly fees for several services. Additionally, most consumers don’t have studio specific loyalty. They don’t even know which studio produces which show. How many people, for example, will be as fanatic about Peacock as they are with Disney?

Travel and vacation services will continue to be disrupted – Hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, airlines and other travel and vacation providers will experience mergers, closures and reorganizations. Cruise lines may, for future survival, merge or expand into related industries. And airlines will experience major consumer pushback against their recent past practice of cramming as many people as possible on a plane.

Theme park expansion will slow – In Florida, Universal had announced a third major theme park. In the current economic environment, it will either be delayed for several years or never be built. Disney had announced major expansions in its parks, especially EPCOT, and including a Mary Poppins ride and a redo of Spaceship Earth. Many of those expansions will either not happen or will be scaled back. Tight crowd control will also continue. We would tell guests in queues, when I worked at the Mouse, to move forward and fill all the available space. That practice is no longer feasible. Crowds will continue to be tightly managed. Disney has embraced variable pricing and advance reservations to enter its parks. Variable pricing encourages guests to be more selective about the dates they choose to visit a Disney park and advance reservations solves a long standing problem: not wanting to disappoint anyone, Disney would do all it could to allow entry to everyone who showed up at the gate, leading to overcrowded parks. I expect advance reservations to be the new normal.

The bottom line? More distance and intimacy, more closures and diversification, less crowds and higher quality experiences. It won’t be the same, or even feel the same, but change and disruption are, as they have been throughout history, the norm. As I quote I once read suggested, “If you close a door to change, it will come through the window.” These changes are breaking down our doors. They will move in.

Walt Disney, as the snap accompanying this aericle demonstrates, always looked ahead and embraced change as opportunity. Storyboards, the multi-plane camera, audio-animatronics, and theme park navigation technologies are just a few examples of how Disney rode the wave of change. We should too.