It's Friday, August seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America. As a result of the pandemic, Halloween could be canceled or at least look very different than in the past. Many major theme parks have already canceled their Halloween events and now big questions remain about trick or treating and also how it could impact the costume and candy industries.
Hugo Martin, business writer at The l A Times, joins us for how Halloween could be very different this year. Thanks for joining us, Hugo, Yeah, thanks for every Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I get together with my wife, we get together with friends. We love to go to all these theme parks that have their events, you know, in California. Here in Los Angeles area, we obviously have the Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, Not Scary Farm at Nots, and the Queen Mary has their
Dark Harbor event. You know. I love those that kind of kicks off the Halloween season and then throughout I love it costumes, trick or tree in the whole nine. But with the pandemic, the way it is. Everything has been kind of thrown for a loop. A lot of these theme parks have already canceled their Halloween events, and there's just more questions after that. What's going to happen to the retailers like Spirit, the costume shops that really
rely on this season to keep them afloat. Everything's been thrown into question now, so he go. You wrote a little bit about how this could impact the holiday there. Tell us about it. You were mentioning all these Halloween festivities that theme parks have, and in the past they've been just going bigger and bigger every year. I mean, they were breaking records. You would be waiting in line for hours in some cases to get in these mazes and to get in the rides, and the stores that
sell the costumes. Spirit and Party City used to go back there to get costumes around the Halloween time and it just be while the wall with people and costumes all over the floor. So it's been a huge boost to the economy every year. And this year, all the major theme parks here in southern California have canceled their Halloween festivities, and some of the stores and the candy makers are saying you know, we just don't know what it's going to look like this year because of the pandemic.
I mean, it's unclear if people are going to be even trick or treating this year. I mean, it's definitely sad, but it's understandable at least with these theme park festivities. You know, in these dark, cramped mazes. A lot of them are outdoors, but sometimes they're indoors. Their smoke machines, people breathing on you, screaming. These are all the things that we shouldn't be doing in close quarters with each other, So it makes sense. You did have a section in
your article where you talked about Halloween spending. There's a lot of money attached to this. Run through some of those numbers. Last year, based on a survey by the National Retail Federation, they estimated that Americans would spend eight point eight billion dollars just on Halloween, and that was one of the third I think it was the third highest in the fifteen years that they've been doing the survey. Most of that money spent on costumes and then a
big chunk also on candy and decorations. So it's a huge holiday. It's second only do Christmas when it comes to spending in the US. So it's big, and it's been getting bigger and bigger every year. You say it's second only to Christmas. There was also a note in the article some people might not have a problem with that. I know a lot of people do. Though, is that kind of slow creep of Christmas into Thanksgiving and beyond
and before that. They're saying that if Halloween is a bust, a lot of retailers might launch Christmas promotions early to try to offset that, to try to compensate. You know, we're just kind of laughing about these things. But that's another thing that Christmas might come even earlier because Halloween could be a bust. Yeah, I mean we all go to the stores and we see the like Halloween stuff where the Thanksgiving stuff. We go, wait a minute, that's
still like a month away or two months away. And now, as you say, if Halloween is a bust, we're gonna see Christmas decorations and Christmas wrapping and all that stuff even earlier because the stores are going to try to make up for that loss. Back to candy for a moment, you know, Candy sales obviously going on throughout the year, and they have other holidays associated with candy, but this is a big one for them. You spoke to someone at Hershey Company, what is their sense of this whole thing.
They're still hoping that it will be a pretty good year. They're hoping that people will buy candy just for themselves, even if there's no trick or treating. It's unclear what's can happen with trick or treating. I did call the l A County Public Health Department and I said, you know, what do you think. Are you guys gonna have any
suggestions on whether people should trick or treat? And they said, for now, they're waiting to do that, but they said be prepared to offer alternative ways to celebrate that minimize contact with non household members, which you know, my reading is they may not be too cool on walking door to door and knocking on people's doors around the neighborhood. So yeah, that's gonna be interesting if public health officials say trick or treating is not a safe thing to do.
And that's another interesting one. You'll probably see a lot of candy bowls just there, you know, kind of help yourself canny balls. But even in that sense. You know, the studies that they've done, the virus can live on surfaces and things for some time. It's not as much of a worry as being in a room with people breathing on you. But even still there's going to be a concern there. So it's just gonna be a tough situation. And you know, we'll wait for that guidance, but already
it seems like it might not be so well. The last question I had for you, Hugo, you spoke to a few people that love Hall the Ween obviously, and they're kind of just saying, it's not gonna be the same. I'm probably just gonna stay home this year. Like you said, you'd like to go to the Universal Studios and not very farm and I do too, And so I talked to some folks who do that on a regular basis, and they said they're just gonna maybe stay home and
watch scary movies all day. They're not gonna, basically, in their mind, cancel Halloween. They'll try to do it in some way that's safe and without going out. Probably no costume parties this year, but you can always stay at home and watch horror movies and uh, celebrate that way. Hugo Martin, business writer at the l A Times, thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America.
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