When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955, many commentators thought that the park was doomed to failure. They couldn’t have been more wrong. It proved to be an overnight success, transforming the fortunes of the Disney company as a whole and spawning almost an entire new industry of competing theme parks. Over the past six decades, hundreds of millions of visitors have headed to the Disneyland Resort. A second theme park, Disney California Adventure, opened in 2001 and has since undergone a multi-billion dollar makeover. Three on-site hotels accommodate out-of-town guests. Running an operation on the scale of the Disneyland Resort is a challenging business. Here are 17 incredible statistics that give an impression of just how complex it really is.
17. It’s very popular
Since 1955, more than 600 million guests have visited the Disneyland Resort – that’s almost double the current population of the US. In 2012, Disneyland attracted 16 million visitors (an average of 44,000 per day) and Disney California Adventure pulled in 7.8 million visitors (an average of 21,000per day)
16. It’s a huge employer
The Disneyland Resort is the largest single-site employer in Orange County, employing some 25,000 Cast Members. More than 500 different types of professions and skills are represented, and more than 30different languages are spoken among the Cast Members.
15. The transport system
The monorail that carries guests to and from the Disneyland Hotel was the first daily operating monorail in the western hemisphere. Walt Disney hoped that cities around the world would see it and install their own versions, but he was left disappointed when they didn’t.
14. A World of Color
The World of Color water and projection show at Disney California Adventure employs a submersible platform that’s bigger than a football field, with more than 18,000 points of control and a lighting system that infuses almost 1,200 fountains with color. Each fountain has multiple points of control for lighting, color intensity, water angle, height and more, and is capable of sending water to heights ranging from 30 feet to 200 feet. 28 projectors are used by the show, 14 of which are submersible. The man-made Paradise Bay lagoon that hosts the show covers 3.5 acres and is filled with 15 million gallons of water.
13. It has a unique landscape
The Disneyland Resort is home to more than 800 species of plants, native to 40 different countries. There are more than 17,000 trees on the site, along with 100,000 shrubs. 1 million annuals are planted every year, with the grounds being watered by more than 60,000 drip emitters and sprinkler heads. 100 staff maintain the greenery, which ranges in size from one-foot dwarf spruce in Storybook Land to towering 80-foot eucalyptus trees. The Mickey Mouse flower portrait at the entrance to Disneyland is planted up to nine times a year.
12. It holds a Disney record
The Ornament Valley Mountain Range in the Cars Land area of Disney California Adventure is the largest rock structure at any of Disney’s North American theme parks. It covers 280,000 square feet and is 125feet tall at its peak.
11. It can handle a lot of cars
Image: Loren Javier, Flickr (license)
The Mickey & Friends parking structure, which opened on June 27, 2000, was the largest parking structure in North America at the time. It can accommodate some 10,000 vehicles.
10. Keeping up appearances
More than 1,000 different costumes are maintained for use in the theme parks and hotels. The total inventory consists of around 800,000 pieces, with the costume division stocking 500,000 yards of material in 900 different fabrics. In the summer, more than 20,000 garments are exchanged for cleaning every week, while around 150,000 individual pieces and 300,000 buttons are replaced every year. It’s not just Cast Members that dress up: costumes are also maintained for more than 650audio-animatronic figures.
9. Heading underwater
Image: HarshLight, Flickr
The Disneyland Resort employs around 50 certified scuba divers. Their job? To maintain equipment on attractions such as World of Color, Fantasmic! and the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.
8. Keeping things tidy
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
Disneyland custodians use 1,000 brooms, 500 dust pans and 3,000 mops every year to keep the parks clean. On a typical day, 30 tons of trash are collected – with 12 million pounds being collected each year.
7. Recyling the trash
Not all of that trash goes into landfill. Every year, around 4.1 million pounds of cardboard, 1.3 million pounds of green waste, 370,000 pounds of office paper, 361,260 pounds of glass bottles, 274,280 pounds of plastic bottles and 17,240 pounds of aluminum cans are recycled.
6. Feeding the masses
Feeding 24 million guests in a year is a major task. Each year, guests consume approximately 3 million hamburgers, 6.5 million portions of french fries, 1.6 million servings of popcorn, 3.2 million ice creams and 2.8 million churros. These are washed down by 1.9 million gallons of soft drinks. A single outlet, Refreshment Corner on Main Street, USA, sells enough hot dogs in one year to circle the park 36 times. The nearby Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor sells enough ice cream every year to build a full-size replica of the park’s Matterhorn mountain.
5. Marching for miles
The Disneyland Band has marched a combined 3,500 miles during more than 90,000 performances since 1955. The group can play anything from a repertoire of more than 400 musical numbers.
4. It’s easy to get drunk…
The Napa Rose restaurant at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa holds some 16,000 bottles of wine in its cellar. The restaurant’s wine list inclues more than 450 wines, of which 80 percent are Californian.
3. A lick of paint
More than 5,000 gallons of paint are used to maintain the appearance of Disneyland’s buildings every year. More than 100,000 light bulbs are in use, including 11,000 “rim lights” on Main Street, USA.
2. Time to celebrate
Every year, the Disneyland Hotel pastry kitchen bakes and decorates around 250 wedding cakes, as well as 3,000 cakes for birthdays, anniversaries and other occasions.
1. It helped create a city
When Disneyland opened in 1955, Anaheim boasted a grand total of five hotels and two motels, offering 87 rooms between them. The city had 34 restaurants. Nowadays, thanks to the Disneyalnd crowds, it boasts around 150 hotels with more than 18,000 rooms, as well as more than 450 restaurants.
