For more than 60 years now, Disneyland has earned the title of Happiest Place on Earth. Nobody would ever describe it as the Cheapest Place on Earth, though. Ticket prices increase on an annual basis, and everyone grumbles about the cost of a cheeseburger. What nobody ever considers is the cost of doing business at the park. How much does Disney pay to operate Disneyland for a day? Read on to learn a few details…
The high cost of customer service excellence
Image: DisneyAccording to the official Disneyland Park fact sheet, Disney’s work force is comprised of 28,000 gifted employees. Those people don’t all work every day, of course. Many of them are part-timers. Even those who qualify as full-time employees have differing salaries. Disney’s daily budget has a lot of fluctuation to it, but we can make some educated guesses based on reported facts and established estimates.
Union workers have a contractually negotiated hourly wage. Disney recently settled a labor dispute with four different unions by agreeing to increase pay. The cast members in these unions are the heart and soul of daily operations at Disneyland. They work in retail, bake and sell food, and manage the attractions. Custodial services are an integral part of the impacted union employees, too.
Image: Disney The agreement that Disney brokered goes into effect at the start of 2019. It raises the salaries of Disney’s union employees to $15 an hour, which would have happened in three more years anyway under California law. They’ll get another guaranteed raise in June of 2020, but let’s utilize $15 an hour as the salary baseline.
Most estimates suggest that 6,000 workers put in a hard day’s work at Disneyland as a baseline. Another 1,000 cast members perform park-related duties every day. I’m uncomfortable describing them as more highly skilled. Instead, I’ll describe them as more highly paid. As part of the contract negotiations, their salaries will increase from $20 to $21.35 in 2019.
Image: DisneyAdding those totals together, Disney spends $120 a day for an eight-hour shift for a standard union member employee. With 6,000 cast members working each day, that’s $720,000 in salary. The 1,000 specialists cost another $170,800. That’s an estimated total daily cost of $890,800.
Some Disney financier would probably wince at the roughness of the estimate, but it’s fair to say that the corporation spends almost a million dollars each day on their cast members. Given the demonstrable excellence of these workers, it’s money well spent.
Taxes
Image: DisneyThe main reason why anyone knows anything about Anaheim, California is that Walt Disney built a theme park in the orange groves there. Despite the company’s significance in the history of the city of Anaheim, the two parties rarely see eye to eye on taxes.
Part of the explanation is that cast members comprise roughly eight percent of the town’s population, and their influence is felt everywhere. Since they’ve been in a protracted dispute with their corporate overlords about salary and Disneyland Resort accounts for 19 percent of all the city’s jobs, Anaheim officials don’t let Disney run all over them. The same isn’t true at Walt Disney World, where Uncle Walt negotiated to run the local government.
Image: DisneyAt the time of publication, Disney’s in a dispute with Anaheim about a $267 million tax incentive spread out over twenty years. The company countered by asking to drop multiple tax deals in place. It’s a nuanced, fluid situation that impacts Disneyland’s future. We can still draw conclusions from its recent past, though.
According to the Orange County Register, Disney “paid more than $125 million in taxes to Anaheim and its schools” in 2016. That’s $344,000 in taxes EVERY DAY. As the author of the article points out, “Disneyland is Anaheim’s largest taxpayer, by far.” And you thought you hated filling out your taxes in April!
Keeping the lights on
Image: DisneyYou may wonder about the utility bill at Disneyland. Disney’s stressed enough about their energy expense that they’ve added solar panels. These green-friendly devices are – no joke – on top of the building that houses Radiator Springs Racers. Space issues in Anaheim prevent the company from adding a massive solar farm like the one in Orlando.
Until park planners can solve this issue, they’re still on the hook for all ride, shop and restaurant operations. The bill for each one of these is hilariously complex. A Stanford math paper for a roller coaster in a state with cheaper electricity has some interesting results. The calculations suggest that each ride on a roller coaster costs 7.5 cents.
Image: DisneyDisneyland would have a fluctuating rate that’s a bit higher, but that’s more of an information statement anyway. It’s impossible to make projections on literally dozens of attractions with varying throughputs. And I can’t use Walt Disney World as a comparison, because Disney was smart enough to build its own power plant there.
The one caveat in all of this is that Disney’s so good at power consumption savings that they’ve written many white papers on the topic. In other words, the answer here is less than you think. After poking around, I’ve come to the conclusion that Disney spends about $10,000 a day on power, and that number will decline in future years as they add more solar panels.
Expansion
Image: DisneyDisney parks rarely stay the same for an extended period. The company’s commitment to plussing ensures that they’re always working on something new while refreshing something not-new. For example, the belief is that Star Wars Land will cost the company $1 billion. Imagineers will have worked on the project for four years by that point, placing the annual cost at $250 million. That’s $685,000 daily just so that you can make Light Saber sounds. It’s the cost of doing business at a sustained level of excellence.
Adding it all up
Image: DisneyThe math here is sloppy and almost assuredly wrong. Every guess about the operating cost of a Disneyland park is a fun exercise with little basis in reality. Even as I’ve attempted to source as much as I can, I’ve had to accept how many different assumptions I’ve made that could easily collapse with the introduction of additional information. Basically, I’ve said “screw it!” and taken my best shot.
My math suggests that Disneyland pays its employees $890,800 daily. The corporation adds $10,000 more for utilities. The government asks for a hefty $344,000, and expansion adds another $685,000. That’s $1,929,800 for a single day at the Happiest Place on Earth.
That guesstimate doesn’t factor in other costs such as emergency services (ambulances and fire engines), white-collar activities (political PAC expenditures and legal fees for park-related lawsuits), healthcare for cast members (I doubt their healthcare provider could answer this precisely) and material costs (hamburger meat, cheese, and buns for that overpriced cheeseburger you were complaining about). When those items get factored in, the cost would soar.
Image: DisneyAlternately, we could take the lazy way out on our estimate. According to Disney’s fiscal 2017 reports, their park operating expenses were $14,461,000,000. Disney has six theme parks, giving each one a yearly cost of $2.44 billion. Disneyland’s portion of that divided by 365 days is $6.685 million. That’s about triple what my calculations suggest, and so I think it’s fair to call those as the low and high ranges for this discussion.
So there you have it: running the Happiest Place on Earth costs somewhere between $1.93 million and $6.69 million each day. Remember that the next time you complain about your $18 cheeseburger.
