Disneyland is deemed the “Happiest Place on Earth,” but happiness doesn’t pay the bills. Disney parks and resorts are rumored to have the priciest theme park tickets on the planet, and while that may not surprise you, what might is just how much of that revenue is later used to bankroll the insane cost of operating Disneyland. It takes a small army to operate the theme park, and with 23,000 cast members and 200,000 employees total, 3,000 to 6,000 of them are duty on any given day. With employees averaging $14-$16 per hour, Disney shells out in excess of $400,000 per day in salaries. Then there are the rides — with 88 attractions, the daily payout for Disneyland’s ride safety comes to around $7,500 a day. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of garbage left behind by millions of visitors, which necessitates a crew of over 600 custodial employees who make an average of $14 an hour, another $68,000. The Walt Disney Company has a lot of parks and properties to maintain, and the company is said to spend over $11 billion a year to keep things open and functional. If you split that evenly, each park would cost roughly $3.5 million a day to stay open. Now doesn’t that make your Disney ticket price seem insignificant?
