So my parents are in Disney World right now (and they didn’t take me!) and the thought occurred to them how much it must cost Disney to run that place daily. Specifically, the 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, the downtown district, 20 hotels, 60,000 employees, maintenance…the list goes on.
Anyone have a clue as to what that might cost to run daily?
Thanks sleestak, but I find that number to be unbelievably low. I know that Disney World has about 60,000 employees. Now, and I could be way off with this, if we assume the average salary is $30,000, that comes out to $5,000,000 a day, alone. And that’s not counting other operating expenses, such as food, fireworks, electricity, water, etc.
I didn’t look at the cite, but I’d wonder how many of those 60,000 workers are making considerably less then that. Minors that make $50-$100 per week. Holiday labor that might make $1000 per year (just working for a few weeks per year) etc.
That’s (supposedly) what they bring in each day, not what they spend.
And if you scroll down farther, someone else suggested it costs 2.1 million per day to keep everything up and running. Clearly there’s some conflicting info here though.
Why would you assume the average salary for somebody who works at a theme park is going to be $30,000? And I doubt even half of their 60,000 employees work full-time.
They were rough-ass guesses, I said as much. Even at significantly lower values, it would seem pretty evident it costs more than $250,000 to run.
Their most recent quarterly earnings statement says that annual operating income for all parks was $1.9 billion on revenue of $11.5 billion. Presumably cost is revenue minus income, and a per-day figure can be obtained for all parks in the aggregate. I have no idea what percentage of that figure pertains specifically to Walt Disney World.
The first cite contains a link to the actual financial report, which clearly indicates that whoever came up with $250,000 has no idea how to read. It appears that the resorts and parks segment costs about $3 million a day. I have no idea what fraction of that is spent by Disney World, but it’s way more than an equal share. In addition, some of these costs may actually be borne by contractors, and not show up on Disney’s statements at all.
I’d really wonder about whether it’s the parks or the hotels which are the real cost center.