Guesstimate daily income and operating costs across the entirety of WDW

[dieboy]

I read somewhere there were about 25k rooms a while back. Was just pondering this today, what do you think their daily income and operating costs are for the entirety of WDW.

Just rooms alone;
Say median price guess, 300/night. x 25000 rooms. = 7.5 mil a day, on rooms alone, assuming it is peak season.
Not to mention food and merchandise, I can't fathom what that pulls in daily.

Anyone else care to venture a guess?

 

[kap91]

I did the math on this once and it’s just obscene.

For instance a one day ticket to a park costs like $100. Now granted muktidays discount this but for arguments sake let’s say what people pay for snacks and drinks makes up for that. Each park easily pulls in 50k people a day on average. That’s $20,000,000. Each parking lot holds around 10,000 cars and at least gets 3/4 full. $20 per car. That’s roughly 350k to half a mil. There’s the 7.5 million you calculated above. It’s likely that per guest merchandise spending assuming on average every guest gets a T-shirt and maybe a small item is another $50 per guest. That’s another $10,000,000. Say half the guests eat at a sit down restaurant once in the day and pay $30 on average. That’s $3,000,000. Then there’s water parks, alcohol, upcharge experiences, etc.

You’re talking easily $50,000,000 a day in income. And probably higher.

The biggest expense is probably labor. 70,000 employees. Though many of those are part time or seasonal. Say the average pay is $20/hr when you factor management vs front of line. That’s 1.5 million a day. Marketing is huge too - nationwide TV spots can easily be millions of dollars. Electricity, insurance, food, raw materials - all that will cost a lot. Plenty of expenses. But something tells me it’s all adds up to be a lot less than $50,000,000.

Not a math genius here but those at least are some ball park figures.

 

[crxbrett]

Yeah, right now there are roughly 27,356 hotel rooms/studios owned and operated by Disney. This does not include Shades of Green, the Swolphin or the other Disney Spring resorts like the Doubletrees and Hiltons and such.

With the Riviera being built, Disney will have just under 28,000 rooms. That is pretty impressive. If you include Ft Wilderness' cabins, it goes up to 28065.

Like kap said, it's insane to think of the amount of revenue being generated from WDW on a daily basis.

 

[Mr Ferret 75]

Spoiler: running costs

Spoiler: profit

 

[dieboy]

Dang ... those are some jaw dropping numbers.

Its odd, I went from being dazzled by Disney as a kid with all the rides and theming, now as an adult I am dazzled by the engineering, and ability to run an operation of that magnitude day to day.

I bet their accountants see some crazy numbers .

What made me start to wonder about this all .. I found out one of the pin shops rakes in anywhere from 18k to 20k daily. For stamped pieces of recycled metal .. (disney probably gets the metal from recycling on property, melts down, re-mold into a pin and stamp some color on it, 'hey look at those chumps buying their recycling back '.

lol @ Mr Ferret 88.

 

[Willmark]

If wiki is accurate:
When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the site employed about 5,500 "cast members".[39] Today, Walt Disney World employs more than 74,000 cast members,[40] spending more than $1.2 billion on payroll and $474 million on benefits each year. The largest single-site employer in the United States,

 

[dieboy]

If wiki is accurate:
When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the site employed about 5,500 "cast members".[39] Today, Walt Disney World employs more than 74,000 cast members,[40] spending more than $1.2 billion on payroll and $474 million on benefits each year. The largest single-site employer in the United States,

If both of those are even close to the truth, Disney only needs to operate a total of 30 days to pay their employees the entire year. Not bad ..

 

[CaptainAmerica]

You’re talking easily $50,000,000 a day in income. And probably higher.

No, not close. $50 million per day is $18.3 billion per year. The entire Parks & Resorts segment had $18.4 billion in revenue in 2017. That's World, Land, DVC, Cruise Line, Aulani, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and ABD combined. Total domestic revenue (World, Land, Aulani, DVC, and Cruise Line) was $14.8 billion.

https://www.thewaltdisneycompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2017-Annual-Report.pdf

 

[Master Yoda]

I actually think the money from concessions, food and merchandise is where most of the profit comes from, not the tickets.
The mark up on those concessoion items is huge.

I have been told that the revenue from tickets covers the operational costs of the parks (eg labor, power, general maintenance, etc).

The profit generated is from food and merchandise.

To put it in car guy terms...park tickets are the $19.99 oil change that gets you in the door so they can sell you a $9 air filter for $30.

 

[Model3 McQueen]

I have been told that the revenue from tickets covers the operational costs of the parks (eg labor, power, general maintenance, etc).

The profit generated is from food and merchandise.

To put it in car guy terms...park tickets are the $19.99 oil change that gets you in the door so they can sell you a $9 air filter for $30.

Park tickets are more like a heads and cam upgrade, so the mechanic can try to sell you longtube headers, cold air intake, ported throttlebody new valves and springs, racing fuel injectors and possibly forced induction. Then you go home and never use your car again until your next trip to Disneyland lol.

 

[Rumrunner]

They are making enough money to at least keep MK open past 10:00. Midnight closings were awesome. Swim and relax at the resort and then casually go to MK and enjoy the night time cool weather and the beauty of the place at night.
I just miss those days and will never understand the 10:00 closings.