Incredible Walt Disney World Facts and Figures from 1971
Today is December 5th, 2020, which means that there are only 26 days left in this godforsaken year. It’s also Walt Disney’s birthday.
For Disney fans, this date comes with more symbolism. It means that we’re just shy of 10 months away from the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World.
Image Credit: Disney
MickeyBlog’s just as excited about the celebration as you are. We’re running a monthly series about Walt Disney World’s half-century of excellence.
This time, we’ll look at Disney’s opening day facts and trivia.
Day One Attendance
When Walt Disney World debuted, nobody knew quite what to expect. I mentioned last time that even executives were reduced to speculation.
Disneyland famously spit the bit on opening day, as guests swarmed the facility.
The demand drove people to do some crazy stuff. Some used fake tickets, and others climbed the walls to enter the Happiest Place on Earth.
Central Florida had consisted of swampland before Walt Disney showed up. The entire south anxiously anticipated its own version of Disneyland.
Alas, this awareness didn’t lead to a massive opening day turnout. Ambitious pundits had called for 200,000 guests to swarm the place.
Instead, a modest 10,000 showed up on that all-important first date, October 1st, 1971.
As a reminder, the company staffed 5,000 cast members! That’s not great bang for the buck.
Some skeptics, the same ones who had inaccurately estimated day one attendance, immediately dismissed Walt Disney World as a disaster.
To them, The Walt Disney Company had spent $425 million – the equivalent of $2.7 billion today – on a park that few had visited.
Photo: The Walt Disney Company
Behold the danger of #HotTakes!
Disney Stock Prices in 1971
Of course, many money people agreed with this opinion.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, the day after Walt Disney World opened, the company’s stock collapsed, falling $9 a share! Oops.
Here’s what happened. Roughly 90 million people watched Disneyland’s opening day catastrophe on television.
Many of them resided on the East Coast and had wanted to visit Walt Disney World. However, few of them wanted to risk opening day crowds to do it.
Disney in July. Graphic: CNBC.
Roughly six weeks later, gridlock became the status quo on Interstate 4, as park visitors arrived from all parts of the country.
The demand existed. The fear of opening day madness kept them away, though. History later repeated itself with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.
If you had been a true believer in Disney, you could have made a fortune in October of 1971, though.
Here’s a quote from a 1986 Orlando Sentinel article:
“Following the disappointing opening, you could have bought Disney at $15.50 a share. By the 15th anniversary, each of those shares would have become eight shares as a result of splits. And the price per share: $41.”
Ignoring everything that’s happened since then, here’s some extraordinary math.
(AP Photo)
On October 2nd, after the stock crashed, you could have purchased one share of Disney for $15.50.
Fifteen years later, it would have been worth $328. The stock went up about 150 percent per year after Walt Disney World, the new business venture, opened!
I feel like there’s some instructive historical advice about Disney right there that applies to the current market.
Disney Land
When Walt Disney World opened, it seemed extremely ambitious for 1971. Today, we look back at some of the numbers as quaint, though.
Dumbo the Flying Elephant only hosted 10 elephants, as the ride was smaller and spun around fewer guests.
Photo: Disney
The Walt Disney World campus consisted of just 27,000 acres of land, only 1,100 of which featured any theme park-based development.
Disney cleared only 7,100 total acres in anticipation of Walt Disney World’s opening, the equivalent of just 11 square miles.
Photo: Salesforce.com
Of course, that total represented a massive land grab compared to Disneyland, where Uncle Walt experienced immediate buyer’s remorse.
He could only afford to purchase 160 acres of land in Anaheim, which has caused generations of issues at Disneyland.
Today, the Walt Disney World campus has expanded to roughly 40,000 acres, and Disney purchases more territory whenever it can.
In 2018 and 2019 alone, the company added almost 3,000 acres.
Interestingly, Disney has honored Uncle Walt’s wish to protect Florida. Approximately 10,000 acres of this land has been dedicated to conservation.
So, the initial concerns that Disney would overdevelop the land have proven inaccurate.
This directive came straight from the top, as Roy Disney paid tribute to his younger brother in 1970.
He declared 7,500 acres of Disney’s new land for conservation. Yes, much of the Disney land from the Florida Project has been protected since 1970!
The Cost of Land Increased for a Hilarious Reason
By the way, there’s one other remarkable anecdote about Disney’s land grab.
Uncle Walt purchased the land on the sly, as he knew that people would demand more money if they knew he was the buyer.
Alas, an intrepid reporter, Emily Bavar, uncovered the truth and reported it in the Orlando Sentinel. You see the headline here:
Due to her scoop, the price of land in Central Florida spiked.
Photo by MARK EADES, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Walt Disney later indicated he paid $80 for his first acre of land there. For the last one, Uncle Walt paid $80,000.
The Earliest Disneyland Fix
To its credit, Disney also learned from another Disneyland mistake.
Walt Disney famously bristled when he noticed a Frontierland cowboy walking through Tomorrowland.
Today, we’d write that off as cosplay, but the entrepreneur bristled at the breaking of his carefully crafted theming immersion.
When Magic Kingdom opened, Imagineers solved the problem by constructing nine acres of Utilidors.
Few non-cast members ever notice these Utilidors as they run through the unseen first floor of Magic Kingdom.
Yes, this park’s Main Street, U.S.A., and other themed lands reside on the second floor, a concession to the quirky Central Florida water table.
However, the mazes allow cast members to reach opposite areas of the park quickly.
Never again would a cast member in the incorrect outfit/costume get spotted out in the wild of a different themed land.
Still, you can imagine the confusion of those first Walt Disney World employees.
They would have had no idea that Magic Kingdom resided on the second floor.
As soon as they learned, they had to navigate a series of underground tunnels. It sounds like something from a horror movie, only it’s Disney.
Disney by the Numbers in 1971
Little statistics like this will help you appreciate how much Walt Disney World has exploded in size and popularity since 1971.
(AP Photo/SDS)
On that opening day, maybe 10,000 visited. Some sources even say 8,000. Contrast that to 2019, when Magic Kingdom averaged 57,425 daily guests.
Also, that’s just the total from one park. Disney operates four now plus two entertainment complexes, one sports complex, and two water parks.
Overall, more than 200,000 guests visit each day, making those 1971 hot takes that much more hysterical in hindsight.
Disney’s parking lots could hold 12,000 cars, which explains why that attendance total of 10,000 troubled many.
There’s also a stunning fact about that parking lot.
It was so vast in size that it could have held the entirety of Disneyland – the full park! – and still had room for 300 more cars.
Admission tickets cost $3.50 on opening day for adults and only $1 for children. That’s the equivalent of $22.90 and $6.54 today, but there’s a catch.
Admission didn’t include ride access. Park officials brought the E-ticket concept from Disneyland to Walt Disney World. So, guests paid as they went.
The most expensive rides cost 90 cents, nearly as much as a children’s ticket.
(AP Photo)
By the way, Disney was already selling the chance to dine at Cinderella Castle on opening day.
A roast beef sandwich there cost a hefty $4.25, which is almost $28 today. So, guests have always paid for the privilege of dining inside the castle.
Photo: Disney
Overall, guests felt that Disney’s pricing was more than fair in 1971, though. As such, attendance didn’t remain deflated for long.
By the end of October, Magic Kingdom had hosted 400,000 guests.
By the day after Thanksgiving, the park had daily attendance of 50,000.
Photo: Matt Stroshane
Walt Disney World was already on the path to dominance.
