In 1967 Disney hired a group named Economic
Research Associates to research the economic impact that Disney World might have on Central
Florida. That report was called the Economic Impact
of Disney World. It wasn’t creative writing, but it worked. That initial report reflected what they thought
Disney World would do to the state during its first ten years of operation. The report, as it would turn out, would also
be way off. The ERA report estimated that Disney World
would primarily generate tourism revenue. Now I know that right now that sounds like
a comically obvious statement but it’s important to remember that back in 1967 the grand plan
for Disney World was just one theme park. The real draw was going to be EPCOT, which
at the time was going to be a real functional city with residents who would work either
in the city or at a nearby industrial park. Yet even with a focus on EPCOT, it was believed
that the primary source of revenue would be tourists coming to visit both the theme park
and this new city of the future. ERA estimated that the first ten years of
Disney World would cumulatively result in $3.9 billion in tourism spending in the region,
with $2.7 billion of that being at Disney World itself. They also estimated that by the end of that
ten years Disney would have created 50,000 full-time jobs as well as generate $243 million
in tax revenue. As for the tourists themselves, they predicted
Disney would see over 65 million visitors in its first decade. That estimation ranged from 6 million a year
towards year one, up to 7 million a year by year ten. So how well did those numbers size up to the
real thing? Well as it turned out, Economic Research Associates
were not even close. Now there’s an argument to be made that
the Disney World we got was wildly different than the Disney World that Walt planned. There was no EPCOT city. No industrial park. So how could one compare the estimated impact
of 1967 report to the real impact of 1981? But I think it works, specifically because
1981 was still long before the Disney World we have today. EPCOT Center, the theme park, still wouldn’t
open for another year. No Hollywood Studios. No Animal Kingdom. No Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon. They were still very much in that first phase
of the original Disney World plans. So ERAs numbers represented a much more developed
Disney World than the one we had in 1981. And yet, still, they weren’t even close. By 1981 over 126 million tourists had passed
through the gates of Walt Disney World. At an average of 14 million a year, it had
already surpassed the Eiffel Tower, Taj Mahal, and Egypt’s Pyramids as tourist destinations. They should have just called Soarin “Places
Disney World is more popular than” Those tourists, by the way, did not spend $3.9 billion
as ERA predicted. They spent $14 billion. Now that said, the ERA did overestimate in
two categories. They initially predicted that the resort would
result in $243 million in tax revenue, but by 1981 Disney had only paid $191 million
in taxes. Additionally, the report expected Disney to
have created 50,000 full-time jobs, but after ten years they only had anywhere between twelve
to seventeen thousand employees on payroll depending on the season. That one seems to be the clear impact of Disney
not building the city of EPCOT or industrial park as they originally planned. Regardless, these numbers show that even Disney
themselves didn’t really know what they were about to unleash on the state of Florida
with the opening of Disney World. Yeah, Disneyland was popular, but this was
a whole other beast. At that point, Disneyland still had a schedule
that fluctuated based on the season. The park was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
from mid-September to mid-March. Meanwhile, Disney World was open every day. The 1970s was also a decade in which most
families in the United States were still vacationing by car, and at the end of the day, there were
near twice as many people living East of the Mississippi than West of it. That also doesn’t account for European tourists,
who saw Orlando as a closer destination than Anaheim. You know... because it was a closer destination than Anaheim. Lastly, the relatively undeveloped area of
Central Florida allowed for more competing attractions to open up which, in turn, made
the region more appealing for families looking for a vacation. It created this sort of snowball effect of
tourism. However, it wasn’t without its problems. The popularity of Disney World resulted in
an explosion of growth in the Orlando area. Hotel rooms in the city went from 6,000 in
1971 to 32,000 in 1981, and the city itself grew by a quarter of a million new residents. Thanks to the Reedy Creek Improvement District,
Disney was able to bear the brunt of the resort’s infrastructure costs. However, the region outside of Disney World
also needed to grow and adapt, and that’s not always easy to do. Articles looking back on the first ten years
of Disney World also cited growing problems when it came to city issues like sewage disposal,
crowded roads, housing shortages, and crime rates. Airports like MCO had to grow to accommodate
the flood of new tourists. In ‘71 it saw 1.3 million passengers, but
by ‘81 that number was 6.5 million. They had expected that number to double by
1987, but they would ultimately be wrong. By 1987 it would more than double, with 16.4
million people passing through the airport annually. It even created uncertainty elsewhere in the
state. With the arrival of Disney World and countless
other amusements in Orlando hoping to ride Disney’s coat-tails, tourism officials in
Southern Florida feared that it would spell doom for cities like Miami. They looked north and saw a region with $12
billion worth of attractions, hotels, and housing in the works and wondered if tourists
would even bother coming down south anymore. Of course, that wasn’t the case, but at
the time they didn’t know. Today all of those numbers seem like child’s
play. Tourism stands as Florida’s number one industry,
with over 120 million annual visitors. Over one in nine Floridians work in tourism,
and Disney itself stands as the largest single-site employer in the nation. The resort has grown to the point where it’s
hard to actually measure the full impact it had on the state. Regardless, it’s an impact that nobody, not even Disney
themselves saw coming.
