Fairy tales, princes and princesses, thrilling rides, and boundless nostalgia — there are a million reasons to love Disney World. More than five decades after its inception, Disney World remains one of the most popular destinations for local and international visitors, worldwide.
And while we all love the Disney characters and their magical kingdoms, The Walt Disney Company loves making money, and it is damn good at it too. When it comes to creating an empire of dreams and enchantment, Disney has mastered the art of turning imagination into cold, hard cash.
But how much money exactly does Disney make? Let’s find out.
How Much Does Disney Make a Year?
2022 has been a particularly successful year for The Walt Disney Company, in which the multimedia giant generated total revenue of $82.7 billion.
Compared to the previous year, the above figure indicates a growth of 22%. It is worth noting that pandemic-ridden 2020 and 2021 were not ideal for the Disney theme parks, but the company still managed to generate $65.39 billion and $67.42 billion, respectively, in these years as well.
Prior to the pandemic, Disney experienced an all-time high in revenue generation, when the company managed to generate $69.61 billion in 2019.
Besides theme parks like Disney World and Disneyland, The Walt Disney Company also makes money from making movies, music, adverts, merchandise, streaming services, television networks, and much more. This is how it kept making tens of billions during the pandemic.
However, now that the restrictions are a thing of the past, the Disney parks have sprung back to life and welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors per day. In 2022, Disney’s parks, experiences, and products segment alone generated $28.71 billion.
How Much Money Does Disney World Make a Day?
Together with Disneyland, Disney World, and their parks and experiences generated $5.010 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. This adds up to $55.666 million per day.
So here’s the thing about Disney World’s daily revenue. The Walt Disney Company doesn’t report revenues or profits for each theme park resort individually.
Many websites try to provide some approximation of how much the theme park makes per day, by multiplying the average ticket price by the average number of visitors, and most of them quote a figure of around $20 million. The thing is, this doesn’t account for food and drink, merch sales, accommodations, add-on services, etc.
So while we can’t tell you Disney World’s profit per day, we can use the company’s official quarterly earnings reports to see just how much money per day do both Disney World and Disneyland earn together.
Namely, Disney’s report shows that the company earned $7.425 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, from the following revenue streams:
- domestic parks and experiences
- international parks and experiences
- consumer products
Domestic parks and experiences made the largest portion of this revenue, accounting for $5.010 billion out of the $7.425 billion. Domestic parks include both Disney World with its four theme parks, and Disneyland with its two theme parks.
By dividing the $5.010 billion by the 90 days in a quarter, we get the $55.666 million in daily revenues we mentioned above.
Additionally, the report also shows Disney’s supplemental operating income (loss) from the same revenue streams, for the same period was $1.514 billion. While this metric is not exactly the same as net profit, supplemental operating income (loss) indicates the financial performance of specific segments within a company.
Domestic parks and experiences were also the highest-earning division in this category as well, generating $714 million of supplemental operating income (loss) in the fourth quarter of 2022, or $7.93 million per day.
How Much Do Disney Parks Make a Day?
In the fourth quarter of 2022, all Disney parks and experiences worldwide, collectively raked in $6.084 billion in revenue, translating to a daily income of $67.6 million. Moreover, the supplemental operating income (loss) of all 12 Disney theme parks around the world in Q4 of 2022 was $815 million, or $9.05 million per day.
Looking at the same report we quoted earlier, we can see that Disney’s international theme parks are significantly less profitable than the parks in the US. Even though there are six domestic parks and another six around the world, Disney’s international parks account for only $1.074 billion out of the total $6.084 billion.
In other words, the international Disney parks generated revenues of $11.93 million per day in the last quarter of 2022, or almost five times less than their US counterparts.
Regarding the supplemental operating income (loss) of the international Disney theme parks and experiences, the Disney World revenue statistics report shows all six parks outside of the USA collectively generated $74 million, or about $822,000 per day.
We can’t assume that each Disney theme park contributes an equal share of the quarterly revenue since clearly some parks make a lot more money than others. Given that we have no other information from the company’s earning report, we will look at some attendance numbers to try and get a better estimate of how much money does each theme park make.
Disney Theme Parks – Number of Visitors in 2022
Let’s start off with the domestic parks. In the USA there are two Disney theme park resorts, Disney World in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim.
Disney World has four theme parks:
- The Magic Kingdom – 17.1 million visitors
- Disney’s Hollywood Studios – 10.9 million visitors
- EPCOT at Disney World – 10 million visitors
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom – 9 million visitors
Totaling in 47 million annual visitors.
Disneyland has two theme parks.
- Disneyland Park – 16.8 million visitors
- Disney California Adventure Park – 9 million visitors
Totalling in 25.8 million annual visitors.
Moreover, all six US Disney theme parks received 72.8 million visitors in 2022, with Disney World accounting for the lion’s share of 64.56% of the attendance.
If we assume that Disney World is also responsible for 64.56% of the revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2022, it earned $3.234 billion or about $35.938 million per day, while the Disneyland theme parks earned the remaining $1.775 billion ($19.728 million per day).
Now for the international parks. Disney owns six parks outside of the USA including:
- Tokyo Disneyland – 12 million visitors (26.09%)
- Tokyo DisneySea – 10.1 million visitors (21.96%)
- Disneyland Paris – 9.9 million visitors (21.52%)
- Walt Disney Studios Paris – 5.3 million visitors (11.52%)
- Shanghai Disney Resort – 5.3 million visitors (11.52%)
- Hong Kong Disneyland – 3.4 million visitors (7.39%)
For a total of 46 million visitors in 2022.
If we apply the same logic as before, and assume the shares of attendance are the same as the shares of revenue generated:
- Tokyo Disneyland generated $280 million ($3.1 million per day)
- Tokyo DisneySea generated $235 million ($2.6 million per day)
- Disneyland Paris generated $231 million ($2.5 million per day)
- Walt Disney Studios Paris generated $123 million ($1.3 million per day)
- Shanghai Disney Resort generated $123 million ($1.3 million per day)
- Hong Kong Disneyland generated $79 million ($877k per day)
Of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2022.
(The Park DB, The Walt Disney Company)
How Much Does Magic Kingdom Make in a Day?
Finally, let’s use the same data one last time to try to estimate how much each individual theme park in the US generates per day.
Out of 72.8 million yearly visitors in both Disney resorts in 2022,
- The Magic Kingdom welcomed 23.49%
- Disneyland Park welcomed 23.08%
- Disney’s Hollywood Studios welcomed 14.97%
- EPCOT at Disney World welcomed 13.74%
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom welcomed 12.36%
- Disney California Adventure Park welcomed 12.36%
Of the total number of visitors.
Translated into quarterly revenues, these percentages look like this:
- The Magic Kingdom – $1.176 billion ($13 million per day)
- Disneyland Park – $1.156 billion ($12.8 million per day)
- Disney’s Hollywood Studios – $749 million (8.3 million per day)
- EPCOT at Disney World – $688 million (7.6 million per day)
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom – $619 million (6.8 million per day)
- Disney California Adventure Park – $619 million (6.8 million per day)
So our final estimate for The Magic Kingdom’s daily revenue is about $13 million.
(The Walt Disney Company, The Park DB)
The Bottom Line
While, unfortunately, we were unable to give an exact number, hopefully now you have a better idea of just how much money Disney World makes per day. We know for sure that both Disney World and Disneyland made $5.010 billion worth of revenues in the last quarter of 2022, which adds up to an average of $55.666 million per day.
Because of their larger attendance numbers, we believe the theme parks at Disney World to contribute for a larger share of those revenues, or somewhere around $35.938 million per day, would be a good estimate.
FAQs
How much does Disney World make in parking per day?
Given that Disney World parking prices vary between $25 and $50, and a daily average of 128k visitors visited the park in 2022, Disney World makes between $800k and $1.6 million solely from parking charges, assuming four people visit with one vehicle.
How much do Disney Princesses make?
According to ZipRecruiter, the national average salary for Disney Princesses is $60.49 per hour. Reported hourly wages range from $16.59 to $89.18, but the largest share of 32% of Disney Princesses earn an hourly wage of between $56.01 and $62.74.
Does Disneyland or Disney World make more money?
Disney World undoubtedly makes more money than Disneyland as the resort is much larger, and has more room for visitors, theme parks, water parks, etc.
How much does it cost to run Disney World?
Disney’s quarterly report shows that Disney World and Disneyland collectively earned $5,010 billion in revenues, but only $741 million as operating income in the fourth quarter of 2022. This means the operational costs of running both resorts were about $4.269 billion for that quarter, or $47.4 million per day.
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