FROM: No Event Too Small Published Wednesdays

Disney World Opening Day Crowd Control

You'd think a theme park like Disney World would want as many people coming through the gates as possible. Now, they do; but for the grand opening in 1971, Charlie Ridgway explains why they did everything possible to ensure low attendance.

- by Charlie Ridgway, July 6, 2011

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As Disney World got closer to its grand opening, we wanted to avoid the problems - especially the overcrowding - that marred the grand opening of Disneyland.

Nearly everyone in central Florida was familiar with the 'project', and the local news media were in competition to predict how many people would show up when the park opened. One newspaper predicted 25,000, another 50,000; and then another predicted 200,000, which really got us worried. We weren't ready to handle that many people in the park.

So we began to think of ways to reduce early turnout.

The first thing we did was schedule a soft opening for October 1, 1971, and then an official grand opening three weeks later. We chose October because, historically, it was the month when the fewest tourists came to Florida, and we picked Friday as our opening day because, again historially, it was the lightest day of the week in terms of tourism.

But that didn't stop the wild predictions by the media. Even the State Patrol became nervous, and planned to assign every available officer to deal with the massive traffic jam they expected from Georgia right down to Orlando.

Then we hit upon another scheme.

Our laborers had been working 12-hour shifts, without much time off, and that ran us afoul of labor laws. So we decided to pick a weekend and have the laborers come into the park not to work but to enjoy the day with their families.

Dads proudly showed their kids around the park, explaining that they were the ones building it, but at that time there were only 3-4 rides running, and so the kids would say: "well, hurry up and finish."

(Great motivation! The next day, when work resumed, it seemed to go a lot faster.)

We also invited the Cast Members we'd just hired and their families into the park, and we set aside days for members of the Kiwanis club and other civic organizations.

Altogether, by the time the park was ready to open to the general public, we'd already had about 100,000 people inside, and quite a few of them wouldn't be back for awhile because they'd already seen all that there was to see - at that point, anyway.

It worked, too. Disney World's grand opening was a huge success.

Don't want to wait another week to read more from Charlie Ridgway? Don't blame you! I can help: first, read my review of Charlie's book, Spinning Disney's World, and then... buy it! The book brims with Charlie's well-told stories, and it spans the length of his Disney career, from Disneyland to Disney World and beyond.

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