Name: How Disneyland’s 36,000 Workers Create the ‘Most Magical Place on Earth’
Uploaded: 2026-07-03T14:00:00Z
Duration: 10 min 26 s
Description: What does it take to run Disneyland? Follow three employees behind the scenes to see how one of America’s most influential theme parks opens, operates and evolves every day.

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The Appeal of Working for an RIA

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Client-Facing Experience Can Help Advance Your Career

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Sustainable Investing and the Wealth Transfer

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What does it take to run Disneyland? Follow three employees behind the scenes to see how one of America’s most influential theme parks opens, operates and evolves every day. Photo Illustration: Andria Chamberlin

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260702/a53c899e-dcaa-430f-9e8c-1b393779c706/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

What does it take to run Disneyland? Follow three employees behind the scenes to see how one of America’s most influential theme parks opens, operates and evolves every day.

How Disneyland’s 36,000 Workers Create the ‘Most Magical Place on Earth’

To all who've come to this happy place, welcome.

Over 17 million people visit Disneyland Resort each year. Disneyland is almost the perfect embodiment of American entrepreneurship.

To all who've come to this happy place, welcome.

Walt Disney obviously was a genius filmmaker. The pinnacle of his success, I think he would have argued, was Disneyland itself.

Sometimes those of us who work here forget the impact that this brand has had on the American culture. Oh yeah, there you go. I think there's a slice of Americana in our parks.

It is the crown jewel of all of the parks in our collection. I think what makes a space successful in a Disney park is one that guests want to go back to time and time again.

Operating Disneyland is like running a small city. They employ around 36,000 people, and the average guest visiting Disneyland won't really know all the work that's going on behind the scenes to make their vacation a reality.

I have worked at Disneyland for almost 39 years. If I'm opening the theme park, my day's going to start at 4:00, because I'm going to make sure I'm ready personally to be able to be here in time to open the park, which is going to be at 8:00. We get off the shuttle and then we find ourselves on stage. We go from backstage behind the scenes to onstage, and then we spend some time making sure the park is ready for the day. Morning Main Street. Everything happiness? We're making sure we all know what's happening. Are we doing a good job? We're doing an excellent job, right? We do a roll call in the morning to say, hey, who's around, and what's the plan for the day, and is there anything we need to talk through? Maybe the cash registers stopped working. Maybe there's an attraction that stops working. What are we doing about that and can we resolve that and make sure that we minimize the disruption and do it in a really responsible way?

Their employees aren't employees, aren't workers, they're cast members.

It's a beautiful day.

They're really trying to drop guests into the stories that they're telling.

Main entrance from theme park one, we are good to open. Good morning. So nice, perfect day. And we hold our guests here while they're assembling until the park really opens at eight o'clock. And it's a nicer, more welcoming, more open to move around environment, and it's kind of special. People actually like to come just for rope drop. Thank you for spending your special day with us. Hope it is magical, it will be. Let's make sure everything is in place. Let's make sure we're welcoming our guests in the perfect way. And then let's get the guests safely on their way to their first destination.

Welcome to Disneyland.

There we go, thank you folks. Have a great time. Hooray, good job.

There are thousands of frontline employees at Disneyland, but I think one of the people that guests are interacting with the most are the ride operators.

You open that door and it just like, you kind of feel it, where it's just like you're putting on a performance, but this one feels more genuine than like actual acting, because like in the most part, you really care about like their experience. Make sure to watch your hats and glasses. Go ahead and pull up on your lap bar. Pull up on that lap bar. Thank you. Watch your hats and glasses.

They're the ones sending you off and doing the last safety checks. They're the ones that keep the main attraction kind of moving, as it were.

Bye, have a good one. See you guys.

Before Disneyland, obviously there were amusement parks. Disneyland helped to create, though, the concept of a theme park. So it wasn't just a Ferris wheel or a roller coaster. It was something that transported you into a different place, a different time. So it made it a fully immersive experience in a way that had never been done before.

On average, a day, Big Thunder Mountain carries about 30,000 guests. That's at our like minimum. Hourly we're almost hitting, I believe like 2,100. We have like five trains running almost at all times. You can make someone's day, you can break someone's day. Happy birthday, princess.

All the training that they do is not just about pushing buttons. It's about creating these experiences. There's this whole idea in Disney of pixie dusting, so it's creating these special moments for people that are kind of the hallmark of a Disneyland vacation.

One interaction that really stuck out with me a lot, we always kind of like see those pins that we always see, like, happy birthday, I'm celebrating. And we just kind of like call it out and be like, "Hey, happy birthday," or, "what are we celebrating?" And in that instance, it said, "I'm celebrating Sue." I'm celebrating Sue's life, she passed away, but this was her favorite ride. One of our first dates was over here at Big Thunder Mountain and kind of says like, oh, like things I remember about her like loving this ride is like sometimes I'll hear her.

My wife had actually passed away in 2020. In fact, June 16th, which was what, a couple days ago.

Yeah.

And so this was her favorite ride, and the that's why I always come on here as much as I can. We were married for like 58 years. Yeah, I come very, very often, maybe 25 or more times a month, because hey, why stay home watching TV when I can be here and enjoy it.

Be on the wildest ride in the wilderness.

Yeah.

It just makes me realize that we provide them that sense of home, that sense of safety, that sense of whatever they need just to kind of feel cared for.

Oh, I'm sorry, can you get those guys?

Oh.

Our cast members bring all of this to life. They make Disneyland, Disneyland.

One of the most storied jobs you can have at Disney is to be an Imagineer. It's this kind of multifaceted job, but they're the brains behind the operations.

There's humans parked in the car spots. An Imagineer, I believe, is someone who works with science and imagination and pulls those together to create experiences that are emotional for our guests.

They're the ones creating the rides, theming elements, the concepts for restaurants, you name it.

It's pretty much anything that you're looking at or experiencing as you ride an attraction, see a show, walk through the parks. I am responsible for the Imagineering team that supports the Disneyland Resort as a whole. They have generally 500 to 800 projects per year. I've been here about 29 years and I started as an intern. So one of the things that I had the opportunity to design as an intern that actually got built was this cash wrap. My boss said, "Hey, here's an assignment, you go draw it, you figure it out." And I drew it, and she liked it, and here it is, and I can still point to it today. And I am currently working with the team that is building the expansion to the Avengers Campus. You can see here we've got a couple of inspirational images that we put out for our guests to see what it is that we're planning. We have over 150 disciplines of expertise. If it doesn't exist, can we invent it? How far can we move the needle on invention? We're building in an operating theme park with guests outside just on the other side of the wall having a great time with their families as our team here is working hard to complete these projects. I have learned that Disneyland is its own unique and very precious park. It is the original. It is the park that kicked off kind of the theme park industry as a whole.

Disneyland helped to reinvent what a brand could be. It's become part and parcel of the American middle class lifestyle. They have a built-in audience that is going to come year after year, but people are willing to pay that expense for something that children grow up knowing they want to visit.

It is really important that we continue to grow and we continue to evolve. I think one foot in nostalgia and tradition and one foot in innovation is really important.

I feel like a lot of people come here with the expectation that it is the most magical place on earth. They have that expectation that we'll go above and beyond for them. All the way down, both sides are open, choose that shorter side and keep your group together, okay?

And that connection point times the thousands of times it happens to the day, that's where the magic happens.

I was first at Rope Drop.

Oh, first at Rope Drop. First at Rope Drop today, that's what I want to hear.

It is our responsibility to make sure we understand the love of our park that our guests have and perpetuate more ways to have that connection. We're just always in the balance of what has been and how we can move it forward.

It is okay with me when guests are on their way out at the end of the night that they feel a little bit sad to leave and what they're doing is they're planning their next visit back. A successful day for me is when we were able to make sure that everything appeared seamless. The best day for me is when no one knows I was there.