Aiming to shed light on the impact of its domestic resorts on the U.S. economy, Disney commissioned a study to put a number on it.
Tourism Economics found Disney's Florida and California resorts have a combined nationwide economic impact of nearly $67 billion, indicating that Disney's two domestic theme park locations "are key economic engines not only in their respective regional economies, but also in the nationwide economy," said Michael Mariano, Tourism Economics' head of economic development.
Mariano and his team have studied the economic impact of Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort in recent years. Travel is an area of focus for Tourism Economics, which has worked with clients like TripAdvisor, Airbnb and the U.S. Travel Association in the past.
He gave a virtual media briefing this week to share the results, which marks the first time Disney has combined total economic impact from both resorts to paint a nationwide picture of the company's impact.
Mariano has analyzed the impacts of Disneyland on Southern California's economy for the last seven months, honing in on fiscal year 2023. His team previously studied the same for Disney World's impact on Florida for fiscal year 2022. Both studies employed similar methodology.
That methodology includes analyzing three components, Mariano said: direct impacts, indirect impacts and induced impacts.
Direct impacts are defined as all economic activity directly associated with Disney guests and visitors. For instance, that includes all sales on site, as well as spending outside of the resort, like at the airport, on transportation, and at off-property venues like hotels and restaurants.
Indirect impacts, Mariano said, encompass the supply-side effect, or the goods and services Disney purchases from local providers.
Induced impacts come from Disney and tourism-related employees' wage and salary spend within the regional economy.
Using that methodology, Mariano found that Disneyland's economic impact in the 2023 fiscal year totaled $16.1 billion in Southern California.
"Now, to put this in context, that's almost as much as American consumers spent on pizza delivery in 2024," he said.
Disneyland directly and indirectly supports more than 102,000 jobs in the region, with nearly 75% of total job impact including jobs within Orange County. Disneyland is the largest employer in the county with approximately 36,000 cast members. It contributed $2.6 billion in total tax revenues.
For the fiscal year 2022, Disney World generated a total economic impact of $40.3 billion within Florida, supporting 263,000 jobs.
In addition to the resorts' regional impacts, Mariano said, they generated an additional $10.2 billion in economic activity throughout the rest of the country. That figure includes purchases by both resorts from suppliers and vendors.
Combining that nationwide figure with regional impacts, he said, results in a total economic impact of nearly $67 billion in the U.S.
"To add some color to this number, consider that the two resorts' total combined impact of $67 billion was nearly as much as U.S. consumers spent on Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Halloween combined in 2024," Mariano said.
In addition to supporting 403,000 jobs across various industries and businesses in the country, he said, Disney also supported "thousands of small businesses throughout the country."
CORRECTED: This story was updated on May 6 to say that Michael Mariano and his team had focused on fiscal year 2023 when analyzing the impacts of Disneyland on Southern California's economy. The original report indicated an incorrect fiscal year.