It may be the Happiest Place on Earth for the 15 million tourists who make their way to Orange County every year, but even at Disneyland someone has to clean up once the doors close and the lights go out. How does the cleaning staff keep such a massive and popular facility clean on a daily basis? In this presentation, we’ll take a look.
During the day, hundreds of Disneyland employees don costumes, take tickets, and man cash registers to keep the park running. Once the customers have left, however, the park is hardly deserted. Disneyland’s custodial staff consists of around 600 people, including janitors (the company refers to them as “custodians�), painters, and gardeners, all of whom
work well into the night to keep the park maintained.
Disneyland has a well-known reputation for being a squeaky-clean environment, and that extends to keeping the hundreds of attractions as sanitary as possible. While Disney won’t reveal the exact amount of money it spends every year on janitorial expenses, the company has revealed that the night shift is where the largest amount of the park’s upkeep budget is spent.1
Every member of the Disneyland janitorial staff is assigned a specific duty they are responsible for carrying out on a daily basis. For the four-person team responsible for tending to the park’s dining areas, their task is the same every day: collecting, cleaning, and replacing the hundreds of chairs, tables, and umbrellas spread across the park, leaving them fresh and clean for the next day’s visitors.
We have a Code V in Fantasy Land!
As you can imagine, cleaning up a roller coaster-filled park that caters to thousands of people every day can be a very dirty job. Disneyland custodians even have special codes for different kinds of messes: a “Code V” is when a patron loses their lunch, and a “Code H” calls out a staff member to clean up horse droppings left on Main Street.2
Code H
To handle more specialized maintenance tasks, Disneyland’s staff of custodians includes staff members with special skills and training. A team of certified divers are responsible for fishing trash out of waterbased attractions like Finding Nemo, as well as making repairs to underwater structures. Likewise, skilled painters and craftspeople come out every night to repair rides, repaint handrails, and ply their craft on the
park’s many installations.
The size of Disneyland’s obsession with cleanliness and image may seem excessive to some, but the
resources the company puts in to its giant cleaning staff pays off. Whereas other Southern California theme parks saw their attendance numbers drop, ticket sales at Disneyland went up 8% between 2009 and 2010 despite the economic recession.1 Industry insiders partially credit the park’s attention to cleanliness for the increase.
Disneyland’s commitment to cleanliness is a fine example of how time and resources spent on cleaning and janitorial services pay off in a positive company image and improved customer satisfaction. It’s also a good reminder that even iconic locations don’t maintain themselves – behind every presentable attraction and gathering area is a team of hardworking janitors who
work diligently to keep it that way.
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1.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover-disney-20100502-story.html
2.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cleaning-680523-clean-one.html
Summary Disneyland doesn’t stay clean all by itself. The park employs hundreds of custodians to keep the park maintained day and night, and assigns each worker a specific task that they are responsible for carrying out every day.