The Numbers Man and the Magic Kingdom

By Rhonda Hillbery

In 1955, C.V. Wood (Disneyland's construction manager), Walt Disney, and "Buzz" Price (from left) look over a model of Disney's plans to create a new type of family attraction in Southern California.

More than 50 years after the fact, Harrison “Buzz” Price ’42 still remembers vividly his first meeting, in July 1953, with Walt Disney. From the start, the man behind the mouse was very specific about his vision for a new type of family attraction. “It sounded strange, unlike anything you would expect in an amusement park,” recalls Price of the early Disneyland meetings. Disney described a Main Street USA entrance that would usher visitors to four themed meccas: Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, and the World of Tomorrow.

Although the animation icon knew what he wanted in Disneyland, he also wanted advice. Where should he build his theme park? How large should it be?

An architect friend referred him to the Stanford Research Institute, a nonprofit adjunct to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. It happened that Price, who was working there as a research economist after earning his Stanford MBA, was plucked to conduct the pivotal location and feasibility studies for Disneyland. That trial-by-fire would mark the start of his 50-year career as a top consultant in the attractions business.

By Price’s calculation, he ultimately worked on about 5,000 projects on five continents for Disney and other major clients, helping to pioneer research techniques that would shape the look and scale of the phenomenon that came to be known as the theme park. Along the way he developed a reputation as a guru in the field of what a former president of Knott’s Berry Farm coined “roller coaster math.”

Price describes his unorthodox career as a wild ride with plenty of bumps, long hours, and little continuity. One project was barely completed before it was on to the next one.

But it was also a blast. In all, Price conducted some 110 studies for Walt and Walt’s brother, Roy, including some for Walt Disney World in Orlando and Tokyo Disneyland.

As one of Walt’s leading consultants from their first meeting until Disney’s death in 1966, Price had unusual access to the creative mogul who helped define family entertainment in the 20th century.

Harrison "Buzz" Price recently published Walt's Revolution! By the Numbers, part memoir, part insider's guide to the economics-of-attractions business.

He also got to know other members of the Disney family well, including Walt’s nephew, Roy Edward Disney, who today fondly remembers him as “an old friend, of both my family and of the Disney Company.” Besides his multifaceted work for the Disney empire, Price worked extensively on the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, the visual and performing arts school whose development Walt championed, Roy says.

The research economist also worked for Disney’s competitors, carrying out planning studies for SeaWorld San Diego, Universal Studios Hollywood, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, and numerous world’s fairs. He even did a study for Caltech on a proposed visitor center at JPL. (It was never built.)

Now semiretired, Price lives in Palm Springs with his wife, Annie, whom he met while he was a Caltech undergraduate. As he reminisces in his home office, surrounded by framed posters, plaques, and awards honoring his lifetime of work, Price’s stories spill over with the names of the rich, the powerful, the visionary, and the eccentric. He shares some of these anecdotes in a recently published book, Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers, part memoir, part insiders’ guide to the economics-of-attractions business, which Roy Disney calls “a terrific tale of the last half-century.”

The first recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the Themed Entertainment Association, Price also has earned kudos from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.

Price comes across as unpretentious and at times irreverent and acerbic, probably not the sort of guy who would fit in seamlessly at a corporation. It’s not surprising to hear that he has worked nearly all of his professional life as an independent consultant, and never officially worked as a Disney employee.

He calls the whole theme-park business “inherently predictable. The activity takes place in a cosmos of large numbers surrounded by understood fixed constraints.”

For him, the predictive power of mathematics has always been a big part of the attractions business’s charm. Price says he has always loved numbers. As a kid, with compulsive persistence, he jotted down on record covers how many times he played each recording. As an adult, he noted how many ski runs he completed at Mammoth Mountain, and how many track laps he ran as a jogger.

Despite his knack for numbers, Price says he earned only mediocre grades in most courses at Caltech. One of his fondest memories of the place is the time he spent as president of a student club called the Musicale, which staged campus concerts and collected classical recordings. “We had 900 recordings from Carnegie Hall, and I played all of them in Dabney Hall at late hours when I should have been studying. It’s a wonder I didn’t flunk out.”

Dabney’s high ceilings provided perfect acoustics for Price’s extracurricular activity. “It was a fantastic place and I had the key, and at one end of it there was a great big hi-fi. I’ve often told my friends I majored in Mozart.” He made up for his academic malaise at Stanford, where as a mature, focused student he finished at the top of his class.

A couple of years later, Price’s developing expertise aligned perfectly with Disney’s needs. With his stable of cartoon characters, a bulging film treasury, and a growing fan base glued to that new family magnet, the TV, Walt saw Disneyland as an ideal avenue for expanding the Disney franchise. Always a perfectionist, Walt insisted that it be done right, and on a tight timetable. He wanted to pinpoint the 160 acres that would represent the best location for his dream park, and he wanted it done fast. Disneyland was to open within 24 months.

Price says that his work as a research economist involved plugging in the numbers: customer demographics, holiday and school vacation dates, daily spending estimates. The idea was to yield a park design able to accommodate the crush on peak days while sustaining profitability over the year’s slowest days.

Within 12 weeks, Price had analyzed site locations in five Southern California counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, and San Bernardino. Zeroing in on several spots, including Burbank, he examined population projections, future freeway construction, climate, and smog patterns, among other variables.

His population projections showed a rapid demographic shift toward Orange County within the next 10 years. The data converged on an area he called “the amoeba” for its irregular shape, which extended for five miles on either side of the Santa Ana Freeway. Based on Buzz’s study, Walt and Roy ended up buying 160 acres of orange groves there, in semirural Anaheim, for about $4,500 an acre.

“Well, we hit it right on the nose,” Price is happy to say, backed by decades of tourist validation. “Dead center, that was the perfect place for it.” Next came a feasibility study, informed by facts and figures about amusement parks across the United States and Europe.

The next several months passed quickly in a whirl of planning and construction. Rejecting as tacky the usual fare of Midway games, bellowing barkers, and rickety roller coasters, Walt insisted on customized rides and cosmetic perfection. Once Disneyland had been finalized down to the last detail of the Mad Tea Party’s spinning teacups, the Jungle Cruise, and Space Station X-1, Walt, Roy, and Price presented the concept to four of the country’s leading amusement-park owners at an annual convention and trade show.

This quartet of experts agreed: Disney’s grand plans would flop. Without a Ferris wheel, Tunnel of Love, or carnie games, customers would leave with cash in their pockets. Custom rides were too expensive to produce and maintain. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle was a dumb idea, with no revenue potential. Finally, they insisted, people won’t notice fancy landscaping. They’ll trample it.

In typical fashion, Disney brushed off the criticism. Having sunk $18 million into the park, plus the cost of land, he wasn’t about to look back.

Disneyland’s opening day, July 17, 1955, was a mess. “Not much worked,” Price says. “It was hot. Thousands of people were milling about in confusion. I remember being stuck in a throng of immobilized people on the bridge to the Castle. We were mired in sticky asphalt.” He stood almost face to face with a familiar-looking man cursing under his breath. “Hello, Mr. Sinatra,” Price muttered weakly.

Visitors flocked to Disneyland on opening day, July 17, 1955.

Of course, these inaugural wrinkles were soon ironed out. Within four years Disneyland was attracting 10 million visitors a year. “There was nothing like it in history,” Price says. “It had the response of a World’s Fair and it was continuous. It was Walt’s Revolution.”

A few years after Disneyland, Walt guaranteed Price enough steady work to set up his own firm, ERA (Economics Research Associates).

Although he insisted on being called “Walt” by nearly everyone, the company patriarch wasn’t warm, Price says. “He was impersonal, but he was loyal and committed to his people. And I learned how to not be afraid of him and how to tell him exactly what I thought. And it worked out fine. “

In his long association with Walt, Price considered himself an outsider with keys to the kingdom. To his client’s mind, the conventional company structure had drawbacks, Price says. “It was too controlling, too bureaucratic, too manipulating. He wanted a free independent voice.” Disney seemed to think trusted outsiders would tell him the truth, instead of what they thought he wanted to hear.

And although Walt, as Price puts it, “got hooked on what I did for him,” their relationship had its ups and downs. Price recalls one memorable occasion when he shared a flight on Disney’s private plane listening as Walt and New York City master planner Robert Moses argued about transportation logistics at the upcoming 1964 New York World’s Fair. Price says that as the Scotch flowed, the words flew too.

Without warning, Disney abruptly turned to Price, arched an eyebrow, and said, “You’re too fat to fly on my airplane.” The 215-pound, five-foot-nine Price tried to appear invisible for the rest of the flight. Afterward he immediately went on what might be called a ’60s version of today’s low-carb diet. “Oh, he stung my pride, and I’d have starved to death if necessary.” Embarking on a “hamburger and martini diet,” he lost 36 pounds in 12 weeks. (A few months later Walt complimented his consultant’s new svelte self.)

After his theme-park mentor died in 1966, Price’s relationship with the Magic Kingdom changed for good. “The king was dead, and I had been the right-hand man to the king. There was a new corporate generation. And it was to be expected. I still continued to work for them, but it was not like when Walt was there, when I was in the loop on everything he wanted to do in the field of attractions.”

As he reflects on the worldwide tourism bonanza that grew out of Disney’s initial vision, Price muses that Disneyland might easily have been shelved, especially after the preopening drubbing it received from the industry experts. It went ahead because the Disney patriarch preferred to dwell on potential opportunities rather than on potential drawbacks. “From Walt I learned that ‘no, because’ is the language of a deal killer. ‘Yes, if’ is the approach of a deal maker. Creative people thrive on ‘yes, if.’” Buzz says that brand of positive thinking guided him for the next 50 years as he took on other big, ambitious projects that had never been done before.

“Before Disneyland, attraction ventures were analyzed with a roll of the dice or designed on the back of an envelope. At the time, there was nobody else doing what we did. We developed an art form.”

For information on Harrison Price’s book, visit www.ripleys.com.