Streets clean enough to eat off of? Not quite, but close. Trashcans are strategically placed, but no more so than in an ordinary city. Hundreds of thousands of people travel the streets of Disney World, generating tons of trash daily. No signs that threaten tickets, fines, or dollar penalties for littering in this city; surprisingly, no cute pleas to be a “responsible citizen,” either. In fact, the mailbox-looking trash bins are unobtrusive in olive or other colors that blend into the scenery.
Why no litter, no food debris, no castaway diapers, newspapers, broken bottles, or discarded furniture on these city streets? There’s a secret to this miracle of the sanitary thoroughfare. It’s called private property. The theme parks are very like cities—small private cities—and the Disney organization runs or coordinates the full range of city services. The theme parks have in-house security and trash operations, transportation, entertainment (obviously) and food services, water and power, medical assistance, and a host of other services that place the parks’ functions somewhere between a “city” and a giant store.
After three days in three different parks, I noticed that litter on the streets of Disney is almost nonexistent. Because this is a private facility with a substantial entry fee, patrons are inclined to protect their own investment in the Disney experience by being more careful than they might be in, for example, a free public beach or park. The contrast is clear when we look at the trash on public parks and streets on ordinary days, even more so after concerts, fairs, or festivals
As a rule, property owners do not discard their rubbish on their own front lawns. Owners have an incentive to protect the quality and market value of their property, and to preserve its value for future use. Thus owners clean, monitor, and maintain their property assets as needed, whether used by thousands of people, or only by themselves.
That’s the difference that private property makes. Self-interest prevents us from destroying our own valuable property, or risking forfeiture of our use fee if we violate restrictions on the use of others’ facilities. At Disney, the admission ticket obligates the purchaser to comply with Disney’s rules. Without any apparent compulsion at all, the Disney environment encourages patrons to properly dispose of trash, potentially one of the biggest and most unpleasant by-products of a multi-thousand-visitor venue.
What to do about the trash that does get loose? Any trash that dropped in the streets or venues at Disney disappears rapidly due to a few workers with dustpans and brooms. To maximize customer convenience, no smelly trash is hauled through the park streets, a process that would clog foot traffic and proceed around the clock. Instead, the underground vacuum system and a complex of underground tunnels called utilidors form the service corridors of the theme parks. The underground garbage tubes whisk trash away at 60 mph, to collection and compacting points at the edge of the park. All for an effortless and trash-free effect for the customer.
Everything at Disney, in fact, is high theater. One MGM park employee offers information for the lost, and greets patrons at the beginning of the day while wafting soap bubbles playfully into the air—it’s still early and cool, and everyone is in a good mood. At the end of the day, the same gentleman will mist cranky, overheated patrons (who were ready to leave an hour earlier) with a squirt gun on their path to the exit. These two activities, specifically, are his assigned tasks: “good mood creation,” I suppose. It’s all about marketing, and everyone leaves happy—momentary relief from the heat, a smile, and a good memory to store for future use or recommend to friends.
Disney seminars for executives in other service industries offer savvy market advice. “The customer may not always be right, but they are still the customer.” These parks have tweaked every detail of the customer’s market experience to try to fulfill that mantra.