15 Money Secrets You Learn at Disneyland

If you grew up poor, you probably never went to Disneyland. Or maybe that was just us. It wasn't even something our parents knew was a thing. So when we became adults, we decided it was time to change that. Earlier this week, it was the first time we went to Disneyland Paris, and since our entrepreneurial brain is wired that way, we found a lot of valuable lessons in the happiest place on Earth. This is not a paid partnership or a sponsorship. Okay? So skip whatever business seminar you plan to go to and take your kids or yourself to Disneyland, because you'll learn more than you would expect. Okay.

Here are 15 business lessons you learn when you go to Disneyland. First up, the value of a brand. A lot of people talk about the power of brands, but there are few who are able to quantify it. Take this plain white T-shirt. It costs less than $1 to manufacture and distribute when you can do it at scale. But the moment you put Mickey ears on it, that same T-shirt sells for 35 bucks. That's the power of a brand. It increases perceived value by double digits. Disney has such a powerful brand. The meaning behind the logo alone will have the same effect on any kind of merchandising product. It's just incredible.

Dream bigger than it seems reasonable. Can you imagine someone walking into an investor pitch? Okay, like Shark Tank and pitching the development of almost 5000 acres with facilities ready to accommodate around 50,000 people per day and a total of 50,000 employees, all based on cartoons from your childhood? Not to mention the entire thing costs $5 billion to build. They laugh you out of the room. But Disney has done exactly that, and it's massively profitable. Disneyland Paris brought in $2.6 billion in revenue last year alone, and despite opening a new Marvel theme park, they still made over $50 million in profit. And this is a one park alone. There are six parks around the world. The sheer size of Disney as a company really teaches you that you're thinking too small.

And all of this was built on top of this next realization that intellectual property is asked here: acquire it if you can't build it yourself. So this entire empire was built on top of applying new technology, which was moving pictures. And we'll talk about that toward the end of the video— to an animation of a mouse. And later onto what are now your childhood stories. The emotional connection that we humans construct to stories is deep into who we are. The company that owns that connection is beyond valuable. Not only did Disney double down on this strategy since inception, it quickly realized how big of a goldmine this is and their limitation in churning out as much of it as possible.

So they looked around, and they went shopping. This is a map of everything Disney owns. You can't even read it right because there's just too much stuff on there. There's Star Wars, everything. Marvel, X-Men, Avatar, 20th Century Fox, ESPN, NABC. And the list is really, really long, right? Owning rights to a symbol that carries a value for people is incredibly valuable. The only other company that we know of that had this realization and doubled down on it is LVMH, where Bernard Arnault realized just how valuable Heritage can be. Disney and LVMH are more similar than most people realize.

Optimization is the name of the game. Just under 20 million people go to a Disney theme park every year. Take a moment to think about the logistics of 50,000 people every day, consistently throughout the year, and all of them having a great experience they can take back home and talk about—parking needs to be optimized. Access, food, emergency care. Everyone needs to feel special because, you know, it was a lot of effort for most of them to even get there. Not to mention, it ain't cheap, by the way. If you're not from a country with a theme park, flights and accommodation and food and everything else will set you back about 2 to 4 grand. Disney hotels are $600 a night alone. In spite of the large number of people, everything does run pretty smoothly. It's easy to get in. It's easy to navigate; the app works really well, and you get your food fast. Beyond extraordinary.

We wanted to go to Disneyland Paris now because they were celebrating 30 years since the park opened. That means they've had 30 years of optimizations to get to where they are today. Just think about your business and all the things you could be doing better or what needs fixing. What if you had 30 years of these fixes in play? How efficient would your business run? Then the price doesn't matter if the experience is worth it. If you've been in a for a while now, you know that a transaction takes place when the perceived value of what you're getting is higher than the cost of what you're paying.

So here's another insight: the value of every memory you make goes up with time. So seeing your child meet their childhood hero is a core memory that you don't care how much it costs because it is so valuable. Like, sure, Disneyland costs $350 at minimum for one day, but people gladly pay it because you're getting the opportunity to play around in a $5 billion playground. And this got us thinking about our own Alux App and how we priced it at $99 a year. Even though you're getting over $1 million of coaching at this kind of discrepancy. If we can provide you guys with over $10 million worth of value, we could charge $99 a month and it would still be a steal. So we're doubling down on our investment.

Go to alux.com/app right now and wait for the next update coming this week. The entire catalog of coaching will be unlocked, so get yourself a subscription while the prices are still low. You can buy time. One of the things that we loved most was the ability to purchase time if you want. Premier Access allows you to skip the line on all the rides. With Disney being a popular destination, the wait time for most rides is between 20 to 40 minutes, and these are rides that last between 2 to 15 minutes each. The more you think about it, the more you realize just how big of a portion of your day will just be you waiting in line, at least a couple of hours in total.

Premier Access costs $100 to $150 per person. That's on top of the $120 to $200 you're paying for the park tickets. Now, the beauty of this pricing is that everyone knows how much an hour of their life is worth. So you can make a choice about how much you want to get done in a single day. Have a magical moment in the customer experience. Disney does this through their parades. So basically, actors dressed as your favorite characters parade through the center of the park every couple of hours on their way. They engage with the park attendees. So picture this: your little girl is obsessed with Elsa from Frozen. You've traveled to this magical place where Elsa lives. And during the parade, she comes up to you and gives your little girl a hug. At that moment, the world stops for a 6, 7, 8, or 9-year-old. You know the age when you still believe that magic can be real. Meeting your hero in the flesh and blood is the ultimate wow moment.

Ever since we've noticed that, we've been obsessing over how we can add more wow moments to your journey. For example, if you're not watching this in full screen, it would really help if you hit the like button on this video. Hopefully, when we said hit the like button, YouTube did this thing and showed you a cool animation. Let us know in the comments if it worked out or not. Points of sale are everywhere in the customer journey. Disney mastered the art of merchandising. They're selling to you before you enter the park, while you're entering the park, and everywhere you turn. Also, they're high APL products. They're flashy. They're next to your favorite heroes. And everywhere you turn, there's something you don't necessarily need, but you definitely want it.

You know how you buy gum at the supermarket counter just because it's right there? Well, Disney did this with the entire park. It's just impulse buy after impulse buy. Most businesses take your money at the end of the customer journey. Disney doesn't waste any time, though. They'll gladly accept your money any time you want to give it to them. For us, we use social media like Instagram or Twitter to add more value to the community without asking for anything in return. But you know, in retrospect, this is a bit of a mistake. You don't need to be pushy with it, but a checkout button should be available next to your customer at all times.

Set everything up for success and ease of use. The day is set up before you begin. Everything is set up via the Disney app before you enter the park. They know how many people will show up. Their predictive models tell them how much food is probably going to be consumed at the fast-food spots. If you want to eat at a sit-down restaurant, you make a reservation through the app so they know who's coming and who isn't. Once the setup is done, you just go through it every single day over and over again, giving people memories and making bank out of it. The big takeaway here is if you have something that works, don't try to be new about it. Do it over and over again until it no longer works. Or you find things that you can perfect.

Too many people find things that work, and instead of doing it 1000 times over, they move on and try to do something else. Going 100%, even the day you are not profitable. This was a big realization about passion, reputation, and how you maintain a brand. So the park is huge, right? And the cost of running it is also huge. We went mid-week in order to have less of a crowd than during the weekends, and the place was still packed. But there must be days where the park isn't profitable. The cost of running the entire thing is just too high. Which means there are days where, although they know they won't be profitable, they still put everything on and give 100% to the guests who did come. Why?

Well, because if they were to start cutting corners, and instead of four parades a day, they only do one. And if they don't do the drone show or the fireworks show or some of the main rides were closed that day, well, the experience would go down. Because a lot of people are only there for one day. And then in that case, all the people who showed up that day would go home and call Disneyland mid. The brand would suffer just as well. The power of word of mouth is crucial, especially if it's an experience-centered business. So you go 100% even on the days you're not profitable. Doing so allows you to build goodwill, and as long as the good days outpace the bad ones, it's just a matter of keeping it going until you can cash in the goodwill that you're building.

This has been the strategy that we applied with the Alux app as well. We're paying these experts more money than we're making from the in-app purchases, but those who do buy them see just how much value they're getting and the kind of impact they have. So we'll keep adding more and more value, even if they're not always profitable or have a cash cow that allows you to take some risk. The studio was the thing that paid the bills, and they started it almost 100 years ago. Just think about it. Snow White was released in 1940 and it's been cash flowing for them ever since. Pinocchio, Bambi, Fantasia, Peter Pan, and all of these other iconic pieces that were also released around then 60 or 70 years ago. They're still printing money, and they've been stacking them ever since.

The Lion King was released in 1994, by the way, they acquired Pixar and brought over all of that value in order for Walt to open up the first Disney park. He basically mortgaged everything he owned, including his own life insurance. And hey, it worked out. Her takeaway here is just how much value you can extract from one great piece of work and how you can funnel it into creating more and more until you become the largest media corporation in the world. Intelligent and simple pricing. Another thing we loved was just how straightforward everything was in terms of pricing. Parking was $30 for a day, a pizza $15, a bowl of spaghetti with a drink $17. Is it the best pizza you've ever had? No, of course not. But it's got Mickey Mouse ears and it's good enough.

So you don't care. You pay with your phone or your watch, and things just keep moving along. If you're staying at the Disney Hotel, you get a magic band and everything you buy gets charged to your room. The more frictionless things get, the more money you're going to make. So stop making things so complicated. Maintain relevance. Honestly, we were really surprised the new generation even knew who Pinocchio or Dumbo were. Although these are great pieces of IP, you never want to rest on your laurels, right? Frozen was a big hit for Disney, and so was the acquisition of the entire Marvel portfolio. Skyrocketing with the success of the Phase one release until Endgame, the entire thing was a masterclass in business itself.

But let's stick to the parks for now. You're not only need to bring in fresh new characters and expand the universe you've created, but there needs to be a real effort in keeping your old IP relevant, which is why they're making live-action movies after every one of their classic hits. Adopt new tech. The fireworks show is now accompanied by a 500 drone show, and that's pretty cool. But it's not really what blew us away. Instead, it was their investment in animatronics that's at the forefront of where we think it's going. If we were to ever go to a Westworld type of reality, Disney is most likely to get there first. Here's probably the most well-known humanoid robot to date, Sophia the robot. And this is just one of the animatronic robots Disney has on display at Disney World.

And two years ago they were working on free-roaming robots for their parks. Just check out the toddler Groot. It doesn't take that much of a leap forward to see how this might eventually lead to a Westworld reality. And lastly, fully dominate the space that you're in through volume, money, and effort. At this stage, nobody can compete with Disney just because of the volume they do and the years of compounding they've had working for them. The takeaway for us was to just stop being in such a damn hurry and embrace that this might turn out to be a lifelong journey. Things get bigger if you keep working on them; things get bigger if you keep expanding them, you get bigger.

When you start buying out your competition, it's a different, bigger game that some choose to play. There are very few companies that will probably be around 100 years from now, and after spending two full days in their parks, after looking at how the entire company is structured, how they're innovating and keeping themselves at the forefront of things, we genuinely believe that Disney might be one of those companies that will one day absorb everything. What was your experience with Disneyland or Disney World? Have you been there? What did you like or dislike? Let us know in the comments. We're really curious. And as a thank you for watching the Sunday motivational video until the end, here is a bonus for you.

What will the world remember you by? There's this quote by Macklemore that we really love, and it goes like this: They say you die twice. First when they bury you in the grave, and the second time is the last time somebody mentions your name. We thought about it, and Walt Disney achieved his dream of immortality through what he's built. He failed to do it in a literal sense. He actually tried and even said he would give everything he's ever built to start from scratch and live forever. But the work does still live on. Be careful what you put your name on, Alexa, pick it carefully. Make sure the legacy you leave behind lives up to some ideals worth following. Walt literally taught us to dream bigger than even people like us think is reasonable.

Learn to look at things as if they were to grow and evolve forever. If this idea resonated with you, write the word “forever” in the comments. Let's see how many of you will outlive your physical bodies and leave something extraordinary behind. Cheers to you, Walt. Thank you for the lessons.