What Makes Us Spend at Theme Parks

WITH ITS PASTEL facades, ice cream parlor and quaint candy store, the entrance to Disneyland is a bit of hometown heaven: charming, bustling and so immaculate you could clean your tongue by

licking the garbage can. But in the eyes of food and hospitality consultant Ed Engoron, it's also a sophisticated money-extraction machine. The streets curve in a giant circle, he notes, because visitors spend 2 percent more when they traverse the park in a clockwise direction. The menu outside the ice cream parlor posts no prices, so the park can raise them when the mercury rises. And that sweet smell wafting from the candy store? Engoron finds a little fan blowing sugary scents through a vent to the street. "Nothing happens by accident here," he says.

I'm visiting Mouseland with Engoron to learn how theme parks encourage the typical family of four to spend $900 a day before collapsing into a sugar coma. The sixtysomething former set designer, now a $5,000-a-day consultant and chocolatier (in 2003 he cofounded the confectionery company Choclatique), has worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Disney and Universal. He's also known for his unusual attention to detail: Until recently, he had his maid put a mint on his bedroom pillow every morning, hotel style. ("I didn't eat the mint," he says.)

We spend hours perusing the gift shops — Disneyland has 47 — and while prices like $4.75 for a 4-ounce bag of Donald Duck caramel corn seem insane (average gift-shop profit margin: 80 percent), Engoron says people don't balk when it's for unique souvenirs to take home to the cousins. But Disneyfied dining is a different story. Folks have a good idea how much a hamburger or soda should cost, and parks try to stay within range of the street price. You could save even more by eating outside the park, but theme-park design discourages folks from eating "off campus." An escape from Disneyland, for example, now requires traversing a parking lot the size of Slovenia.

Roaming through the Adventureland section, Engoron points to a rare dead end. Theme parks are laid out in loops to ensure that visitors never pass the same attraction twice or need to check a map. ("If you're looking at a map, you're not looking at what you can buy," he says.) The rides are dispersed evenly so that plenty of traffic flows by the gift shops and candy stands, and the hottest new attraction is often strategically placed to lure traffic to a former dead zone.

Smooth traffic flow also ensures proper pacing. While visitors drop $10 to $20 for every extra hour they stay, there's a limit. Families that stay too long stop spending and wander like aimless zombies, clogging the park. Good park design lets people accomplish all their spending goals before they hit the wall. That explains the short menus and food kiosks situated near ride lines. It also explains the "fast pass" phenomenon, which lets visitors spend their time eating and shopping rather than waiting in line for rides.

It all sounds a bit sneaky, but you can't really begrudge theme-park operators their clever tactics. (Disney declined to comment.) Admission revenue covers just half the cost of their unionized labor, $40 million rides and gargantuan insurance premiums. If they can persuade folks to buy a $6 hot dog, I say more power to 'em. As Walt Disney once said, "If you want cheap, clean your own damn garbage can." Okay, I made that up. But he did say, referring to Disneyland, "It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true." Parents know just what he's talking about.

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