No, for real. Disney makes more money from parks than they do from movies.

this is sorta true, but not fr the reason you think. yes, the parks pull in big cash for Disney, but it’s what they sell there that’s the real money-maker for Disney and always has been: merchandising.

I have a brother who lives in Orlando and works for a contracting company as a civil engineer. He did some work for them maybe a decade ago the they are working on this one building in the Magic Kingdom, on Main Street near the entrance that had this huge shop in it. One o those gift shops that everyone stops at right before they leave that has souvenirs and merch from every franchise, of every character, of any damned Disney thing you can think of just so they can shake you down one last time before you leave the park for he day.

So, they’re doing so hurricane repair to the building and it’s some major work. They’ve shut down the entire building to d major structural repair, and he’s one of the engineers telling the park manager team that they need to shut the store for a day or two in order to replace some critical support something or other. Well, the Disney people weren’t having that. They made it clear that the store could not be closed, not or a day, not for an hour, not for a minute because it, by far, was the best moneymaker at any of the parks, reaping just titanic amounts of cash— more than all the parks or hotels combined. My brother and the other engineers are trying, pleading, with the Disney guys telling them that not only may it not be possible to do it any other way that going into the store to work, but that if they could, I could triple the work time and budget. They didn’t care.

The Disney guys basically told the engineering team, and later the site mangers and up the chain at the contracting company, that they didn’t care how the long the project took or how much it cost or even if they had to tear down the whole structure around the store and rebuild it— they were not, under any circumstances, to disturb the smooth operation of the store the one tiny bit. One single day of operation made so much money that it’s ridiculous, so the Disney people just didn’t care what had to be done to keep it open. They were like, “we’d close all three parks before we’d close that store. get it done.”

so, yeah, the parks make tons of cash, that’s true, but nothing compares to the money they make selling Disney-branded merch.