Opening Day Infrastructure Failures
Share
A story about the chaotic opening day of Disneyland and its initial challenges.
"They opened the park and only invited about 1,500 people - invite only launch. But somebody counterfeited the tickets, so double the number of people showed up with counterfeit tickets on day one.
Because double the number of people showed up, everything breaks. The plumbing breaks because there's too many people using water in the park, more than the load was able to handle. They come to Walt and say 'We got a problem with the plumbing, you have to make a choice: toilets or water fountains.' He chooses toilets, so there's no drinking water that day.
The asphalt was still so freshly poured that women's high heels were getting stuck in the cement because it was caving in. It was basically a giant disaster.
Walt does some PR and basically says 'We had to work out the kinks, give me a month.' Sure enough, within a month the place is running smoothly, and in 7 weeks they hit 1 million visitors. It was an immediate hit once they worked out the issues."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.