Booze Is a Cash Cow For Disney, So Why Was Walt So Against It?

Walk around the Walt Disney World Resort, or any Disney Park for that matter, and it’s everywhere. It was one of the items that Walt Disney banned from his parks, but now it has become as ubiquitous as Mickey-shaped ice cream bars or popcorn. It is alcohol.

Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort have embraced the sale and consumption of alcohol. You can add a shot to your coffee at Hollywood Studios or drink around the world at EPCOT’s World Showcase. Even Disneyland and Magic Kingdom have started to sell alcohol at certain locations.

Related: Stop Getting Wasted at Disney World

So, how did it come to this? How did the one thing that Walt Disney did not want at his parks become available everywhere? Why was Walt so against booze at Disney Parks? And how did his dislike for alcohol keep Disney from expanding its locations around America?

The simple answer to why booze has become so readily available at every Disney Park is money. But the reality is much more complicated than that. So, let’s look at Walt Disney and alcohol and how that relationship has dramatically changed over the years.

Walt’s Aversion to Alcohol

When Walt opened Disneyland, he banned several items from the park, including gum, ice cream, cotton candy, and alcohol. In fact, gum still isn’t sold at the parks. The first three items were sticky, and Walt wanted his park to be clean. This is the man who puts a trash can every 30 feet.

So, why no alcohol? It was, after all, the 1950s when everyone drank…a lot. At the time, Walt Disney said:

No liquor, no beer, nothing. Because that brings in a rowdy element. That brings people that we don’t want and I feel they don’t need it.

But even that was subject to change. Two years after Disneyland opened, Disney wanted to open its exclusive Club 33. Walt believed that if he would charge a substantial fee for his VIP club, serving beer, wine, and liquor to his guests was necessary. So, most rules were subject to change in favor of money, even the ban on booze.

However, Walt Disney wouldn’t live long enough to see the completion of Club 33, nor would he live long enough to see Walt Disney World in Central Florida’s completion. But Roy Disney held to his brother’s beliefs and ensured no booze in the Magic Kingdom.

But beyond Walt’s desire to keep away the “rowdy element,” was there something more to his distaste for alcohol? In most cases with people who have a distaste for booze, you have to look at their families, but in Walt’s case, it may not have been that.

Walt Disney’s father, Elias Disney, did not drink, but Walt did. At the end of every work day, around five p.m., he would have his secretary make him a Scotch Mist, but it was not what it seemed.

His secretary from 1958-66, Tommie Laurine Wilck, said:

The Scotch Mist is mostly ice. I would put ice and water in it and then float the scotch on top and not give him very much of it. He may have consumed a lot of liquid but I don’t think he really got much liquor.

There is no evidence that Roy was much of a drinker either. However, years later, Abigail Disney, Roy’s granddaughter, opened up about her father, also named Roy Disney, being abusive and an alcoholic.

Abigail Disney said:

My parents were conservative and very strict and both alcoholics. So there was some violence in my home. Not all over the place, not all the time. But when you do get subjected to some violence as a child, you kind of never feel safe again. So we didn’t feel safe in my home at all.

But by that time, Walt Disney would have been long gone. So, perhaps it was a genuine belief that families could be happy together at a Disney Park without the need for alcohol.

This belief ran so deep that it even cost Walt his potential expansion plans in the Midwest, and eventually landed Disney World in Central Florida.

St. Louis Disneyland and Beer

After the success of Disneyland, Walt Disney went looking around the country for a place to put a new theme park. At first, he looked at Niagara Falls and Washington D.C., but both locations proved problematic due to the weather conditions at the Falls and space in D.C.

So, Walt returned to his Midwest roots and began planning a new Disney Park in St. Louis, Missouri. To accommodate for the weather in St. Louis, Walt decided that the majority of this new park would be indoors. You can read all the details about his vision here.

So, what went wrong? Simple beer. The Busch Family had been a St. Louis staple for decades, and a dispute over serving beer in the new park ruined Walt’s plan for a Midwest Disneyland Resort.

Related: That Time Disney DID Plan to Build Another Resort Outside of Florida

University of Central Florida History professor Dr. Jim Clark told Click Orlando:

They seemed to settle on St. Louis for a different kind of attraction, kind of incorporating the city and the Mississippi and Walt got into a disagreement with Augie Busch — the family that owned Anheuser-Busch, makers of Busch beer and Budweiser — and basically Augie Busch said to Walt, ‘Hey you are not coming to St. Louis if you are not serving beer,’ and he wanted the beer concession and Walt said, ‘We are not going to serve any beer or liquor in the Magic Kingdom’ and it kind of went downhill from there. And literally, they had the dinner the night before, Augie Busch made a comment, and they were supposed to sign the papers the next morning, and Walt called it off, so it was that close. That was his thing. I mean, he had the beer concession for the football teams, for the baseball teams, and here was this major thing coming to St. Louis telling him, ‘No, we don’t want your product in our theme park.’ Walt was worried that it was going to end up kinda like a carnival or a county fair or something like that and he did not want drinking in his park.

So, Walt took his money and theme park to Central Florida, and the rest is history. And the Magic Kingdom would remain a dry campus for decades, but then what happened?

What Happened to Walt’s Rules?

Walt and Roy Disney died when Disney started building EPCOT at Disney World. That made it substantially easier to bend the rules if they could create a valid excuse. And EPCOT provided just that.

The original EPCOT had Future World and World Showcase. If you were going to truly showcase countries, it was impossible to do without having their alcohol. Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada were known for beer, Mexico for tequila, and France and Italy for wine.

And so, Disney was able to create an excuse to get alcohol into its park, but the Magic Kingdom would remain dry. But World Showcase would create a new Disney tradition, drinking around the world. And would also turn a trash can into a mascot, but that’s a different story. 

A few years later, Disney’s Hollywood Studios opened, and since there was already booze in EPCOT, why not continue this new tradition at what was then called Disney/MGM Studios? And finally, Disney’s Animal Kingdom followed suit. As Disney expanded its parks internationally, first at Disneyland Paris and beyond, prohibiting alcohol was never a serious conversation.

Back in California, Disney’s California Adventure was opening, and it’s hard to showcase the state without including wine country. So, for the first time, alcohol became available at a Disney Park in California. That left Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom as the only two parks without alcohol, and that was about to change as well.

In 2012, Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland expanded to include the Be Our Guest Restaurant. For a new table service restaurant, it only seemed fitting that Disney offered a drink to accompany the meal. And just like that, Walt’s cardinal rule was gone.

As the Disney Dining Plan expanded to include an alcoholic beverage with a table service meal and with the opening of Skipper Canteen, booze expanded to all of the table service restaurants at the Magic Kingdom.

That left Disneyland as the only dry (albeit only in name) park. The Disneyland dam broke in 2018 with the park’s expansion to include Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. Oga’s Cantina became the first place to sell alcohol to the general public in Disneyland.

At the time, Disney CEO Bob Iger said: 

I think Walt had a nip or two in his apartment at night. This just seemed like one of those traditions that if we changed it the empire wasn’t gonna crumble.

And just like that, Walt’s golden rule disappeared. Was it about appeasing the guests? Hard to say. Was it about making more money? Isn’t everything at Disney about money? Does it make the park experience better? Sure. Does it get out of control sometimes? Absolutely.

But at this point, there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Sorry, Walt.