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Comment by xfour | Hacker News Reader

Visiting there recently I was in awe of what it must take to run and maintain that place. Every single day... it’s more or less spotless at any given moment you have attractions shows security vegetatation water systems etc. it’s incredible any amount of staff can keep that place running.

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I’ve been to a corporate training session at Disneyland where they talked about keeping the park clean. Broken Window theory is part of it, so they take active steps to keep the park clean. For example, they studied how far people were willing to walk before they would just drop their trash on the ground and then put trash cans within that distance of each other. They have employees whose job it is to sweep constantly, but every single employee takes pride in the park and picks up trash lying around. If one lightbulb is out they replace all the lightbulbs to reduce the broken window effect and keep the appearance that they aren’t constantly fixing things.

No city that I know of takes this approach. I’ve heard anecdotally of some cities striving for it. But I can’t imagine it being at the same level as the Disney culture

Former sweeper here (years and years ago). We were also responsible for restrooms, which I still find are generally a pleasant experience relative to other public restrooms. When sweeping, you had an assigned area that you were expected to circuit every 15 minutes. Emptying trash cans was its own special assignment. Restrooms was an hour-long cycle covering a designated set of restrooms that varied according to park crowd/staffing.

My first job out of high school was a summer cleaning restrooms at Disneyland. One important lesson I was taught then that I still apply as a software developer today: Don't just deodorize (i.e. mask the smell). Eliminate smells at their source.

I've heard this sentiment a lot, but honestly didn't notice it when I was there. Generally I found the US to be much dirtier than a lot of other countries I've visited. I wonder if there is a bit of "broken windows theory" helping out - people won't litter or break things because it's Disneyland.

Coming from Europe I was amazed when I first visited the US. It was that much dirtier.

I noticed that Disneyland was a lot cleaner than the rest of the normal USA. But the USA in general is a very dirty place. Trash piles up everywhere in larger cities and towns, roads are poorly kept, and in many places there's just this overall feeling of "dirty" and constant "mess" that I've only seen in third world countries and in Paris.

The most striking place you can notice this is at Niagara Falls in NY. The US side is dirty and tired. Walk across the footbridge to the Canadian side and its like walking into a sci-fi utopia of cleanliness.

Although, being a US citizen, I'll say that what I notice most when visiting Europe is that the graffiti seems 100x worse to my eyes in most European cities than in US cities. Italy seemed especially bad to me. It's like some child has drawn on the walls of Europe with crayons.

Another interesting point to me is Sydney, Australia. I had visited it as a child in the 80's and remembered a very grubby, dirty city. I visited again a couple years ago and found a beautiful, clean, enjoyable city.

Niagara Falls, NY is dumpy because is a typical Rust Belt city that experienced significant industrial and manufacturing decline in the late 70s-80s coupled with failed "urban renewal" projects. The population went from 102,394 in 1960 to ~48,144 in 2018. It's not exactly easy to maintain a tax base in that situation.

You can tell Americans don't like paying taxes just by this, chronic under funding of public services. That and just a general disregard for public places, unless that neighborhood "belongs" to you and other like-minded and well financed individuals.

I have a feeling most of these sentiments are coming from a European point of view . Continents like South America, Asia, and Africa all have many places dirtier than the US. Don't get me wrong, I hate how dirty our cities are in the US and wish people actually cared enough to take care of their waste, but what I've seen in developing countries makes the US look like Disneyland.

Indeed. I live in Mexico and the feeling of going to the US from here is that everything is so clean, the roads are way nicer, basically the reverse perception of everything GP said

There is some of the "broken windows theory", but it's mostly the staff. There are lots of people who want to work there (my wife worked there in her teens) so they are able to pick good people and they staff the place. There are enough workers on the grounds and in restaurants to keep things clean. The staff is trained to be diligent, go the extra mile, and always be friendly! When I go to other amusement parks I see areas understaffed or staff standing around chatting and ignoring the trash laying around.

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