A legend”…“the father of all we do”…“a walking archive”…“the one who started everything” —those are a few of the descriptions given to Harrison “Buzz” Price by some of the people who’ve known him and worked with him over the years. Best known as the man who did the first viability studies for Walt Disney’s projects, includ­ing Disneyland, Price is credited with founding the feasibility analysis segment of the attractions industry.

Price founded Economic Research Associates (ERA) in 1958 and turned his work for Walt Disney into a full-time career. After selling ERA in 1969, he started another firm, Harrison Price Company. Between the two, he did thousands of feasibility studies over the years. “He’s absolutely a pioneer, astute and brilliant, plus he’s a gentleman, and the combination of those factors, I think, made his career for him,” says Tim O’Brien, vice president of publishing and communications for Ripley Enter­tainment. O’Brien was appointed to the Hall of Fame committee in the early 1990s and got to know Price during that time.

Now 84 and living in Palm Springs, California, Price recently answered some questions about his experiences with Walt Disney and his legacy in the industry he started.

How did Walt Disney find you, and what were you doing at the time?
It was July 1953, I was at SRI (Stanford Research Institute), and I’d just gotten my MBA and become a consultant. Walt had been badgering three of Los Angeles’s biggest architects to give him some design parameters to help create a park, and one told him to call SRI. The next day, I got a call from Nat Winecoff, a movie industry guy who was helping Walt with his park idea. I offered to come out and talk about what we could do for them, which I did.

So you weren’t actually a Disney employee?
I’ve never been a Disney employee. In fact, I’m the only non-Disney employee that’s been named a Disney Legend by the corporation—that’s better than being blond!

Conventional wisdom at the time was that Disneyland wouldn’t work; when you ran the numbers, did they tell you the same thing?
No, the numbers didn’t. They said the market was there, and he should do well with per caps and pen­etration. We did a dog-and-pony show in Chicago at the IAAPA convention for four operators of four top parks. We went through the ideas of the five [park] areas and the storytelling, and these guys were brutal. They said Walt should keep his money and leave this to people who knew the business. When I came back with that report, Walt had already bought the land and was hot to trot, and he said to hell with them.

Why did you recommend Anaheim, an agricultural town at the time, for Disneyland?
We looked at the five southern California counties and computed the center of gravity from the census districts, and we did a growth analysis, which showed it was going rapidly southwest toward Orange County. We needed 160 acres—so it could-n’t be in downtown L.A.—and accessibility to the freeway network. We also looked for the best cli­mate; it was in the direction of Orange County, which was also the direction of the growth. We focused on the area we called the “amoeba,” because of it’s shape. We [ranked] 10 sites in the area, and he took number one.

When did you realize that this was going to be monumental, and something you wanted to make a career out of?
Actually, I don’t think there was an epiphany, but there was a momentum going on. I’d left SRI and had a good job at Harvey Aluminum. About a year after the park study, Walt got me involved in the Tracy Clinic, a school for the deaf. We did a master plan, and that turned out very successfully for him, and [the clinic] got off the curb. So he helped me form ERA in 1958, and the primary purpose was to work on taking Disney back east.

It’s been said that Walt Disney’s brother, Roy, tried to curb Walt’s real estate buying spree in Orlando for Disney World. Why was he determined to buy so much land?
Walt had been burned at Disneyland because he built a park that took off like a scalded rabbit. People piled in there, bought land, and the peripheral develop­ment was, in his mind, schlock. So one, he had a vision of Epcot, which required a lot of land, and two, he wanted to constrain the encroaching develop­ment. Walt was a big believer in overinvesting.

In your book, “Walt’s Revolution! By the Numbers,” did you say that there’s no relationship between level of capital expenditures and attendance?
What I said was that there’s not a level or pre­dictable relationship between the growth of capital expenditures and attendance. I had data from 300 park years, and what I got mathematically was that the results were totally random—some were up, some down, and some unchanged. There was no exact cause and effect between investment level and result. But you have to reinvest in the busi-ness—the heart of my book is the essentials of rein­vestment. If you don’t do anything, you die.

What was your biggest surprise during your career?
I suppose it was a mystery to me that we could present a quantitative discipline to a bunch of creative people … they didn’t have a lot of time for that before.

Do you have a personal philosophy?
The big thing is “ yes if ” consulting—the “ yes, if ” message and not “no, because.” “Yes, if ” tells you what you can do with a project if you make changes—“no, because” just kills it. Also, worry a lot … care about what you’re doing to the point that you can’t sleep. Don’t take it for granted.

How would you like to be remembered?
There were a lot of things I’m glad I’m not remembered about! One good thing is that I was sued five times and won all five! Nah … the real thing I’d like to be remembered for is that I was part of Walt’s revolution, and that he set new standards of performance for design and opera­tion. But I worked with a lot of other people besides Walt, and that’s not the only way I’d like to be remembered. I kept at it with a whole new generation of people.