An Anaheim small business has made more than 200 million free souvenirs over the past three decades that Disneyland visitors use every day as they head into the park in search of Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Advantage ColorGraphics has been printing the Disneyland guide maps that double as free souvenirs since 1994 and has worked with the Anaheim theme park since 1984.
Advantage ColorGraphics designs and prints 7 million Disneyland guide maps per year and produces another 3 million direct mail, travel brochures and printed pieces annually for the park.
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The Anaheim-based company with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Salt Lake City employs 500 workers in Southern California with dozens focused on Disneyland printing projects.
Disneyland featured Advantage ColorGraphics in a national TV commercial highlighting the 8,500 small businesses Disney works with across the country.
“I appreciate that Disneyland is really making an effort to support small businesses,” Advantage ColorGraphics CEO Tom Ling said in the commercial.
The Disneyland resort had an annual economic impact of $16.1 billion in Southern California that directly and indirectly supported more than 102,000 jobs in the region in 2023, according to an Oxford Economics report commissioned by Disney.
Nearly 75% of the jobs were in Orange County. Just over a third of those jobs were at the Disneyland resort, the largest employer in Orange County with 36,000 workers. Nearly one out of every 20 jobs in Orange County can be attributed to Disneyland, the report found.
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Working with Disneyland for decades has been a real benefit to Advantage ColorGraphics.
“Other clients trust our abilities due to the relationship we have with Disneyland,” Ling said via email.
Ling visited Disneyland as a kid growing up in Cerritos and takes his five kids to the park today.
“I remember the first time we went to the park as a family,” Ling wrote. “We made a beeline over to the park maps and I showed my kids. I said, ‘Dad printed this,’ and they were super excited.”
Disneyland park maps are probably the most common free souvenirs at the Disney theme park that include celebration buttons, character stickers, Autopia driver’s licenses, Indiana Jones hieroglyphics decoder cards, Animation Academy character drawings and Oga’s Cantina cocktail coasters.
Disneyland guide maps printed by Advantage ColorGraphics over the past three decades often show up on eBay for hundreds of dollars — depending on the rarity of the Disneyana collectibles.