My Week at Disney

I recently spent a week at Disneyland California with my family and many readers will know that my wife an I are Disney freaks - possibly for slightly different reasons, but fanatics all the same. I have taken some sideways glances for my love of Disney and even left my last job primarily because the leadership did not "get it". I have a Disney watch that I used to wear to work all the time (I don't wear watches anymore) and have taken criticism that wearing a "cartoon" watch makes you look unprofessional. When I left that employer, I made a point of explaining that he was the fool for not understanding what that cartoon mouse actually represents.

So here is the deal - and this will not be news to anyone who does in fact get it - Disney is more than amusement parks or animation studios or a legacy of great movies. Disney is about the experience. It is a philosophy that says "do it right and the money will happen. Give people value and they will pay for it." This is diametrically opposed to conventional business thinking that is geared to extracting the highest profit from the least expense. Running a business that way is like managing a stock portfolio with a "buy-low, sell-high" mentality - it only works in theory.

Good evidence of this is seen every time I visit Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. We usually also visit Universal Studios because we also enjoy that place, but to a much lesser extent and here is why. If you visit both places in short succession, you will likely also notice that Universal is a profit center and Disneyland is an experience. At Universal, it is obvious that they have taken shortcuts with things they think are minor like food, lines, bathroom locations, site maps and the main gate entry process. When you enter Universal for the first time, you say "OK, now what? Lets look at the map to see where we should go first". When you enter Disneyland for the first time you say "WOW" and you migrate to the first (of many) cool things that slowly transport you down main street. You may be halfway across the park before you open the map to figure out what to do next.

Disney spares no expense to create an illusion that completely envelopes you. They do this in their parks, movies, games, and is core to their business philosophy. This comes from a deeply ingrained understanding that if you really understand a person and involve them in a story, they become part of it - there is personal investment and when people feel they are part of something, it is no longer about "product" but "experience". Disney sells the experience and they do it very well.

As a coincidence, I just finished reading "The Pixar Way" which is similar to "The Disney Way" by no accident. These two companies were made for each other (and now are all one family). The top brass at Pixar share the same ideals as Walt Disney did when he was running Disney Corp and these ideals are shared by some of the most successful business enterprises in the world. Pixar's attention to the philosophy is evidenced in their string of extremely successful movies. In each one, the characters are exceptionally endearing because the creators draw them the way they "feel", not the way an opinion panel or marketing report dictates what they should look like. The whole concept breaks down to a simple phrase that I keep churning in my head - "forget the money, just do it right." It is a simple thing, but so often ignored by mainstream business management who are too focused on profit and sales targets to see a much easier path - just do it right.

Doing it "right" means paying attention to details and understanding real customer needs. It means ignoring the cost/profit analysis while you are designing. It means remembering that people are all children inside who forgot how to play and creating experiences to cater to that hidden child.

My favourite Walt Disney quote is "Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old." When I visit Disneyland, I am suddenly 12 years old as soon as I walk through the main gate - it really is a magical place, but they don't force feed you pixie dust, so everyone experiences it in a different way.

One day at Universal is enough for me. After you have been on all the rides and taken the backlot tour, it is just concrete and street vendors. Disney is different in a way that is hard to explain, but easy to experience. I can spend a day in Disneyland park just wandering the grounds and looking for all the small but important details - like the tiny functional vegetable gardens between the attractions, or the live orange groves spread throughout the park. Each attraction spills out into the queue so that you start to experience the ride while standing in line, long before you have to keep your hands and feet inside that car at all times. There is a story behind every rock and tree, each pathway is designed with the surrounding experience in mind. The walkway leading to the new "Ariel's Undersea Adventure" attraction in California Park was torn up and re-poured with seashells at the surface to enhance the experience for people standing in line for the ride. Universal would not have considered such an expense. In New Orleans Square, the pathways are made so that you actually believe you are walking on cobblestone streets in the French Quarter. I barely noticed the ground at Universal because it is all the same bland concrete.

I know it sounds like I am on the Disney payroll, but that is just the side effect of pure awesomeness. Disney does not just want to sell you a park admission or a Mickey Mouse hoodie - they want to turn you into ambassadors AND IT WORKS. To put an extremely fine point on this for you, I was the Los Angeles area for 7 days with my family and in total we spent approximately 8 TIMES as much cash with Disney than we did at Universal Studios. Does the Disney philosophy really need more evidence than that?


Be Awesome - Change the World.