David Zanolla teaches an advanced honors course at Western Illinois University called Communication Around the "World". The 'World', of course, is Disney World, and in addition to standard lectures and projects, the course includes a guided trip to Disney World in March. Cool, eh?

You can't come on the trip - sorry! - but you can take a virtual seat in David's class by attending his weekly series, College in the Kingdom, exclusively on Disney Dispatch.

With less than a month before we travel to Orlando for the on-site portion of the class, reality slaps the students hard with the realization that they still have much to learn.

Something tells me they didn't expect that learning to involve a discussion (heated at times) about whether the term 'magic' belongs in a theme park communication course.

Debating the Disney Magic

It's extremely common to read articles on how Disney 'makes magic'.

However, it's not every day that Disney fans encounter an article that suggests the reason for Disney World's design success isn't all rainbows and lollipops. A pair of entries on the Passport to Dreams blog (one about Structuring the Experience, the other about Elements of Theme Design) argue that indeed the word 'magic' is not a concept we should be enforcing in our discussions of theme park design.

Instead, the author's thesis (paraphrased) is Disney World connects with its guests because of their focus on 'structuring the experience'. If you haven't read the blog, bookmark it: it very well may be one of the best blogs about Disney theme park design.

Both of the above-cited articles challenged my students' notions of the difference between the means and the end. Our course is focused more on HOW Disney World structures the environment of a land, attraction, resort, or restaurant; so these articles were a way of playing devil's advocate to expose the students to opinions of theme park design that aren't all about 'magic'.

DISCLAIMER: I should clearly state that I am not 'anti-magic'. I simply wanted to show my class that it's because of Disney's understanding of how people interpret messages (in this case through designing a space/setting) that we can feel 'magic' has been created.

Spreading the Disney Contagion

Our second item of discussion briefly focused on Jeff Kober's idea that some of Disney World's customer service practices become 'contagious', specifically the motto 'everyone picks up trash'.

Fortunately, I was able to experience this firsthand at EPCOT during last year's class. A WDW executive was walking in front of us and, without missing a beat or breaking stride, he leaned down and scooped up a piece of trash in the World Showcase. I don't mind telling you I felt extremely guilty that I didn't pick it up myself. As a result, it then became a mission of mine to beat Cast Members to every piece of trash that I saw.

Yes, It's on the Quiz

Finally, every week the students are being quizzed on important elements of Disney World organizational culture: the service theme, service standards, service basics, and components of setting.

I'm sure they think a weekly quiz on the same material is overkill, but these concepts are foundational to Disney World's organizational culture, so I want to burn them into their brains.

"I'm sure they think a weekly quiz on the same material is overkill, but these concepts are

It'll come in handy when in a few short weeks we arrive at Disney World.

Class dismissed! Come back next week for more Communication Around the "World".

Visit the COURSE HOMEPAGE

Stuff Not to Skip

College in the Kingdom Homepage
http://www.disneydispatch.com/content/features/special/college-in-the-kingdom
Western Illinois University
http://www.wiu.edu
Communication Department at WIU (where David works)
http://wiu.edu/majors/degreeOverview.sphp?degree=20
Honors College at WIU (co-sponsors of David's course)
http://www.wiu.edu/centennial_honors_college

Comments (1)

At the time of Disneyland’s design and construction, the movie industry was going through major changes due to the challenge of television. Cinemascope and 3D movies were all the rage. Norman Klein said, “The screen that surrounded and invaded and was immersive in scale in scale seemed particularly appealing. It seemed modern, panoramic, wall to wall.” The 3D fad ended in 1956.

The early Imagineers used a basic theatrical storytelling tool called the Elements of Setting. Production designers would rely on five elements including location, time, historical time, seasonal time, daily time, and weather to frame the experience. John Hench refined this concept especially for theme parks as Form, Space, and Time. The Form is the story.

John Hench said, “Disneyland wasn’t really a radical step for Walt because even in the two-dimensional world of motion pictures space is implied. In fact, we used many of the techniques we had learned from the films and applied them to the third dimension. And when we set up a kind of story in our own mind, we would establish an imaginary long shot as if we were taking it with motion pictures.”

SamLand - 2/20/2011 @ 8:08 PM

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