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Riding the Disney Happy Train

I was the type of child who discarded the dolls my mom routinely tried to introduce as "play pals" in favor of books and puzzles. So, naturally, expectations were tempered when I decided to plan a long overdue trip to Disneyworld last weekend.

The Disney experience is legendary (and ridden with kids who really love and cherish their dolls). There are entire blogs dedicated to Disney this and Disney that, people who affix duct tape to the bottom of their feet and smear petroleum jelly between their toes to brave the crowds and devise algorithms that optimize their visits; my supervisor at the agency where I worked 4 years ago, a Princeton grad, had written her thesis on the subject!!

So I put on my finest Target beachwear, purchased the all-access park-hopping pass (an ill-advised move according to the optimizing experts) and thought "let the memories begin!". "Let the memories begin!" is the campaign Disney launched in 2011, featuring user-generated Disney memories (e.g. kids opening a pizza box only to reveal pepperoni-shaped Mickey ears and "we're going to disney" smudged in tomato sauce on the cardboard box), some of which ended up in ads, others projected on the Cinderella Castle, all of which, warm enough to melt Loki's heart.

3 parks, heat-stroke preventing ice cream cones and angry feet later, I have to say that the Disney experience was an enchanting one, even for a big kid without small kids like me. Every step of the way, I kept on thinking of how mindful Disney is of all the minuscule things that (in different weights, no doubt) fuse together to leave you with an overwhelmingly positive aggregate memory. I have this expression for poorly conceived experiences: "created without love". Those are the ones that should go down the bad egg chute, and unfortunately, there world is littered with services (all products are services) that don't even come close to passing that litmus test. You can smell the stench that emanates from them a mile away. Disney, on the other hand, has the power to sway even the mild skeptic with its commitment to putting a smile on people's faces.

So What Makes a Good Experience Anyway?

When I was in grad school studying sport management, I heard a lot about the "Driveway-to-Driveway" game experience, especially from the likes of Bill Sutton. In an SBJ article, he talks about how all CMOs should leave their ivory tower, drive out to any area where a large population of fans live, and experience the commute to the stadium firsthand. He proceeds to go through all the various touchpoints fans come across before the game even begins: the parking lot, sidewalk concession and merchandise, the ticket booth, arena concessions, restrooms, ushers, souvenir shops, etc. That's not even considering all the digital connection points where fans interact with your team long before gameday (some, horrific, especially when it comes to ticketing).

Exquisite and memorable experiences hook you in before you expect it and engage all your senses. And they know how to dazzle you on your way out to make sure you tell people about it and come back. (This Starbucks Experience Map details that beautifully.)

The takeaway is an obvious one: it's not just about the game, and it's about so much more than just the rides.

In fact, that's why the rides aren't even made especially visible when you look at a map of Magical Kingdom; they're just one part of the overall experience.

Take the driveway-to-driveway concept one step further, and you get the "continuous vs. discrete experiences" paradigm. This article does a good job of talking about the companies that distinguish themselves by accounting for the gaps between activities, e.g how Uber's drivers' phone GPS pings the traveler letting them know how close they are. Compare this to the usual taxi experience, which, well, just lets you rot along the sidewalk with no further confirmation that anyone is indeed going to pick you up or when.

What impressed me most is that Disney is a self-contained world, complete with its own road infrastructure as you approach the park and Mickey ears adorning road signs. The parking lot is broken up into two general areas, "Heroes & Villains", and the subsections are given names, such as "Simba 22". From the moment you set foot in the park, you're greeted with warmth and a custom pin that identifies you as a first-timer so that other cast members can welcome you to Disney throughout your visit. There's the meticulous decor that contextualize rides, lending the themes they're embedded in an eery vraisemblance, a scintillating sound effect that welcomes every person picking up their tickets conjuring up tinker bell, and the list goes on and on.

Never once are you given a chance to step outside of the experience and realize that every part of it is carefully engineered. That's because it accounts for the gaps between the rides with a tightly knit narrative that grows stronger and more believable at each connection point.

As we weaved through the crowd to beat the post-fireworks mass exodus, I couldn't help but walk backwards and take in the magic. Beyond the ridiculous air pyrotechnics system and the fact that they Disney holds fireworks every day, you forget about the Imagineers and that Disney has an Operational Command Center or that it aims to increase per capita spending; amidst the strollers and burnt out parents and toddlers, it's hard not to get sucked in by the Disney mythology and the idea that young or old, "All our dreams come true, if we have the courage to pursue them".

Photo courtesy of Marc Lorenzo.

#disney #experience map #storytelling #authenticity #creating connections