What Meeting Pros Can Learn From a Trip to Disney

(An edited version of this article was published in MeetingMentor Magazine in Fall 2019)

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure to talk with some amazing meeting and event professionals about our craft, and it’s always been intriguing to me how many of them say they take inspiration from art, music, and other disciplines not directly related to what we do. Maybe that’s just the way creative minds work, and like a lot of us, I've always had a difficult time switching off my event brain.

Never was that more apparent than when my family and I spent a week in Orlando this summer, visiting 5 theme parks in 5 days. While I managed to sit back and enjoy it (well, most of it), every now and then I had to put my events hat back on and analyze the experience. Here’s what I learned:

The Importance of Good Staffing

From start to finish the Disney staff were friendly, courteous, and kind. Even those doing the most mundane tasks did so with flair, such as the people with dustbrooms that make designs in the dirt before sweeping it in the pan, or the shuttle bus driver that told almost non-stop Dad Jokes to keep an overcrowded, standing-room-only busload of exhausted families in stitches the whole ride home.

I can’t even imagine what it must be like to deal with tens of thousands of crying children, tired and sweaty families, visiting tourists with less-than-perfect English, and being asked for the million-and-first time where the waffle cone stand is- every day.

If they can do this day in and day out, we should be able to put together a staff that can do it for a few thousand people over a weekend, shouldn’t we? If they can pretend to care about each and every person that comes to the park, shouldn’t our registration staff be able to do the same?

The Waiting Game

Speaking of mundane tasks, if you’re going to a theme park there’s just no way around it- you’re going to wait in line. Even with Disney’s FastPass technology, you only get to “skip the line” on a certain number of rides per day, and even then you frequently wind up in a line, albeit a significantly shorter one.

What’s amazing, though, is how much thought has been put into the “line” part of the experiences, and the more modern the ride, the more effort that’s been put into it. The Avatar: Flight of Passage ride had us waiting almost two hours (totally worth it, by the way) in a line that went from outside, to inside a series of caves, to the nighttime forest of the fictional planet Pandora, to a full off-world science laboratory, to interactive video and lighting to prepare us for the ride. The last half-hour of the line didn’t even feel like a line, it felt like part of the experience.

Fortunately, event pros are starting to think this way already. At IMEX Frankfurt, the lads of SongDivision were serenading the long line of attendees waiting for a cab with impromptu songs based on attendees’ names and where they were from.

What “dead space” can you liven up for your events? Transportation lines? Breaks? Time moving between sessions? While your attendees are queued up waiting to get into the final night dinner or to get onto the expo floor, what’s the environment? How are you entertaining them?

Properly Set Expectations

One of the only negative experiences we had was, unfortunately, one of our first. Most of the time, the “wait time” signs in the parks were pretty accurate. If it said it would be a 40-minute wait, it would be a 40-minute wait, or just slightly less. With a FastPass appointment an hour and a half away, we decided to take a chance on a ride that had a 30 minute wait time. While in line, they started making announcements that the wait was now 45 minutes. 50 minutes. 60 minutes (in, of course, a friendly and fun way).

The whole time we assumed that meant for people behind us just entering the ride, not us. But as our actual wait time was approaching an hour and a half, we decided to abort. We cut the line backward and out of the front entrance. “There’s a big difference between 30 minutes and an hour and a half,” I grumbled as we passed the girl at the front. “That’s why we made announcements!” she said cheerfully.

Nothing makes your audience sit and stew about something like giving them time to sit and stew. Do your very best to properly set expectations when it comes to shuttles and transportation, start times, and food schedules. When things go wrong and your attendees are left waiting, own it, and see my earlier points about keeping them entertained while they wait.

Limitations Breed Creativity

One of the things that I really enjoyed was seeing the evolution of ride technology. I’ve mentioned the “Grinning Ghosts” in my presentations so many times (as one of the first modern uses of what would eventually be called “projection mapping”), that I absolutely had to drag the family to the Haunted Mansion. My Tween loved it, and my 10-year-old was legitimately scared and buried her head in my shoulder. They loved the Pirates of the Carribean ride so much we rode it twice over the time we were there. Both these rides are ancient compared to Flight of Passage, but they’re still legitimately fun instead of being “so bad it’s good”.

When building the original mansion in Disneyland, it was a late decision in the design to make it a ride, as opposed to a “walk through” attraction. As a result of the limited footprint, they decided to dig down into the ground to generate more square feet, and the “haunted elevator” was born. Guests were ushered into a room where the floor slowly lowered, creating a freaky false perspective of the ceiling, paintings, and wallpaper stretching and getting taller. When re-building the ride for Disney World, they had no such limitations, but this part of the mansion was part of the “experience” before the actual ride (remember that from above?) so they recreated it- with a false ceiling actually rising and the audience standing still!

Even with the resources of Disney, rides don’t have infinite budgets or infinite amounts of space. The parks are in a constant state of refurbishment and reinvention. The Pirates ride has added multiple Jack Sparrow animatronics next to the ones from the ‘60s, but it’s essentially the same ride. So really there are two lessons there: “Limitations breed creativity”, and also to a certain extent, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The Best Seat in the House

Finally, and I think this is an undervalued design aspect of both theme parks and events, there’s the making sure that every guest has the same, or at least equal, experience. During Flight of Passage, I snuck a peek out the corners of my 3D glasses. I was surprised to see how many other people were on the ride. It was such an immersive experience that it was easy to forget that there were 7 other people in the room with me, much less the rows of what looked like theater “box seats” not only next to us, but above and below as well. I guessed that maybe 40 or 60 people were on the ride at once, and was blown away to discover later that capacity was 192 riders per run- almost 1500 passengers per hour.

For the other rides, there may be a difference between the front of the car and the back, but never any question as to which was better. So many of the other lessons tie into this one. FastPass holders may have a shorter wait time, but those that wait in the regular line can have a more immersive experience. If you’re having a fantastic day, the park workers are kind and friendly, and the same if you’re having a rough one. If you’re the first one in or the 192nd into the ride, you have the same great experience.

Can you say that about your awards night? Can you say that about your quarterly meeting? Can you say that about your trade show booth? Shouldn’t we all aspire to that for our guests? Shouldn’t we make sure each and every one of them has the best seat in the house?