Studio News Experience

Aside from still working 6 days a week and 40+ hours a week, I have had an interesting week. My manager notified me that Studio News (an internal news company for Disney) would be taping a transaction done at one of our stores to broadcast on the news program for the week. Every hour, a cast member in a store is required to do a Magical Moment with a guest. A Magical Moment can be as simple as playing a game of tic-tac-toe with a child or playing a trivia game with a guest. This particular broadcast was to portray what a Magical Moment looks like at our different stores.

I had the chance to meet and get to know what the Studio News team does. Every week they do a new show of the happenings and events taking place in Walt Disney World. The broadcast is then shown on all Disney Cast Member televisions in break rooms and different cast rooms so cast members are aware of what is going on in and around the company. The broadcaster explained how his particular pitch was to tape different Magical Moments done within all the parks to show cast members the variety of different Magical Moments.

It was interesting to see how an internal news company compares with an external news company. Internal news companies still have to go out and interview different people and cover different events, but they get to stay within the company. Everyone all shares a common interset as well; they work for Disney. External news companies can be a little more challenging as journalists and broadcasters are required to interview and talk with strangers on events that might not even affect the journalists in any way.

This week's Disney Exploration Series in Guest Service talked about different leadership skills. It was extremely interesting because the information didn't simply apply to Disney, but life applications as well. For example, we did a hands-on activity on what we thought what traits good and bad leaders should possess. We also talked about different stages of leadership. For example, in Disney there are three different stages of leadership in any working field; entry level management, area management, and general management. As a person works their way up less technical skills are needed and more of an emotional and IQ are needed.

We did an activity at the end in which we worked in partners. One partner was an angered guest and the other was the manager. In front of the class we had to act out how we would solve the situation and then perform instant guest recovery to make up for the poor experience the guest had. I found this to be extremely interesting because it was situations we deal with every day.

Layout of Parks

All classes are cancelled again this week because of the peak spring break season. College program participants are all working 50 plus hours this week therefore they cancel classes for us because of the crazy hours we will be working. I am working 52 hours this week and 48 hours next week. Once the spring break peak season dies down classes will go back to normal along with our regular hours.

The layout of all the Walt Disney World theme parks are planned and purposeful. Three of the four theme parks are in the shape of a hub. A hub has a central point and then the rest of the locations branch out from that central hub making it very easy for guests to navigate through the park. The Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and the Animal Kingdom are the three parks that have hubs at Walt Disney World. They each have a central point.

Magic Kingdom's central hub is Cinderellas Castle. Main Street U.S.A., Frontierland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Mickey's Toontown Fair, and Fantasyland are the six different parts of the park that branch out from Cinderella's Castle.

EPCOT's main central point is Innoventions, a walk-though tour of inventions of the future. This park is set up a little bit differently because all the attractions branch out from Innoventions as opposed to different lands. The World Showcase part of EPCOT is an "O" shaped layout around the World Showcase Lagoon.

Animal Kingdom's main hub is Discovery Island. Africa, Asia, Dinoland U.S.A., the Oasis, and Camp Minnie Mickey are the different lands that branch out from this central point.

Fun Facts of the Week

Animal Kingdom Fun Facts

The Tree of Life is the Animal Kingdom's main icon. It is 145,000 feet tall and has over 100,000 leaves on the tree. The most interesting part about the icon is that is secretly contains over 325 animals carved into the trunk of the tree.

Disney's new Expedition Everest is a roller coaster in which guests try to escape from Mt. Everest. If you stand just before the Asian statue in one area of the park, the peaks of the mountain and the points of the statue line up exactly to match each other's points.

"Slow" Week

These next 2 weeks...(April 2-16) are the two busiest weeks of the internship. We are told to be at our best at all times because not only area managers, but general managers will be walking around the park because of the high capacity of people that will be coming through. In fact, classes are even cancelled for this week because of the amount of hours. We will be working anywhere from 50-60 hours this week.

I've learned a lot during this internship program about service recovery. When guests are unsatisfied or unhappy with the quality or performance of Walt Disney World, it is required to implement service recovery. In other words, we need to make up for their unsatisfaction. It can be anywhere from a free popcorn to a free night in a resort depending on the circumstance. Although I experience minor service recoveries such as free popcorn everyday, this past week I experienced a more severe service recovery situation.

A guest had purchased about 12 items from the Star Tours (Tatooine Traders) store. The guest had taken advantage of the service of having it shipped to their resort for free. Unfortunately, the guest's items were lost on the way over. We had to find every single item that was in the guest's bag in the store and make up the same package for them. The guest's bag was then delivered personally to their room. Although the guest's experience was a little tedious, they received want they wanted and Disney went above and beyond.

This week should prove to be a real test as the numbers of people in the park are going to be extremely high and extremely busy. I am hoping to exhibit my best guest service skills possible this week.

Fun Fact of the Week to come...

Campus Representative/ Disney's Exploration Series

One of the perks of becoming a Disney College Program Alumni is that you can apply for a position known as a Campus Representative. As a Campus Rep, it is your job to promote and introduce the Disney College Program to students on your current campus. Therefore, if I were to receive the position, I would be responsible to attending and promoting the program to students on the Rowan campus. Applications are due in April 1 and we are required to hand in a cover letter as well.
Qualifications for being a representative are:

• Alumni of the Disney College Program.
• Enrolled full-time or part-time in a college or university
• Full-availability during the recruiting semester
• Exhibit outstanding leadership qualities, highly creative and well organized
• Maintain good standing with the Walt Disney World Co.

One of the other great perks about becoming a Campus Representative is that you get to enjoy all the privilages of a current college program participant such as free park entry and discounts on merchandise and food.

I would really enjoy taking on this position because I absolutely love the work I'm doing down here and I would love to take it back up to Rowan with me because I love the work I do at Rowan also. I think it would be a great oppurtunity for me to stay in contact with the Disney company, but at the same time share my incredible experience with other students at Rowan. We will be contacted about interviews after we've submitted our applications. Ill keep updates posted about it.

This week's Disney Exploration Series in Guest Serivce was in the field of Quick Service Food and Beverage. Now I must say, I was very deceived going into the class. I thought how interesting could a class be when we are talking to managers about fast food. I must say it was honestly the best class I've attended so far. Not only did they present the food choice decision they have to make everyday, but we got to sample what kind of decisions they are faced with as well in an activity at the end.

The activity was called Iron Chef and its rules were similiar to the one seen on the Food Network. We were broken up into groups and were given various snacks such as graham crackers, apples, M&Ms, marshmallows, peanut butter, rolls, English muffins, jelly, and banana chips. We were instructed we had to use the peanut butter but all other ingredients were optional. We were also given a sheet on how much of each item would cost to make our snack. Our next step was to make a snack or meal that guests in Walt Disney World would buy while staying in the budget and giving our snack a price and name. Our group decided to put peanut butter on the apple and throw some M&Ms and marshmallows on it, giving it a healthy side, but also the sweet taste. We named it the Messy Mickey.

We lost the competition because of the name. The managers said that giving a snack a name like that would cause the parents to instantly trigger "mess" when they heard of the name. It was very interesting to hear information like this because I think the decisions that go into food and beverage in Walt Disney World are underestimated and are just as challenging as opening up a new attraction. I thought the class was extremely interesting and I learned a lot about marketing.

Disney Fun Fact of the Week:
Spaceship Earth in EPCOT is designed with a special irrigation system that allows the water to run off to the sides intead of dripping straight down the globe and onto the guests walking underneath it. If you can see in the picture the posts coming straight down on the right and left side are what take the rain and flush it out and over the stores next to it and far away from the guests. If these posts were not present, the rain would run straight down the ball and onto the guests.

Professional Internship/Disney's Exploration Series in Guest Service

While talking with my managers last week, they offered me a professional internship position in management at Disney's MGM Studios. The internship would entail the responsibilities of what the current managers are doing such as coordinating cast members, opening and closing, and financially mantaining the merchandise locations. A professional internship is an internship that is higher than a college program internship that puts both feet in the door of having a career with Disney. Although the management position would be great, I would ideally like to do some kind of journalism internship. Perhaps maybe one for ESPN or a local newspaper. I'm even going to look further into getting some kind of professional journalism internship through Disney.

This week's Disney's Exploration Series in Guest Service was on park operations. Even though I will not be receiving any credit for this class, I'm really enjoying this series because we are receiving all the backstage information that Disney does from the top executives in the company. This week's session was conducted by Stockton Toler, Park Operations Manager at the Magic Kingdom. This year, Disney is conducting a special promotional year called the Year of a Million Dreams. Disney has hired a special team known as the Dream Team consisting of seventeen members that go to certain parks each day and award prizes at random to guests. Prizes consist of a lanyard with the Year of a Million Dreams pins all the way up to a 4 night cruise on the Disney Cruise Line. The Dream Team awards randomally for instance picking seat number 86 in the 3:00 Lion King Show. But what happens if there isn't anybody in seat number 86 for the 3:00 show? Toler explained that the prize is then marked as failure to reward and goes back into the pool to be awarded at a later time. At the end of class, Toler showed a video of a certain Year of a Million Dreams prize that was awarded. A family of four was waiting in line at the Magic Kingdom for it to open. They were selected at random to walk into the park before it was open down a red carpet placed on Main Street. When they got to the middle of the street, they were instructed to stop and turn around and wave. The greeter got on the loudspeaker and welcomed the family to the Magic Kingdom. Once he was done, every single cast member and character would popped out of the stores and shops lining Main Street and greeted them. It was quite the sight to see as each member of the family's jaw dropped and did not close until the end of the video. It's certain things like this that make me excited to go to work each day and makes me even more excited to report them. Certain things like this have taught me that we can present customer service in a fun way too. We are definitely making their day yet doing it in a fun way for everyone. That's the Disney Difference. There is a publication that Disney puts out called the Main Street Diary which is an internal publication for cast members to read about certain events such as Year of a Million Dreams happenings for the week. I think it would be interesting to see if I could possible report on one of those events for the publication.

Here is a website that explains the Year of a Million Dreams prizes and details.
http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/disneyparks/en_US/index?name=YOMDLowBandPage

My friends from Rowan visited this past week for their spring break so I didn't have the chance to work as much, but it certainly was interesting and exciting to tell them everything I've learned so far about Disney. For example, as discussed prior, the Mickey pole seen on the top of Crossroads at MGM Studios, is a lightning rod. They had no idea. It was also very interesting to see their reactions to the information I told them. They were so surprised at all the Disney secrets that they had never known when they previously visited the parks.

Fun Disney Fact: The Contemporary Resort is the largest A-framed building in the world (as seen in picture above.)

Results of ESPN weekend/Guest Service Class

This past weekend (March 2-4) Disney's MGM Studios hosted its annual ESPN weekend. The event went extremely well and it was especially successful for Disney's MGM Studios because of the publicty and attention it received from the media and ESPN. Famous athletes such as David Robinson, Charles Tillman, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, Adam Vinatieri, and many more. They participated in interviews, live game shows, ESPN shows broadcasted live from MGM Studios, and guests got the oppurtunity to interact and with the athletes and ESPN broadcasters.

Because I have a great interest in hopefully writing for Disney or ESPN one day, this past weekend was a great oppurtunity for me. I was privilaged enough to be able to work for the special events team under the management of Mike Lolli, Disney's Special Events & Production Manager of MGM Studios. Although I didn't get the oppurtunity to directly network with any of the ESPN broadcasters or journalists I was able to become more familiar with their names and personalities. One of my managers for merchandise knows one of the ESPN employees and she said she might be able to introduce me to him in future. Overall, it was a great oppurtunity for me to become familiar with and make my name known in the two major companies I would like to eventually work in.

It was also very interesting to see the way in which Disney hosts special events. They have such a particular yet logical way of treating and transporting celebrities. For example, instead of having a group of body guards move the athletes from place to place and event to event, they had one person from guest relations transport the celebrity to where they needed to go. This particular way was not overwhelming to the guests, but yet kept the athletes safe and accounted for. I thought this was extremely successful for Disney to do and once again something they did that made them stand out from the other companies. They also involved all ages in the event so that the entire family could be a part of the event. For example, they hosted a Motorcade Parade in which the atheletes would ride down Hollywood Boulevard (the main street in MGM) in fancy sport cars and sitting right next to them would be a Disney character such as Mickey Mouse. This way Mom and Dad would be interesting in the parade, and yet the kids would enjoy the event too.

I was also very excited to meet and get autographs from David Robinson, Jim Palmer, Brian McCann, and Charles Tillman. I don't think I have a future career in the NFL, NBA, or MLB but it was a nice oppurtunity all in all.

This past Wednesday ( 3/7) I attended my first Disney's Exploration Series in Guest Service class. This weeks topic was resorts. The class was taught by Mayra Santiago, the head manager of Disney resorts. It was extremely interesting to learn the ways in which Disney designs and themes resorts to cater to certain audiences. For example, Disney resort cast members use a 5 step cycle to advertise and cater to guests. It goes from Anticipation, Welcome, Experience, Farewell, and Savoring. Basically Disney looks for ways to cater to guests as they are anticipating on coming to giving them the best possible guest service even when they leave and are planning their next vacation. The guest service simply doesn't only exist during the vacation; it is also before and after as well. Next week's topic is Park Operations and Guest Service in which we will hear from Park Operations Managers to teach the ways in which guest service can be seen through park operations at Walt Disney World.