Announcing Disneyland Insights: Inspiration, Ideas & Magic for You and Your Organization

This Disney Insights podcast is one of the most unique podcasts I’ve hosted over the hundreds I’ve presented over the last few years. It is about a work I have been laboring on for the better part of a year and a half, but in truth, It’s the story of a lifetime of learning and understanding Disney. Indeed, it spans some five decades and its result is truly what I believe is something unique that I am introducing into the marketplace today. If you want to know the stories, the histories, the heritage that has really made Disneyland what it is today, this work seeks to provide that. Moreover, unlike nearly any other treatise, this seeks to answer how you can lead an organization, engage your employees and provide as powerful a customer experience as you can at “The Happiest Place on Earth”. Join me as I introduce Disneyland Insights: Inspiration, Ideas & Magic for You and Your Organization.

How We Got Here

The following is an outline of what I’ll share on this week’s podcast:

One National Geographic

• 50 Years of Studying Disneyland
• Drawing a Map for Social Studies Project

Deciding on a Career

• To Ron Miller: I’m Going to Be a Director at Walt Disney Productions
• Judge Whitaker–Disney Animator of Donald Shorts, plus Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland–Creates a motion picture studio for BYU–My father meets him
• Theater, Film, Television at BYU
• Went on a mission for my church, came back and tried to figure out my life
• Going the Road of Instructional Design & Organizational Development
• Early Computer Based Training
• Visiting Barbara Duncan at Disneyland University
• A Thesis on Disney: An Historical, Descriptive Study of Disney Educational Media as Informative and Entertaining
• On the Bleeding Edge of Online Learning in early 1990s First Through Apple and then Through NeXT
  • WYSIWYG
  • Full Color
  • Sound
  • Interactive Touch Points
  • Animation

A Magical Opportunity at Walt Disney World

• Theme Park: Disney University & The American Workplace

• Developing the First Interactive Map of Walt Disney World
• Leading Technology for Disney Institute

• Embracing Best In Business Ideas from The Disney Institute
• Handling Volkswagen’s Roll Out of the New Beetle

• Seeking to Write a Book on Disney–Be Our Guest

Starting My Own Performance Journeys

• Writing For MousePlanet
• Creating Disney at Work

• Authoring 5 Disney Best In Business Books. Each of these have taught me some important lessons:
  • The Wonderful World of Customer Service at Disney–Learning the discipline of writing a book
  • Lessons From Epcot: In Leadership, Business & Life–Learning the lesson of getting paid
  • Disney’s Hollywood Studios: From Show Biz to Your Biz–Something outdated sooner than later
  • Disney, Leadership and You–the perfect book, but only a book
  • Disney Insights 100–In a format locked in time

My newest book, A Century of Powerful Disney Insights, Volume I 1923-1973, The Walt & Roy Disney Years is available! 

Also, check out my two of my other books, The Wonderful World of Customer Service at Disney and Disney, Leadership and You. 

Also, for those examining other business benchmarks beyond Disney, check out Lead with Your Customer: Transform Culture and Brand Into World-Class Excellence.

A Los Angeles client who was fast tracking an organization, needed “easy to access” support to build and train their employee base. So I came back to online learning as a solution. I looked far and wide for the right vehicle, and found it in a product line that afforded the most multimedia and interactive solutions. Then Covid set in, and having an online set of tools to share with workforces big and small became crucial. Fortunately, I already had the software to do so, and it allowed me to be ahead of the game, rather than reacting as happened for many during the pandemic. I even came to sell these online courses to organizations across the globe where it was more difficult for me to travel to.

And yet all the while, I thought, this could be used for something else. I had built up a library of hundreds of podcasts and about the same in a YouTube video library. but how could I combine all of this into one whole. And that brings me to the present.

I now stand at a place in my life with both decades of training & development experience while at the same time having a perspective of Disney really no one else has. I not only have been an historian in studying this for so many decades, I’ve actually taken these ideas and helped organizations in the public, private, and non-profit arenas to apply and benefit from this. Furthermore, I have shared these ideas with countless individuals with an intent to inspire and give them insights as to how to make their lives even better.

So why this work at this time?

Creating Disneyland Insights

• A 70th Anniversary Opportunity
• Sharing Podcasts on Disneyland
• Extending My Own Study of the Park
• Creating a New Disneyland Map–Still a map you could walk around the park with but more light & whimsical
• Creating and organizing an extensive library of photos (6,000), videos (1,500), charts and more

What is Disneyland Insights?

The simplest description for Disneyland Insights: Inspiration, Ideas & Magic for You and Your Organization is that it’s an interactive, multimedia experience. It could have been published simply as a book. And that book could have included photos. But not likely the volume of photos shared, many of which are historical. Moreover, a book can’t contain the scores of videos and audio segments that accompany it. And a book is linear. Begin at the beginning and go to the end, with only a table of contents overviewing what happens between those two points. Here we have something truly interactive.

By the numbers:

• 1 Park
• 9 Lands
• Several Dozen Maps & Charts
• Over 100 Interactive Points
• Some 50 Videos–Which Can Only Be Found Here
• Over 50 Audio Narratives
• Easily 300 Photos and Images
• Hundreds of Pages of Text

All of this is intended to play on your laptop, iPad or mobile device. You can sit at your office desk and review it by topic. You can casually jump around from place to play while laying on your sofa next to the fire. But best of all, you can use this as a guide as you literally walk through Disneyland, experiencing attractions, shops and shows, and seeing the park with new eyes with insights you’ve never heard before.

In essence, your purchase is a deep dive into what makes Disneyland the “Happiest Place on Earth”. It chooses from 70 years of magic to identify those ideas, designs, and concepts that can inspire you in ways you’ve never considered. It’s an ongoing look at the business behind the magic. But it’s also a way to find the practical magic to apply to your own life.

Who Is The Audience For This

While anyone who is truly looking for insights on the history, heritage and operations of Disney will benefit from this, This is truly designed for those who are seeking to find new ideas that will guide you to

1. Provide Individual & Organizational Leadership Excellence
2. Create Employee Engagement & a Team Culture
3. Offer a Superior Customer Experience

Not only does the content through examples, stories and models play to these themes, but each section provides “Souvenirs for You and Your Organization”. They are reflective questions that may be used to better the work or operation you may be lead or be part of. And in that instance, it is more of a business focus. In fact, many may utilize funding set aside in their organization for training and development to purchase this volume.

But much of this content is also designed to allow you to consider its personal application to your own life and dreams. If you are a believer that if “you can dream it, you can do it” then this offers inspiration and focus toward that. Disneyland inspires, and this work seeks to direct that inspiration into action.

Q&A

1. Is this an App or something that resides on my phone?

It’s actually link to a location that holds it ready for you at any time. The advantage to this is that unlike an online book, this content is evergreen. It continues to grow, to have new additions, and new insights in time. Like Walt shared about Disneyland and its comparison to films. When a film was put into the can, there was no changing it. It was locked down permanently. But Disneyland was different “Not only can I add things, but even the trees will keep growing! The thing will get more beautiful each year!” That is the same sentiment here with Disneyland Insights.

2. Is the content similar to what you share on your blog and podcasts?

Very much so, but now it is organized in a way that you can access it easily, and that you can apply more readily to your life and to your organization. And all of this is presented in not a singular format, but in a multimedia context.

3. How much?

The price point for this is currently $70.00. That may seem high compared to a book, whether in print or online that I have sold in the past. But this is much larger in content than a book, with photo, audio and videos, which I didn’t do in the book.

While I am selling this at a price point more expensive than a book, in truth, it’s more like an online course, which I sell for several hundred dollars per course. And frankly, even this is more content and more at depth than those courses.

Here’s the even better news! For a short time, I’m offering it at the introductory price point of only $40.00. That’s an introductory price. And for many of you, you may be able to utilize funds dedicated in your organization for your training & development.

4. What about offering more of a Disney Insights offering that is more fan based–dealing not so much with organizational or personal application, but just fun tidbits about Disneyland?

Good news there too. That will be coming forth in the months to come, as well as offerings celebrating the other parks–particularly Disney California Adventure during its 25th anniversary set in the context of Disneyland’s 70th anniversary.

How to Order This Book?

Click here to order Disneyland Insights: Inspiration, Ideas & Magic for You and Your Organization. It’s also available on the show notes page of our podcast.

Thanks for joining us for this podcast. Know that as in the title of my organization, Performance Journeys, it’s as much about the journey as it is about performance. That’s at the heart of this newest offering, Disneyland Insights. We want you to find the second star to the right, and keep going straight on till you reach it. We want to support you in following the compass of your heart, knowing that with a smile and a song, a little faith, effort and pixie dust, your dreams can come true. After all, if we can dream it, we can do it. Until next time, bright suns, we’ll see you real soon!