Monday Musings - Monday Musings (The Humanity Advantage)

Hi friends,

Greetings from Disneyland!

A friend told me he’d be down here today, so I moved my flight and canceled all my meetings to spend the day with Mickey and Minnie.
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Let’s talk about why I love this place so much: Walt Disney’s peers thought the decision to build Disneyland was the stupidest decision of his career.

None of the proven money-makers would be there: roller coasters, ferris wheels, and lucrative carnival games like whack-a-mole. There wouldn’t be enough ride capacity to make a profit, either. When Disney wanted to create custom rides, experts told him to get real – they’re too expensive to build and at risk of breaking down.

Unlike other amusement parks at the time, Disney’s vision was rooted in childhood fantasy instead of economic rationale. He dreamed of castles and pirate ships, jungle cruises, and New Orleans-style riverboats. Other amusement parks accepted filthy sidewalks as a cost of crowds. Disney insisted on cleanliness. He recruited a small army of janitors who dressed in themed garments. Even the trash cans amplified their surroundings.

Industry veterans scoffed at Disney’s plans. They urged him to stick to movies and leave the amusement park business to people who knew what they're doing, and they certainly didn’t understand why the light posts in New Orleans Square needed authentic French etchings. One consultant belittled Disney’s attention to detail, saying: “the public doesn’t know the difference or care.”

Themed trash cans throughout the park

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The story of Disneyland is the story of care. Walt’s obsession with detail was a bet on our humanity. People can sense care, even if they can’t always put words to the experience, or model it on a spreadsheet.

At a time when amusement parks referred to their visitors as “marks,” Walt insisted on creating a hospitality business and calling visitors “guests”. Instead of thinking like a financier, he thought like a hotelier.

Walt said: “Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic.”

Walt rejected the conventional wisdom on amusement parks. He avoided hiring industry experts, and instead brought his own people from Disney Production Studios. He rallied artists who’d devoted their careers to making animated movies and told them to apply their entertainment chops to the in-park experience.

More humanity doesn’t necessarily come from adding bodies to the product. It’s more about the perspective you bring to your craft.
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At most amusement parks, the lines are so unimaginative that you might as well be going through customs. But at Disney, the lines are entertainment. The line for Spider-Man was a holographic, IMAX-type experience that put the eight-year old next to me in tremors of fear and excitement. “In designing Disneyland, we thought of the park as if it were a three-dimensional film. We wanted everything that guests experience, not only the shows and rides, to be an entertaining part of the story. This was a new idea: we took the most basic needs of guests and turned them into attractions.”

Whenever you design an experience, you have to take the perspective of the customer. In writing, you play reader. In hosting, you play guest. Success depends on this flip from creator to consumer.
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​Most of these anecdotes are from Disney’s Land by Richard Snow.

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The Trouble with Education

So much of education is unnecessarily dry. Kids learn to associate productivity with a discipline to fight through boredom. Humor and entertainment are frowned upon. But it doesn't need to be this way. Syllabuses could look like a game of Candy Land, and teachers could be trained like the performers they are. School needn’t be so bland.

At Write of Passage, we bring our humanity to the education industry. Last cohort, we decorated the studio for Halloween and dropped confetti at the last live session. For high schoolers our writing examples reference pop culture whenever possible (Taylor Swift is our favorite).

The principles of Disney apply elsewhere. Chances are, there’s a “humanity advantage” in your industry. So where can you add that personal touch?

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I'm no Walt, but I understand his passion. I feel so strongly about changing the landscape of education that I’ve dedicated an entire team to building Liftoff, a program developed specifically for high school students.

Teenagers already consume heaps of media and harbor various obsessions. By giving them permission to dive into these topics, they’ll learn the craft of writing. Before they enter college or start their career, they’ll have felt the same creative magic that drove Walt to create Disneyland. Liftoff is a step toward putting passion back into the education experience.
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​Submit a Liftoff application or nominate a teen to attend.

And with that, I’m off to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride for the second time today.