Thought 50: Power of Imagination 🎢
How do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors?
Welcome to Part 2 of my Disney world series. My first blog post in this collection is about our Trend Video project, which you can read by clicking the link here. That blog post is more about the events leading up to Florida, while this post will be more about our adventure at Disney.
The beginnings of this project go back quite a while. Last year, after our first Loon Lake field study, we were told that we were going on a field study to San Fransisco, California. Everyone was very excited to go to California, but near the beginning of this school year, an email went out saying the trip to California was cancelled. We were all pretty disappointed, but soon after, we got information about our new field study, to Orlando, Florida.
Our project formally began in late January/early February. Our goal is to make a documentary about We began this by doing tons of research on Walt Disney, his life, his company, and his parks. After weeks of research, we were put into groups and given roles. The other members of my group were Declan, Sylas, Cooper, Brooke, and Xander, and I had the role of Producer. Still today, a month later, I don’t entirely know what a producer does. Next, we were tasked with doing our own individual research and organizing it in a PKM (Personal Knowledge Manager). A PKM is basically just a way of organizing notes. The theme of our groups video was the Magic of Disney Entertainment. We were tasked with talking about how shows, performances, and character interactions affect the visitors at the park.
Next, we were tasked with creating a pitch board for our video, but the teachers realized it would take too long and was too hard, so instead we just handed in a treatment and description of our video.
Our last task before we left on the 25th was to write a screenplay, create a storyboard, and call sheets. This ended up being very stressful because I ended up doing 90% of all of these. The one that was the most improved was the screenplay, which went from a few scribbles with very unspecific writing to a collection of slightly scary pictures of us.
Unfortunately, our flight was cancelled the night before. I go pretty in detail in my other blog post, so click here to read that. Basically, west jet cancelled our flight for “weather reasons” and we were put on 2 flights on the 28th. However, the new schedule conflicted with a trip I already had planned with my family so I had to leave earlier on the 5th.
We filmed over the entire course of the trip, so I will just do a bit of a description of each day I was there.
On the first day, we woke up early to go to Magic Kingdom at rope drop. I also got my first taste of the Florida weather. If I had to describe how it felt in 1 word, that word would probably be terrorism. We went on lots of the big rides and waited in long lines all day. Important for our group, we also saw lots of shows. My 2 favourite shows that day were the Philharmagic show, which is like a 4-D musical short film in this air-conditioned theatre, and the nightly fireworks over the castle. My favourite ride this day was Space Mountain.
On our second day, we went to Disney World’s winter themed water park, Blizzard Beach. We didn’t really do anything for school that day, it was more just to have fun. I built up the courage to go on the 120-foot waterslide known as the Summit Plummet. My highlight of the day was when we were trying to buy lunch for our group as one order but for some reason, some of our Disney Dining Cards weren’t working, so I gave the very confused employee approximately $3.85 all in coins. I bet she had fun counting them all. That night, we journeyed across the park to Disney’s Wilderness Resort for their American Adventure dinner, a delicious dinner of fried chicken and ribs, with a hoot-and-hollering show to go along with it. Max Louie said some morally questionable things during the show, and I can excuse that because he said he forgot to take his medication, but that does not excuse the morally questionable things Cole said during the show.
On the third day, we went to EPCOT, which was probably my favourite of the locations I went to. We started the day with the Frozen Ever After ride. This is important because Disney has a feature at the end of some rides, where it takes a picture of you and you can save it on your phone, and this had the best picture I got. Next we went on Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind, and this was probably my favourite ride of the whole park. I sat next to Dylan on it, and he claims he briefly passed out near the end of the ride. Shout out to Dylan for really embracing the Disney experience. After that, we met with a Disney employee who gave us a workshop on leadership and teamwork: the Disney way. It was a pretty interesting workshop, and we got to go behind stages at the park, and it kind of reminded me of Loon Lake. We also went to the Biergarten restaurant for lunch, which is kind of like the American Adventure dinner, but its German lunch instead. The last ride I want to talk about is the Soarin ride. Soarin is like a flight simulator that takes you through different places around the world. My favourite part of the ride was the introduction video because it is performed by Patrick Warburton, who is also notable for voicing Joe Swanson from Family Guy. Read my Trend Videos post to hear more about the impact of Family Guy on me during this trip.
On my 4th and final day, we decided to have another relaxed day and go back to Blizzard Beach in the afternoon. I spent my second day at Blizzard Beach going on the rides I missed the first time, and catching lizards with Dylan. We got so close. After that, we returned back to the All Star Sports Resort to change a bit, so we could spend my last night at Disney’s world class shopping mall: Disney Springs. Disney Springs is easily the largest shopping centre I have ever been to and was like a theme park to consumerism. Dylan, Declan, Zach and I spent the night walking around the area, and even making some purchases. We got dinner at D-Luxe Burger, a Disney Springs exclusive burger shop, but I desperately want them to open up chains because it was probably the best burger I had ever had. When we got back to the hotel that night, I realized I had forgotten to film a scene for our documentary where I am talking in front of Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, so I settled for the next best available thing: The Hotel Bathroom.
After spring break, once everyone got back from Florida, we started to put the video together. Sylas took care of editing and did an amazing job, and everyone else did voiceovers and sent in footage. Overall, we managed to create a video that tells a history of Disney, and answers our driving question.
Disney creates immersive experiences by making captivating and engaging stories and worlds. Disney brings these stories to life by using advanced technology, trained cast members, and using billions of dollars to guarantee they are perfected. Disney performances use light, sound, acting, costumes, and more to take you out of reality and into a simpler, happier one you don’t want to leave. Character mascots are trained to never break character to create the illusion of talking to the real character. Nighttime performances take advantage of the night, and use light to show you want they want you to see, and hide what they don’t want you to see.