Hey Y’all, Max here.
Today in this post I’ll be talking about our latest PLP field school to DisneyWorld, Florida, and the projects that came with it.
This field school was the first international trip my PLP year has been on. We would have gone to Oregon in grade 8, but that was canceled because of Covid. There was also California that was announced a few month ago, but that was also canceled. Anyways, everyone was very excited to go on this trip, and to go to DisneyWorld which was the main draw and where we would be spending almost all of our time.
Before I get into the trip, let me explain the project we would be working on before we left, while we were there, and after we left. The Maker project will have its own post ( You can find that here ) the other project is called ‘Power of Imagination’, and it’s what I’ll be focusing on in this post. The driving question was:
“How do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors?”
This kind of explains the whole project, except for the final product. The final product is a ’video-essay’ made with a group that explains one aspect of the project. My group chose the Emotional connection to DisneyWorld. The statement that goes along with it is: “How do Disney theme parks create powerful emotional connections with visitors that can shape visitors’ memories and perspectives for years to come?” This focused on four things: food, merchandise, community, and “Disney adults”. Community is kind of the umbrella the three other things fall under, and Disney adults are the people who, in short, repeatedly come back to visit DisneyWorld regularly so that left my group to focus on either the food, or the merchandise. Originally it was going to be both, but it would be too difficult to focus on both, so we eventually cut it down to just merchandise.
The point of the video was to show the emotional connection between the merchandise and the experiences DisneyWorld has to offer. This was a point that was repeated very often throughout the group while we were planning the video. The group was Faith , Gwen , Mateo , Noah , Patrick , and myself. During the planning I was in charge of the storyboards, and I made sure the screenplay that Noah made, the storyboards that I made, and the planning sheets that Mateo made lined up with each other.
All in all, the planning stage was a bit rough at times but to be honest it could have been quite a lot worse.
Here’s the final iterations of our storyboards for the video.
Part 2 of this project is when we actually get to Florida and carry out everything we planned. This includes interviews, footage, and anything in between. I personally feel like I got way too much b-roll and footage, not just for this project but also for the humanities project and for personal purposes. Anyways, b-roll was not an issue as all 6 members of our group got way too much of it. The interviews ( there were 3 of them ) were probably the hardest part of this project to get. There were two POV-style interviews that Mateo and I got at Disney Springs, another one at Galaxies Edge in Hollywood Studios, and maybe one more I forgor 💀.
2/4 of our interview subjects were hesitant to be interviewed, and honestly I can’t blame them. It must be either annoying / nerve-wracking to be approached by two teenagers and then told a bunch of unintelligible spiel about “project-based learning” and asked to be interviewed and filmed when all you’re trying to do is enjoy your vacation at DisneyWorld. The only mostly compliant subject we had was this really nice older guy from New Jersey who was glad to give his opinion, just not to be filmed. The questions we asked fluctuated depending on the subject, but I’ve attached a screenshot from our screenplay below that shows all the questions.
The B-roll we had to get was all over the 4 parks of DisneyWorld ( and also at Disney Springs, which is a massive shopping centre ), so we always had to stay focused and get as much footage as was required.
Here’s my groups final video:
Finally, to answer the driving question.
- “How do Disney theme parks shape and influence the cultural, economic, psychological, and social experiences of visitors?”
Disney is a massive corporation above everything else. It may try and advertise itself as the “Happiest place on earth” and it does a convincing job of presenting itself as that, but to be honest while I as there myself I couldn’t stop thinking about the monetary and commercial cost, and profit of everything. SO what I think is that Disney repeats a loop of magic, profit, and improvement, over and over again. My thinking is that Disney sets it up so they will continue to pour more profits back into their attractions, rides, and everything that makes DisneyWorld ‘magical’ ( the ‘psychological and social’ experience ), while still being able to make a profit, selling things like food and merchandise, thus being able to literally sell the magic. Sorry if this is a bit of a rabbit hole, I have a lot of opinions about this.
I might have made this post too long I still have two more posts on Florida so stay tuned for those.