When Michael Eisner became the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, he wasn’t afraid to fail. In his early years on the job, Eisner oversaw the launch of two new theme parks in Orlando, one in California, and one in Europe. The man was dreaming big.
But at some point during his administration, probably some time after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, that fearlessness went away. The brash iconoclasm of the famed Disney Decade resolved itself into a timid commercialism that ultimately paved the way for Eisner’s departure in 2005.
Yes, it was time for him to go, but when thinking about the legacy of the man who helped build Walt Disney World into what it is today, it’s important not to forget just how ambitious he once was.
The best way to do that is to look back at one of his most bold failures: the Disney Institute, an educational vacation experience unlike anything Disney had offered before.
Here are five things that made the Disney Institute so unique, but ultimately led to its demise:
5. It was borne out of a family vacation
Image: Disney
In 1985, just a year after he became the head of the Walt Disney Company, Eisner took his family on a summer trip to the Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. The Institution had been around since 1874, and over time, it became a place for artists, politicians, historians and academics to gather and discuss the major issues of the world. There were daily lectures from presidents and people of industry, performances from musicians and dancers, and classes in anything from theater to religion. Everything was designed to brighten the mind and give adults access to a more educational summer experience.
The historic cultural retreat is set beside a beautiful lake in a charming New York town. It feels something like a mix of a small college campus and a relaxing summer resort; Eisner absolutely loved it, and decided to make a version of his own.
4. The Disney Institute was originally going to be part of Celebration
Image: Disney
It’s impossible to know exactly when Eisner decided to build his own Chautauqua in Orlando, Florida, but it couldn’t have been long after he returned home from the idyllic New York landmark. He immediately put Imagineering to work designing Walt Disney World’s own adult education resort, but the plan took years to incubate.
By 1992, the blue sky brainstorming had solidified to the point that Eisner was openly discussing the Disney Institute with the press. In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel from March of that year, the CEO made his vision clear:
“Eisner said he would like to see the institute become a place where thinkers, artists, educators and those interested in exercise and health could exchange ideas. He didn’t fully explain how the Disney Institute would be like the chautauqua movement, but he seemed to be referring to the strong educational bent of its clubs and tent shows.”
At that stage, the Institute was going to live within another ambitious Disney project: the master-planned community of Celebration, Florida. Unfortunately, Celebration was dealing with its own complicated development process fraught with delays, meaning the Institute would need to find a new home if it was ever going to open.
3. It was built within an existing resort
Image: Disney
Of course, Imagineering can be quite thrifty when they need to be, and the creative wing of the Walt Disney Company opted to transform the aging Disney Village Resort into the new Disney Institute.
Construction began on the Institute’s new buildings in 1995, and the Village Resort’s home-away-from-home townhouses were slightly modified to fit the overall new theme.
In all, a performing arts theater, a movie theater, an amphitheater, a health club, classrooms, a closed-circuit TV station, and a radio station were built on the existing site.
When the Disney Institute finally opened in 1996, it offered over 60 hands-on programs in areas ranging from cooking to animation to agriculture and everything in between. Like its inspiration in New York, the Institute lined up some big-name Artists-in-Residence such as director Martin Scorsese, critic Gene Siskel and golfer Gary Player to lecture and otherwise engage with the community.
It seemed to be, for the most part, a positive experience for its guests:
“I thought I’d be bored,” says Michael Zirpoli, a detective from Centereach, N.Y. “I mean, who wants to go to school on vacation? But this is fun, especially since it’s all hands-on learning and the classes are designed to open up your mind. At home, I have no time to explore my creativity. Here they push your imagination.”
2. Despite positive reviews, it was a “Disneyland of the mind”
Where some saw an educational experience, others saw a fantasy. In his review, Jerry Adler of Newsweek called the Institute a “Disneyland of the mind.” At first glance, you might think he was referring to the wonderful intellectual stimulation guests received at Eisner’s pet project. In reality, he was suggesting something far more cynical – that the Disney Institute wasn’t particularly interested in teaching guests anything meaningful, but rather selling them on the illusion that they were doing so.
And lest you think Adler was being overly negative, then-Disney Travel Company President Randy Garfield essentially confirmed that sentiment to the Sun Sentinel:
“Our goal at Disney is to make fantasies real,” says Randy Garfield, president of the Walt Disney Travel Company. “Each of our cast members plays a role in fulfilling the dreams and expectations of our guests.”
Adler equated those fantasies to a performance: one in which the cast members acted as though the guest was quickly learning a new skill, and the guests pretended they didn’t really know the truth. “Most of us know we really can’t draw,” he wrote. “But it’s nice to be in a place where people act otherwise.”
1. The Disney Institute is (technically) still around today
Image: Disney
Shortly after the Institute opened, it became clear that guests weren’t as enamored with the idea of an education vacation as Eisner was. The programs were quickly scaled back and resources were diverted elsewhere on the Disney property. In 2002, after just six years of operation, the Disney Institute closed due to total lack of interest.
But despite its failure, relics from the failed experiment still remain at Walt Disney World.
While much of the Disney Institute’s accommodations and facilities were torn down, some were put through an extensive refurbishment and reopened in 2004 as Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa. Even the name “Disney Institute” lives on as a professional development program Disney offers to this day.
Michael Eisner’s dream of a year-round Chautauqua Institution was probably a bit far-fetched. Guests were flocking to the Orlando resort because of the incredible creativity shown within its theme parks, not for a designer-brand correspondence course. But there’s something to be learned from the scope of what Eisner was trying to do. The Disney Institute was a failure, yes, but it was an ambitious failure – the kind of thing Disney would never even attempt today.
In 2002, Eisner opted to tear his own project down and replace it with a hotel — swapping a risky, outside-the-box idea for an assured moneymaker. When you stop to think about it, there’s something poetic in that: the only person who really learned something from the Disney Institute was Eisner. Unfortunately, what he learned was the ability to second-guess himself.
