If you walk into a Disney Park, you’ll quickly recognize that something feels … different. Even if you’ve been to a place like Busch Gardens Williamsburg or Knott’s Berry Farm, your first steps into a Disney park feel unlike anything you’ve experienced before.
This, of course, is intentional. Disney has spent over half a century honing its techniques that turn an ordinary vacation destination into an extraordinary one.
We all know about the big things Disney does — from the scale of their theme parks to the intricacy of their design work — but let’s instead focus on some of the smaller things they’ve become known for. These smaller creations are, in many ways, more important that the big stuff Disney gets credit for.
Let’s take a look:
The Smells
Image: lorenjavier, Flickr (license)
One of the odder characteristics Disney has become known for over time is its use of scents. The are entire swaths of the fan community who debate which iconic Disney smell is the best. And, truly, there are some olfactory experiences at Disney that are not to be missed.
But, while some of these are accidental strokes of magic — like the water smell of Pirates of the Caribbean — and others are core parts of an attraction experience — like Soarin’ Around the World — Disney’s most important scents are the ones used on Main Street USA.
Every smell from fresh popcorn to just-out-of-the-oven cookies is specifically designed by Imagineering to cultivate a sense of child-like wonder and amazement. The nostalgia of Main Street USA — from its turn-of-the-century charm to its Anytown USA architecture — exists to make you feel as comfortable in the park as possible. It’s a sensory trigger designed to relax you.
Smells are critical to that relaxation, and in filling Main Street USA with some of our brains’ favorites, Disney is able to set itself apart from many similar parks from our first steps onto the grounds.
Background Music
Image: aloha75, Flickr (license)
Music is as important to themed attraction design as any other element — and, some might argue, it’s the most important. But even beyond the actual attractions, music serves a critical role in the subconscious storytelling necessary to make a themed land work.
Take Future World at Epcot for example. Its background music is designed to elicit a sense of technological wonder from the guests. Using heavy synthesized sounds and digital soundscapes, the Future World score sounds like something you’d hear in the future — or, more accurately, as the background score of a movie about the future.
But even beyond themed lands, background music serves a crucial role in attraction queues. The echoey, scuffed-up sounds of the 1920s music playing in the Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror queue is as important to that attraction as any other element of story. It sounds creepy, and it makes you feel unsettled as the attraction begins.
At other regional parks, you’ll often only hear pop music as you walk from ride to ride. Or, in some cases, you won’t hear any music at all. This is one key difference between Disney and its regional competitors.
Cast Members
Image: harshlight, Flickr (license)
While “the Disney Difference” doesn’t quite mean what it used to mean, Disney’s Cast Members broadly are among the best in the themed entertainment world. The company’s focus on guest experience, and its willingness to give its Cast Members the power to create magic for the guests on a moment’s notice, separates the Disney parks from other similar amusement entities.
Some, like Universal, have begun bridging the sizable gap between them and Disney over time, with more extensive training and more front-line crew empowerment. While others, like Six Flags, have been slow to retrain their employees in a more guest-centric mindset.
But, while the gap has narrowed — due, in part, to Disney’s downscaling of their own employee training — Disney’s Cast Members are still some of the most pleasant and kind people you’ll interact with in a theme park. And, ultimately, it’s the people you encounter on your vacation that help make it special.
Landscaping
Image: misscrabette, Flickr (license)
Disney’s commitment to landscaping has become so renowned that they even devote an entire festival to their ability to cultivate horticulture.
It might be the single thing guests take the most for granted, in fact. When you consider what goes into the guest experience — everything from service to food to housekeeping to attractions to entertainment — the most unsung but important element is the green space on property.
Each resort has perfectly manicured lawns and gardens that evoke themes as broad as the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Mexico, and even Africa. The immersion we feel when walking in, say, the Japan pavilion or along the Port Orleans French Quarter Resort is due, in large part, to authentic greenery that Disney has spent decades growing.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom is an ode to our planet’s beauty, and it features some of the most lush horticulture on Disney property — and it is this horticulture which separates such a park from its competitors at zoos and theme parks around the country.
Disney is a beautiful space to spend time, and it is so beautiful in large part because of its greenery. That’s a far cry from the pavement and concrete vistas of Six Flags and Cedar Fair.
Trash Cans
Image: themeparktourist, Flickr (license)
If you live in a city, you likely have had the experience of walking a few blocks with a cup of coffee in your hand that you are desperate to throw away. Disney, thankfully, has never had that problem.
Trash cans at Disney are so ubiquitous that you’ll never find yourself without one in your vicinity. This confidence allows you to buy food and snacks without worrying about when you’ll be able to dispose of them. And, that ubiquity keeps the parks cleaner over time — making them feel more special.
Add to that the theming that goes into each trash can — from the clean-looking shine each can possesses to the unique logos and designs present on each one — and you find yourself being surprised more theme parks don’t have a similar commitment to dealing with trash. You feel more confident than you would at a regional park, and the cans look more pleasant — meaning you don’t frown whenever you see one.
Sightlines
Image: harshlight, Flickr (license)
Disney’s attractions began as a diversion Walt Disney forced on his team of animators. In constructing Disneyland, Walt turned to the people he trusted the most to create these moving tableaus of stories he wanted to tell.
As such, the first Imagineers viewed their attractions as films, and they applied the same logic to them that they did to those films: Audiences should only see what we want them to see.
Over time, that idea became baked into the DNA of the Disney parks. A guest shouldn’t ever see something that the storytellers don’t want them to see — be it an electrical transformer, the back of a show building, or a few cast members on a smoke break.
Thus began Disney’s obsession with sightlines, and that obsession has led to so many pieces of Disney magic. The Tower of Terror is technically visible from the Morocco pavilion at Epcot. So, they painted it the same color as that pavilion to help it blend in.
When constructed, Tomorrowland was one of the few places in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom where you could see outside the park’s grounds. So, the Contemporary Resort was built in its view, so that the theme carried out beyond the land.
At other parks around the country, rides are where they have to be. If there’s something you really don’t want guests to see, maybe you build a fence — but broadly, at regional parks, you can see vast open fields of construction equipment right in the middle of a park.
And that’s the Disney difference, at the end of the day. The commitment to story pervades even the parks’ physical layout — something you won’t ever notice, unless you look for it. That’s the definition of something small, but Disney wouldn’t be Disney without it.
