The Disney Leadership Academy

Today’s experience with the Disney Leadership Academy was not at all what I expected. While I had hoped that the tour would take us into several backstage areas and perhaps educate us on the history of the park and the hierarchy of leadership at Walt Disney World, we spent most of the time doing leadership activities. While these exercises were certainly useful in learning about how to be a leader, I wish they had been supplemented with more information about how leaders function at Disney World.

In all honesty, the tour made me like Disney World less in one way. I had expected more from the tour and it felt very “show” focused, rather than actually educational or “behind-the-scenes.” The costume creation center, while interesting, seemed very staged for public viewing by tours coming through. After dinner tonight we discussed, that certainly the front desk lady would not be able to accomplish much with tours coming through that she needed to greet at periodic intervals! The decorations on the walls and the signs indicating the different sections of the room seemed entirely placed for the people observing the area. This made me appreciate Disney in general, but specifically the tour, less because it seemed like the experience had been falsely advertised. Though our tour guide, Jill, claimed that we were going “behind the scenes,” it didn’t seem to be an authentic area. This made me disappointed because I had hoped for more.

However, seeing how the costumes were designed and assembled made me appreciate Disney more. It was incredible to see the vision boards (with sketches, photos, and fabric swatches) on the walls for shows that we have seen in the past few days, like the Festival of Fantasy parade and the Spirit of Aloha dinner show. Seeing how the costumes were produced made me appreciate the amount of work and precision that goes into each one of the outfits I’ve seen this week. It was particularly amazing to see a Sofia the First dress in the early stages of being made and then to see the completed dress on a costumed character later in the day. I was also amazed that the costume department is actually housed in Hollywood Studios. I would never have expected it to be on Disney World property, let alone in one of the theme parks. It made me like Disney more to know that the costumes are made through ethical labor done by adults in Florida, rather than through sketchy practices abroad.

As much as I appreciated seeing how the costumes are made for the park, I was also somewhat disappointed that we didn’t have a more authentic behind-the-scenes experience.