june-2010

52
JUNE 2010 | UNITED.COM
industry
The Keys
to the Kingdom
AT THE DISNEY INSTITUTE, CORPORATE EXECS STUDY
THE HOUSE OF MOUSE’S PRACTICAL MAGIC.
BY DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF // ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROSS MACDONALD
“THESE TUNNELS only look like they’re
underground,” Scott Milligan tells me
with glee as we descend a wide concrete
staircase. “They’re actually the fi rst
story of a building that stretches
underneath the entire park.” He stops
and makes eye contact, as if he’s just
revealed the secret of the mummy’s
tomb. “What visitors see is really the
second story of a two-story building.
The grade around the park was raised
to cover it up.”
My bright-eyed, barrel-chested guide
smiles as the staircase opens into a
tremendous tunnel system bustling with
janitors, food servers and fully costumed
characters, all capable of popping up in
almost any location in the park to restock
a restaurant, handle a problem or step
onstage. “This is a culture by design, not a
culture by default.”
Scott Milligan is not your typical
Disney World tour guide. The
impressively cordial fi ftysomething
former human resources manager
takes corporate clients on tours of the
park’s “living laboratory” as a facilitator
for the Disney Institute, an off shoot
of the company’s in-house training
program, Disney University, which
was highlighted in Tom Peters’ 1982
business classic In Search of Excellence.
In the practical sense, Milligan’s role
is to help outside businesses—ranging
from restaurant chains and hospitals to
banks and airlines, including United—
introduce some of the company’s
innovations to their own operational
cultures. The Tourism Business
Council of South Africa retained Disney
to help prepare more than 250,000
tourism workers, many of them new
to the industry, for this month’s FIFA
World Cup soccer tournament.
Disney World likes to portray itself
as a place where “magic happens.”
But for most adult guests at the Magic
Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and
the rest of the 47-square-mile resort
complex in Orlando, the real magic has
less to do with the animatronic robots