A Little Disney 101

Kimberly Chapple
Editor

Last month I attended the National Fluid Power Association Spring Conference at Walt Disney World in Orlando. As an editor, it was a great opportunity to meet and greet leaders in the fluid power industry, while at the same time gather story ideas for upcoming issues.

I came away from the NFPA conference with new insight from seminars on sound business leadership principles, and a desire to share my new-found appreciation for Walt Disney as a master visionary, builder, ecologist and designer. From his movies (the world's first full-length color animated feature is Snow White) to his theme parks (one of which is a multi-billion dollar property built on prime swampland, Walt Disney's vision resulted in tremendous successes, all the while hearing "it couldn't be done." Sound familiar in your line of work?

Perseverance sure pays off. Our group was lucky to see it in a "behind the scenes" trip of the Magic Kingdom where we observed many engineering successes, including hydraulic and pneumatic systems at work, actuator-laden animatronics, and creative air conditioning systems and conveyer componentry at the park's own laundry facilities. We learned how Walt had a carefully-engineered reason for everything -- from the attractive canal system surrounding the parking lot (while man-made, it looks natural and rids the park of dirt washed off vehicles each and every rainy Florida summer afternoon) to the entire layout of the park itself (which is actually the second floor of the structure allowing "cast members"--Disney employees--to access all areas unseen; for example, you'll never see a Frontierland cast member walking through Fantasyland to get to work). Heck, it's even designed so that NASA Space Shuttle missions from Cape Canaveral fly over Tomorrowland.

Experiencing Disney from this perspective was one great big lesson on how vision, creativity and "covering all the bases" result in rewards. And it's directly applicable to OEM design. Hey, perhaps you can talk your boss into sending you South for a little "Disney 101." May you end up as inspired (and, of course, as financially secure) as Walt did!

kchapple@designfax.net