Not Quite a Million, But a Few Cool Dreams Nonetheless

We did not come home from Walt Disney World this week having won a DVC membership or a trip around the world, but our very average family of four did experience the Year of a Million Dreams guest service philosophy numerous times, in fun and different ways.

A few of the highlights:

My eight-year old son was given the exclusive Pixie Dust pin while visiting the One Man’s Dream attraction at Disney-MGM Studios. The cast member awarded him the pin after observing how focused he was on all the exhibits, and demonstrating his interest in Walt Disney’s life.

While looking at merchandise at Big Al’s in Frontierland, my older son was spontaneously given bags of cotton candy for both him and his brother, along with a Magical Moment certificate from the “Frontierland cast.”

My older son got to summon Crush at the beginning of Turtle Talk. He also assisted with some pre-opening duties at Animal Kingdom for which he was rewarded with FastPasses for the entire family at an attraction of our choice.

After riding Rock ‘n Rollercoaster my wife and I were invited to ride a second time and thereby bypass a 30 minute standby wait time.

The kids were awarded Magical Moments certificates for all kinds of different activities--pullback racing at Once Upon a Toy; trivia at Sid Cahuenga’s; handprints at Mickey’s of Hollywood; finding the key at Muppet Labs Security; and playing Star Wars tic-tac-toe at Tatooine Traders.

An interesting side note-- the marketing itself is fairly low key in terms of visible promotional materials. The monorails have some pretty ugly paint jobs, and I noticed some banners scattered throughout the Magic Kingdom, but not much other than that. Maybe they’ll be ramping it up more after the holidays