The World part of the Vacation Planner works harder than the rest. No form of recreation is spared from a majestic helicopter shot. If you weren’t aware it’s “one of the world’s premiere golf destinations,” just count the people in primary-color polos teeing off. If you thought the only way to navigate the place was by monorail, get a load of all those boats. If you assumed Pleasure Island was just for grown-ups, as all other advertising would have you believe, pay attention to the mom saying how much her kids dug The Adventurer’s Club.
That last, looming existential crisis aside, it’s all the same war of attrition for vacation days. Give them so much to do they won’t even have an afternoon to spend anywhere else. Get them to stay on property and the deed is already halfway done.
Though all the existing Disney resorts get their turn to shine, even the few chain hotels around the Disney Village, the real stars are Eisner’s pet projects. The Grand Floridian is the peak of timeless luxury, inspiring one guest to admit somewhat less timelessly that she “feels like Scarlett O’Hara.” The shiny, new moderate resorts are the peak of timely value, inspiring another guest to admit they stayed at Port Orleans because “it’s economical.” If that’s not enough, bulleted lists of “Reasons to Stay Inside Walt Disney World” push in from both sides and pinch the cuddly footage of Pluto packing his bags. Some of them, read at face value, are setting viewers up for later disaster. Admission to Theme Parks doesn’t mean free tickets, only guaranteed entrance no matter the capacity. Access to All Resort Recreation doesn’t mean the motorboats are included, only available. At least two of these perks - Disney Quality 24 Hours-A-Day and Disney’s Famous Service - are functionally identical and the last one - Rooms in All Prices - is a lie made self-incriminating with the addition of Walt Disney World’s first “value” resort in 1994.
If a guest books a room, good. If a guest invests in a room, even better. The fledgling Disney Vacation Club is presented as a magical loophole. Free tickets. Free travel planning. The nicest accommodations on property. The option to come back every year to the same deluxe villa or take a year off to spend it at the international Disney property of your choice, illustrated with a Monkey’s Paw glimpse of Euro Disneyland.
But who needs France when you’ve got a 5-Day Super Duper Pass in Florida? There are plenty fallen soldiers to weep for in this video, but none more tragic than early ‘90s naming conventions. And it was, truly, Super Duper. Unlimited admission to all three theme parks, two water parks, and Islands both Discovery and Pleasure in the convenient span of a full vacation week.
The biggest clue comes during the wind-down as various families reveal their hottest Disney tips and it’s surprisingly not the little boy carefully holding his littler brother in front of him to block his Hard Rock Café t-shirt. Right before the end, in between soft jabs at more generic vacations, a woman in white floral print says it out loud:
“The value is phenomenal. We wouldn’t go anywhere else.”
Call 1-407-W-DISNEY now. The number still works, though they’re plum out of Super Duper Passes.
Did The Walt Disney World Vacation Planner work?
In 1994, attendance at Universal Studios Florida jumped another 300,000 guests, almost closing the gap with the rival studio down the highway.
Disney-MGM Studios, to its credit, was the only Walt Disney World theme park that didn’t report a decline that year. It did not report any growth, either.
Disney’s 1994 planning video dropped Delta Air Lines, twenty-five minutes of material, and the flop sweat. Most of the footage is carried over and condensed, providing the structural backbone for several yearly updates to come. The follow-up tapes, especially from 1994 to 1997, show up in more thrift stores and Ebay auctions. You can find them more easily on YouTube than the lengthier original. They live on in nostalgic comment sections in ways this one doesn’t.
Like the pie-in-the-sky decade that spawned it, The Walt Disney World Vacation Planner accidentally proved that more isn’t always more, especially when more is the competition’s stock-in-trade.
Comments
The interesting thing about calling Disney for vacation planning is that they use a phone number starting with 407 (the area code for the Orlando area). Normally, vacation companies would use a toll-free 800 number so people didn't have any long distance charges.
I wonder how long people would be put on hold or how long they would spend talking to a Disney vacation planner... and then how much would their phone bill be, at the end of the month?