2006 – 2008 – The Year of a Million Dreams

Sad as it may be on a list that’ll continue on to 2023, many Disney Parks enthusiasts will be quick to tell you that in terms of annual promos, Disney peaked with the Year of the Million Dreams. It makes sense. Coming off of the resounding success of the Happiest Celebration that practically escorted the world back to Disney Parks after a multi-year downturn in tourism post-9/11 (and positioned just before the 2008 Recession that sent the world back into financial despair), the Year of a Million Dreams was exactly what the world needed.

Basically, the Year of the Million Dreams saw “Dream Squad” Cast Members dispatched across Disneyland and Walt Disney World. These Cast Members were charged with the appropriately-Disney job of making dreams come true for those who least expect it. A Cast Member might hand you a pin, or a lanyard filled with them – yours, free. They might give your entire family dreamy Mouse Ears at no cost.

But the Year of a Million Dreams was best known for bringing to life the dreams that money can’t buy. Sure, FastPass is free anyway, but imagine stepping off of a ride and being handed a “Dream FastPass” lanyard, with once-per-ride, anytime access to nine rides across Magic Kingdom for your whole family; being invited to the press opening of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage; being randomly told that EPCOT will stay open late for you and a few a hundred other guests tonight.

Better yet, you might be randomly selected by a Dream Squad Cast Member to win a $500 World of Disney gift card; an all-expenses paid trip to the other domestic Disney park; a 220-point Saratoga Springs Disney Vacation Club timeshare ownership, promising free stays at DVC properties and all dues paid through the 2050s; a 4-day Disney Cruise with VIP reception on Castaway Cay; even the Grand Marshall Tour – a 15-day, all-expenses paid trip to the Disney Parks in Florida, California, Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong, plus $8,000 cash to pay the associated taxes.

Of course, despite not being the biggest prize on the roster, the pièce de résistance was an overnight stay inside the parks, via the custom-crafted Cinderella Castle Dream Suite at Magic Kingdom or the Disneyland Dream Suite above New Orleans Square at Disneyland. The practice of giving away a night in each suite every day was one of the most exciting possibilities for guests in the parks… Just don’t expect a dream come true, and certainly don’t ask for one.

Sure, 99% of Disney’s giveaways during the promotion had a retail value of $24 or less (think, pins, hats, shirts, exclusive ride time, FastPass access, etc.) and most guests didn’t really end up with anything at all. But somehow, the atmosphere of the Year of a Million Dreams was enough to lift everyone’s spirits anyway.

The Year of a Million Dreams was such a tremendous hit for guests, it became the Years of a Million Dreams, extending through 2008. In all, Disney reported distributing about $18 million in giveaways in 2007 (the full list of which you can view here), and $13 million in giveaways in 2008. The total – about $31 million – is far, far less than the cost of the even the smallest attraction, yet engrained tremendous good will in the hearts of Disney Parks guests… so much so that Disney probably should’ve made the practice permanent. But oh well. Time moves on, and so does the promotional cycle…

2009 – What Will You Celebrate?

The “What Will You Celebrate?” campaign is memorable for its too-good-to-be-true promise that any guest would be granted free admission to Disney Parks on their birthday.

As a guest-facing perk, the giveaway made good sense. Disney Parks have always been synonymous with celebrations, like graduations, honeymoons, adoptions, retirements, weddings, and birthdays. A national study by travel research firm Ypartnership suggested that 7 out of 10 people had taken a vacation primarily to celebrate a special occasion, and that Disney Parks had topped the list of destinations. Especially in the midst of the financial crisis caused by the 2008 Recession, the promise of a free admission might just enough to convince a family to consider upgrading their “staycation” into a full-blown Disney trip.

But still, free admission on your birthday?

Make no mistake, this wasn’t an altruistic offer from Disney. The campaign made great sense business-wise, too. Very few people visit Disney Parks for exactly one day – their birthday – alone. So even if Junior got in for free (in 2009, an $80 value), Mom, Dad, Sister, and Brother didn’t. (Likewise, if you had a multi-day ticket or Annual Pass, Disney promised an “alternate birthday treat,” but explicitly decreed that no cash refund or credit would be issues for the unused ticket.) That means that a single free admission was a clever “loss-leader,” more than made up for by families opting into Disney Parks vacations thanks to the promotion.

The “What Will You Celebrate” campaign ran from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009. That means that everyone on Earth got exactly one day of opportunity to enter Disney Parks for free (except those born February 29, who could redeem their free birthday admission on either February 28 or March 1 since 2009 was not a Leap Year). But offers of free admission continued into the following year with a different promo…

2010 – Give a Day, Get a Disney Day

The “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” promotion was one of the shortest-lived promotional campaigns in Disney Parks history… because it was one of the most successful.

Using The Muppets (who Disney acquired in 2004) as ambassadors, the campaign offered a compellingly simple premise: families could sign up to volunteer for a full day at a partnered non-profit organization, and in exchange, would receive tickets for admission to Disneyland or Walt Disney World theme parks for each volunteering member of their family for a day (meaning that, unlike the “What Will You Celebrate?” birthday-based free admission, the whole family could get a free day together.)

Once in the park, “VoluntEARS” were invited to participate in the Honorary VoluntEARS Cavalcade – a mini-parade wherein “Give a Day” guests marched alongside an under-construction parade float carrying Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Sweetums.

Tickets could be earned through the promotion through qualifying volunteer work beginning January 1, 2010, but needed to be redeemed before December 15, 2010 (with a few blockout dates around holidays). Disney hoped to recruit one million volunteers and thus committed one million single-day admission tickets to the cause. Just 67 days into the year – March 9, 2010 – Disney announced that the “Give a Day” promotion had exceeded their expectations. One million “days” had been volunteered, and one million “Disney days” distributed, bringing the promotion to an early end.

2011 – Let the Memories Begin

At the start of 2011, barely a quarter of Americans had a smart phone. The newest innovation was the iPhone 4, with an unprecedented 5 megapixel camera. Instagram was just three months old. Disney World did not have free wifi, FastPass was free and booked day-of, and MagicBands didn’t exist. But the “Let the Memories Begin” era saw the increasingly tech-savvy, photo-forward, phone-as-camera culture coming and embraced it as a media-tinged promotional campaign.

In addition to a 14-city promotional tour where guests could pose for virtual in-park photos, the “Memories” campaign was based around a pseudo-social-media campaign where guests could upload their in-park photos to a Disney-curated web page, creating a sort of fan-generated archive of Disney Parks vacations throughout the year.

Those images (as well as in-park pictures captured by PhotoPass photographers) also had a guest-facing function. Each night, that day’s images would be used to populate a show called “The Magic, The Memories, and You!” that saw real guest photos projected onto Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom and It’s A Small World at Disneyland. (Projection mapping was a brand new technology for the parks, and the gimmick of searching for your image on the castle was a clever one that remained part of several subsequent nighttime shows.)

Projection mapping and the display of guest-submitted photos isn’t the only thing that remained from the campaign. “Let the Memories Begin” became a de facto slogan of the Disney Parks and in fact, banners bearing the phrase were hung over the entrance to Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom and remained for several years, even outlasting the promotion they were placed there for.