Disney Institute launches new classes

Many of you Disney dweebs (myself included) may remember the brief spot that was the Disney Institute before it became today’s DVC site of Saratoga Springs.  You might also recall that Disney Institute’s concept was to offer classes to the public taught from people across the Disney family on a variety of things like cooking, art, animation and many other things that Disney has specialties in.

Of course you also might recall that it was supposedly given 3-5 years to build a business base and axed in less than a year.  Oh, and it gave us those recently rehabbed Tree House Villas as well.

What some of you may not know is that the Disney Institute never really died.  It just went back in general to it’s roots in offering executive training to companies and individuals interested in learning better operational and customer relations capabilities in the Disney way. 

I know this existed first hand from the summers that bracketed my freshmen year in college were I worked for a water park back in my home state of Missouri (Big Surf Water Park if you must know! :).  I’m a fair haired light skinned boy, so lifeguarding was out for me.  Instead I worked in the main office doing bookwork, cash management, etc. (funny stuff for a future engineer, but hey, it was work). 

It did give me access to almost all of the folks who were running the day to day operations however.  At the time they were using a program packaged and sold by, you guessed it, Disney.  I didn’t participate directly since it was aimed at mangers, but it was basically on how to improve operations and guest experiences.  That was almost 20 years ago now…  sheesh how time flies.  Of course, I don’t think it was called Disney Institute back then, but I digress. 

Anyhow, since Mr. Eisner and crew closed down the Disney Institute, it’s gone back to its roots.  Today it offers classes on the essence of Disney operations in a variety of topic areas:

• Leadership Excellence
• People Management
• Quality Service
• Team Experiences
• Behind the Scenes Tours

Today I just got an e-mail from Disney saying they’ve added two new classes:

You can check out the current schedule and pricing at http://www.register123.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x1408083eb&varPage=info.

BTW, those Behind the Scenes Tours are a mix of ones you see from Disney offered through the parks and some others that are unique to the Institute.  Most of them are of the 3 hour variety and around $60 - $100 per person in groups of 20.  You should check them out if your there with a group … I’ve done a couple through the Disney side and they are usually quite fun and informational.