It's a Small World After All

"Did you get a picture of that?"my wife asked me.

We were in Mirabell Garden in Salzburg, Austria, on an Adventures by Disney tour called Imperial Cities. Our son, 7, and daughter, 4, along with several other kids and our two Disney "Adventure Guides," were reenacting a scene from "The Sound of Music," which was filmed in Salzburg. The kids hopped from step to step, singing "Doe, a deer, a female deer…" just the way Julie Andrews and the von Trapp kids did in the film. By the time they finished the song, everyone was laughing — the kids, their parents, the guides — and what was a chilly, Alpine morning had been transformed in front of our eyes. Everyone was looking forward to the adventure ahead.

"I hope you got it," my wife said, "because that was a real Disney moment."

As it turned out, our trip was full of Disney moments — from watching the kids learn to make apple strudel in Vienna to enjoying a feast in a 600-year-old medieval building overlooking the main square in Prague. Moments like these are a cornerstone of the four-year-old Adventures by Disney business and the reason why the company keeps growing year after year.

"We had six itineraries in 2006; 12 in 2007; 17 in 2008; and we’ll have 23 next year on six continents," said Ed Baklor, senior vice president. "Our Adventures by Disney program is an escorted tour product where we help families experience the stories of the world, Disney-style. We get to immerse them in a hassle-free vacation with everything planned out — the hotels, the meals, the coach transportation, the stops along the way … It’s like a Fast Pass to the world."

Disney’s Best-Kept Secret
For a company as important and visible as Disney, its tour division has managed to stay largely under the radar since it first began in 2005. Even now, it may be the company’s best-kept secret.

In its first year, Adventures by Disney carved out a niche for itself in domestic trips and national parks, and tours such as Quest for the West (Jackson Hole, Wyo., Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park), Spirit of America (Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Williamsburg, Va.) and Southwest Splendors (Sedona, Ariz., Grand Canyon National Park and Moab, Utah) are still considered core products. The company does not only offer domestic trips, however. It now features seven tours throughout Europe and the British Isles, as well as in exotic destinations such as Peru, Costa Rica, Australia and China.

For 2009, the company is expanding its offerings once again, adding eight new itineraries. Close to home, there will be Beantown and the Big Apple (Boston, Newport, R.I., and New York City); Golden Path to Yosemite (Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and San Francisco); Taming the Last Frontier (Fairbanks, Denali National Park and the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska); and Rocky Trails and Mountie Tales (Glacier National Park, Mont., and Banff National Park, Alberta). While overseas, Adventures by Disney will be adding Alpine Magic (Stresa, Italy; Zermatt and Lake Lucerne, Switzerland); Bella Italia (Sorrento and Florence, Italy); Gateway to the Galapagos (Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands); and Safari to South Africa (Capetown, the Garden Route and Kapama Game Reserve).

"Our national parks trips are truly the core of Adventures by Disney, with our Wyoming and Grand Canyon itineraries, so it’s a natural evolution for us to go to Glacier, Yosemite and Denali," said Baklor. "Then we have the more exotic destinations of China, Peru, Australia and Costa Rica, and we add to that the Galapagos Islands … and South Africa. It’s just a great statement for our growth."

In addition to these new itineraries, next year, Adventures by Disney will be adding a special luxury element to select departures on two of its tours. These Signature departures will feature upgraded accommodations, enhanced travel experiences and special amenities. For instance, on the Signature version of Safari to South Africa, guests will stay in a private game lodge, enjoy special spa treatments, attend a privately hosted dinner at an elephant lodge and stay at the famous Cape Grace hotel in Capetown. On the Signature version of Golden Path to Yosemite, clients stay at the Awahnee Hotel in Yosemite and the brand-new St. Regis in San Francisco and also participate in a walking tour of Ansel Adams’ Yosemite with tips by expert photographers.

"We got the idea for our Signature series from suggestions by key travel agents and directly from customers," said Baklor. "Our trips are all-inclusive and hassle-free, so picture that with the addition of deluxe hotels … We felt like it was worth testing this year."

The Disney Difference
Itineraries and accommodations are important, of course, but what makes Adventures by Disney stand out is the way it caters to its core market, families.

The focus on families begins with its Adventure Guides. On our trip, our guides took care of all the logistics — everything from arranging for our luggage to be picked up to watching our backs at ATMs — as well as educating the group on the history and culture of each place we visited. On the days where we had free time, they acted like our own personal concierge, making sure we had whatever help we needed to make the most of our trip — steering us to a bike rental agency in Salzburg, for example, and recommending a great family-friendly restaurant in Vienna. When we preferred to keep things unstructured and just wander, they stepped back and let us do that too.

For most tour companies, this is where the job of tour leader ends, but not at Adventures by Disney. In addition to these duties, the Adventure Guides are consummate babysitters for all the "Junior Adventurers" on the trip. In fact, babysitting is an inadequate description of what they do. On our trip, guides Alex Kemper and Trevor Enderby entertained, educated, befriended and bedazzled the kids. The parents were amazed at how quickly the kids felt comfortable with them. Nervous jitters on the first morning were gone in a matter of hours, and pretty soon, the kids wanted to be on their own with Alex and Trevor as badly as their parents wanted some time without their children.

This is a key component of an Adventures by Disney tour as the itinerary is punctuated by blocks of time where adults and children go their separate ways in order to better experience an attraction. For instance, while the adults in our group took a guided tour of Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, the kids went with Alex and Trevor to the children’s museum next door to learn about the lives of royals and servants through dress-up and interactive games.

"We’re designing tours for every member of the family," explained Baklor. "So there is something for everyone whether you’re 4 or 94. I mean we’ve had 89-year-olds ziplining in Costa Rica, and I had a 5-year-old spending 2½ hours at the Louvre last week in Paris. And the 5-year-old wasn’t bored because she was playing an art detective game, looking at the same art that mom and dad might be looking at with an art historian and spending the same amount of time, but doing it from a child’s perspective. This is certainly more fun for the kids and more fun for the parents because they’re not getting tugged on the shirtsleeves all the time."

Balancing family togetherness with time apart seems to be a fine art at Adventures by Disney, and our itinerary felt like just the right balance. Alex and Trevor provided several opportunities for my wife and me to have dinner without the kids, for instance. And even long bus rides were used to play games, draw pictures, make flip books and, yes, watch the occasional Disney movie — allowing the adults to spend time actually talking to each other.

This attention to detail is part of what’s called the "Disney Difference" in the Disney corporate lexicon. It’s a term you run across a lot in the promotional material, and it is taken seriously by executives and guides alike.

"Our trips really tell a story," said Don Rose, vice president of sales and services. "People ask us all the time if they are going to find characters on our trips and the answer is yes, you are, but not the typical characters you’re going to find at our theme parks or on our cruise ships. Instead, you will come face to face with characters such as Benjamin Franklin on Spirit of America or Marco Polo in Italy. And it’s really amazing how we use those characters to tell the story of a destination."

Even if they didn’t use corporate lingo, the clients on our tour were certainly impressed with the Disney Difference. They mentioned the ease of being met at the airport; the patience of the guides when it came to dealing with everything from strollers to wheelchairs to desperate rushes to the potty; the city maps that were given to us when we arrived in a new destination filled with handwritten, color-coded notes (instead of some blurry, generic photocopy); the gifts and Disney pins we were given at the end of each day’s adventure; the farewell dinner slide show (and DVD of it sent to us at home upon our return); and much more.

Unlike the clients on some of Disney’s tours, many of the guests on our trip were well-traveled. Most had been to Europe before, as well as having traveled with other tour operators.

"It’s different with a Disney trip," said Ellen Sims, from Toronto, who was traveling with her husband and two daughters. "The kids become like a family by the end."

One couple with an only child said they liked Adventures by Disney because it gave their daughter a bit of the camaraderie of having siblings.

The biggest manifestation of the Disney Difference I found was in special events that were built into the itinerary. One evening, we had dinner in a private gazebo built by the Hapsburgs right in the middle of the Vienna zoo. After a great meal in stunningly beautiful surroundings, we walked back to our bus through the closed zoo at night.

At a dinner in Prague, the kids tried their hand at fencing (which had our son smiling from ear to ear), and then we all enjoyed a medieval feast complete with costumed musicians, jesters and a king. After the dinner, the kids knelt down and were dubbed princes and princesses by the king. (Our daughter wore her crown nonstop for the rest of the trip and even flew home wearing it!)

And the list goes on. These special moments, whether it’s a private marionette show in Vienna or a dessert party at a Broadway theater in New York City, are carefully thought out and extremely well executed, and they are key elements of the Disney Difference.

"Our development team does a fabulous job, and I’m really proud of the work that they do," said Rose. "They look [at a destination] and say what does a 4-year-old do, what does a 14-year-old do, what about a 40-year-old? We look at the destination, we look at the infrastructure and we absolutely make sure we do something that everyone will remember forever…."

Matching the Client
Identifying a client that is right for Adventures by Disney requires that the agent ask a few questions.

Many of the tours have minimum-age limits. The more adventurous trips, such as South Africa, are available for kids 6 and up, although they are recommended for those over 8. Even relatively mellow trips, such as the Imperial Cities tour my family experienced, have a minimum age of 4 and suggest that kids be at least 6. Take the age suggestions seriously. While our 4-year-old did well on the trip and had fun, it was strenuous for her (and us) at times.

On our tour at least, nearly everyone had some experience with Disney travel products already, whether it was from staying at one of the theme parks, taking a Disney cruise or a previous tour or being a member of Disney’s vacation club. While experience with Disney’s travel portfolio is not essential, a positive opinion of the brand is a plus when gauging a client’s interest.

While our tour was full of seasoned travelers, some of the tours are more popular with first-time travelers. Likewise, some of the domestic trips are ideal for families that want to visit New York City, for instance, but are overwhelmed by having to arrange all the details on their own or by having to keep their kids entertained throughout their visit. Of course, the trips are also ideal for multi-generational families and families that want to travel in a group with other friends and families.

Once you do book a family on an Adventures by Disney trip, be sure to follow up once your clients get home. Repeat business on these tours seems like a no-brainer, especially with the growth and additional itineraries that have been added year after year.

Regardless of how you identify the right clients for these tours, travel agents should know that their contribution to the growth of Adventures by Disney is not lost on its executives.

"We’re very excited about our growth, and the support we have internally from the company has been very positive," said Baklor. "But this growth has been due to the fact that the travel agent community has helped us get to the point where we can sell 23 itineraries. So without the travel trade, I don’t think we would have gotten as far as we have."

With or without travel agents’ help, Disney’s best-kept secret is bound to get out. It’s only a mater of time before consumers discover Adventures by Disney and it develops the kind of following that the Disney Cruise Line enjoys. Agents would do well to jump on this profitable bandwagon now and enjoy the adventure.

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