Why Disney Needs Interns

Hello all - it appears that what little traffic that still comes my way after months of silence and bombastically declaring myself done comes from lifeanchoredinhope's list of Disney internship blogs - which is cool and all, but I never meant for this to be a Disney blog. You guys are here anyway, so I'll try to give you something fun to read. And I feel your pain - there's little enough first hand information about the engineering internships in particular - I know, we engineers are not all illiterate, we just act like it sometimes.

Quick background - I was a Professional Intern at Walt Disney World from January 4th 2016-May 15th 2016 (Spring 2016), working with Facilities Asset Management (FAM). FAM manages all the construction and refurbishment that the Imagineers or the Design and Engineering group doesn't manage across all the parks and hotels. I worked on projects like repainting the Aladar statue in front of Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur ride, building projection towers for the Hollywood Studios new nighttime entertainment, replacing a beer cart at EPCOT, and bringing the Carousel of Progress back up to modern fire code, among other things - not necessarily the glamorous jobs, but the ones that needed to be done to keep the parks safe and functional. Specifically, I did cost estimation and cost control, making sure that these projects had relevant numbers to budget to and that they stuck to those budgets. I got to see projects before they happened and see them progress, which was super cool.

Enough about me - to the main point - why Disney desperately needs interns.

Don't get me wrong - Disney is a great place to work. Therein lies the first problem - a lot of people who work there have been there for a long time, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Experience means that there almost always is a solution to almost any problem, but at the same time, there is a set way to do things - which can cause issues in a company that prides itself on innovation. Interns bring in new perspectives and new techniques, which can help the company grow and change with the times. Disney is an old company with a lot of traditions, and it relies on the churn of interns to shake things up a little.

In addition, interns come in imbued with the pixie dust that a lot of the people working at Disney seem to have lost after years (or decades) of working there. From personal observation while I was there, a lot of the full time cast members seem to forget how cool it is that they work at monkey-flipping Disney World, where their job is literally to make the imaginary real and to make people happy. It was part of my job to passively remind the people I worked with that it was pretty amazing that what  they do is unique and pretty frakking amazing - I mean, some of them got to work every day underneath Big Thunder Mountain, or with real zookeepers, or on frakking Rivers of Light - and, yes, I know, it all becomes over time an every day job, but working with young cultish enthusiastic interns helps remind older cast members why they wanted to work there in the first place.

In addition, interns bridge the gap between cast member and guest. Because the vast majority of Disney interns are young, family-free, and brand new in town with shiny blue (free!) passes to Disney World, that is where a lot of us spent a lot of our free time. (I mean, Universal and Sea World cost money.) A lot of the permanent cast members don't have time to actually experience the magic they help create because they have families and bills to pay and hobbies (ugh!), so they miss out on a crucial perspective of making Disney what it is - what it looks like from the customer's side, which, as Disney prides itself on catering to its customers' needs, is extremely important. A lot of the time, interns serve as instant focus groups (and test dummies) when it comes to testing new ideas because they have not yet become ensconced in the Disney Company bubble and still have a bit of an outside perspective.

And finally, there's the reason you all want that gosh darn internship in the first place - Disney needs interns to find the best people out there and indoctrinate  hire them. Disney consistently ranks as one of the most desired workplaces among millenials, the LGBTQ community, and maybe, I don't know, America?, so the internship program seeks to find out who really wants to work, not just who wants the shiny big brand name on their resume. As you've undoubtedly heard before, it really is a long interview that goes both ways, and as internships unfortunately become more of the new entry level position, Disney needs hungry new interns to fill up the lower ranks.

Long story short - interns keep the company young and hip, and help Disney find the best new talent. The Walt Disney Company would not survive without its internship program, which is why it's so monkey-flipping amazing. If you can get in, it's definitely a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

If you have any questions or comments about Disney and/or internships, feel free to shoot me an email at g14racer@gmail.com or look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook.


*Please note that all opinions are my own and in no way represent The Walt Disney Company or any of its affiliates.
**Also note that the hyperlinked images are not my own and belong to their respective sites.