Disney Legend and late-Imagineer Marty Sklar said, “Walt made educating visitors an integral part of the Disney park experience - without ever using that word.”1 As Imagineers, they could seek to educate but all the methods of doing so would need to allow for guests to incorporate their senses, lead with curiosity and ask questions, and discover independently or with their family and friends. But before all else, the methods had to be fun.
While reading that, certain attractions might have popped into your mind. Maybe you recalled the salt-water breeze from Soarin’ at Epcot or the rush of heat felt from the semi-truck engulfed in flames at Catastrophe Canyon from the now-defunct Studio Backlot Tour at Hollywood Studios. There’s many more where that came from but before we continue with the ways in which we can experience these attractions in the parks, let’s learn a bit more on how this conceptual framework was developed and why it still matters today.
What is edutainment?
In the simplest terms, “edutainment” is the strategic use of entertainment to educate an audience in an engaging way. While it’s been a buzzier term in recent years, it’s not a new concept by any means. In fact, some historians cite Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack2 as one of the earlier documented forms of edutainment for it’s inclusion of puzzles and other inviting methods to inform early American colonists on how best to improve their lives with the means that were available to them.
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If we fast forward, oh, 215 years later, Walt Disney introduced his own form of edutainment: the “True-Life Adventures” film series. Frustrated by the economical but deeply uninteresting industrial short films created by Walt Disney Productions for corporate clients during the war years, Walt switched gears and decided to shut down the entire operation on the basis that, well, he just didn’t enjoy making or watching that kind of educational film.3 Instead, he directed his attention toward capturing and sharing stories of the natural world through documentaries. Over the next several years, the 13-film “True-Life Adventures” series won eight Academy Awards and identified Walt Disney as a father of the nature documentary as we know it today.
To all of my Gen Xers and my fellow millennials: what did the sweet, sweet rolling television cart mean for at least thirty minutes of your school day? That’s right - you got to sit back and relax with an episode or two of a television show, like Schoolhouse Rock!, The Reading Rainbow, or Bill Nye the Science Guy. We could extend that to the computer lab with games, such as The Oregon Trail which singlehandedly taught generations of American children that the last thing we would ever be caught doing was romanticizing pioneer life because what would it ultimately result in? Say it with me folks: dysentery! Although, I was more inclined to daydream about the turn-of-the-century life and times of my favorite American Girl doll, Samantha Parkington.