I'll come out and say it - I really hate the phrase "pixie dust" when used in reference to Disney service or the Disney brand. Some folks will use the phrase tongue-in-cheek, or with some measure of wit. That's totally cool. But some people really seem to take this "pixie dust" thing in earnest, and that creeps me out a little bit.
Disney is one of the biggest, if not
the biggest, media conglomerates in the world (Comcast might be #1). Disney excels at social engineering, brand positioning, behavioral economics, etc. They literally have this down to a science. They have hundreds if not thousands of people specifically employed to play at our heartstrings, bombard us with marketing, appeal to our nostalgia and convince us that what they do is "magical" and cannot be duplicated anywhere else. While I firmly believe that there are many many Disney employees who truly want to make something fun for fun's sake, at a corporate level,
Disney is totally playing us. However, they do it so well, I find that I don't mind.
To wit, I
do have a story (which some of you have already heard) about something
DCL did on our first cruise that literally no other cruise line could have done:
Me, my wife and our three kids (11, 6, 3) took our first cruise ever on the Dream for a 5-night Bahamian itinerary. We were totally the target market for DCL - first-time cruisers with young children and enough disposable income to afford the fares. The ship, as we all know, is huge and beautiful and elegant and all that stuff. We were having a great time with the kids' clubs, the AquaDuck, the schmancy MDRs, etc.
However, during one sea day, the five of us were on the promenade on Deck 4 fore, looking at the ocean and trying to figure out how to play shuffleboard. We really weren't aware of the time, so we did not know it was time for the big princess meet-n-greet in the Atrium. So as we are just hanging out, out of the fore alcove comes a huge line of princesses - Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora, Tiana, etc. My 6-y.o. daughter's eyes almost popped out of their sockets. There were really no other guests in the vicinity so there weren't people running up to the princesses. It was really just them, their handlers and us. Now, the handlers could have just kept shepherding the princesses toward the atrium, and the princesses themselves could have just passed by with a smile toward us, but instead, they stopped and talked to all of us, but specifically toward my daughter. I thought her head was going to explode.
It was not very long; maybe 2-3 minutes tops. But it was enough for all of them to say something to my little girl - "What's your name?", "Aren't you beautiful?", "where are you from?", "Are these your brothers?", "Please make sure you come inside and see us." The usual pablum. But the fact that they stopped when they didn't have to, and literally made my daughter's day/week/month, was worth the fare premium right there.
Now, could another cruise ship delight my little girl if the cruise line had access to several beloved princesses from TV and film? Of course they could. But they don't have Disney's brand or Disney's intellectual property that Disney has spent literally billions on to ingrain itself into society and become part of that zeitgeist. Not many companies have been able to do that, and certainly not to the extent and success of Disney.
So, yeah, right then and there on the Dream in June of 2012, there was that "pixie dust" (
groan) that literally no one other than Disney could have given my little girl. Perhaps more accurate to say "it was a unique experience that could only be given by Disney based on the popularity, strength and pervasiveness of their brand and their IP," but still.
Sorry for your loss, but so glad that she had some hope and joy to the end.
