Trainers in the Wild: Training Lessons Learned Launching Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Imagine a training team of 12 people responsible for the arrival, orientation, and job-specific training of new employees. Now imagine over 100 of those trainees are arriving every week. Those arrivals continue for months. There aren’t enough training facilities. The facilities that do exist are still under construction. And the trainers are coping with all this while wearing hard hats, dodging construction vehicles, walking through muddy landscapes, and working extremely long hours a day, every day, for six months straight.

That was the experience of the 1998 Disney’s Animal Kingdom opening training team. The training team was one of the factors that made the opening of Walt Disney World’s newest park a success. I was on that team and learned some valuable training lessons about conflict, collaboration, creativity, flexibility, focus, and fun.

In this presentation, I will share what I learned that helped me grow as a trainer and how those lessons apply to effective training strategies you can implement to handle almost any challenge. Join me for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring a little more adventure and adaptability into your own programs with actionable training strategies – and discover how to thrive when the terrain gets wild.