All you need is faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust.

Let me start by saying that I love consumer products and definitely need certain things to maintain my level of comfort. A few of my favorite things include: my BlackBerry, iPod Touch, Coach purses, and Banana Republic clothes. Though largely “unnecessary,” I would like to think that these products enhance my life. However, experiences take a product to an entirely new level, one that I believe brings great long-term memories and satisfaction. As much as I like all these products, they cannot top the experience that I had seeing Taylor Swift at my first concert or the wind that I felt in my hair when I visited the Golden Gate Bridge. Experiences are defined as: involving the entire living being; resulting from direct observation and/or participation in events – whether they are real, dreamlike, or virtual; and complex, but can be categorized. Given this definition, my most meaningful customer experience is visiting a Disney theme park.

Disney parks are a very personal experience for me. The Walt Disney Company, as a whole, makes up a significant part of my life. My walls are adorned with Disney artwork, Disney songs crowd my iTunes, and reading Disney online news is as much a part of my daily routine as taking a shower. However, I am going to focus on the actual experience of visiting a Disney theme park.

I’ve been a avid Disney fan for the past decade, frequenting both the California and Florida resorts. For me, and many others, the Disney “experience” begins when I start planning my vacation. I can tell you that my Walt Disney World vacation is 79 days from today. (Disney conveniently provides a counter on their website, as proof that guests are so excited about their vacation that they count down each and every day.) For me, the entire vacation process is an experience, from booking the flight/planning the car trip, to packing, to making restaurant reservations, to hardly being able to fall asleep the night before. A trip to a Disney theme park overwhelms my senses to the point that it is difficult to describe in words. Disney is about family, friends, not acting my age, wishes, relaxation and, in short, pure magic.

Disney theme parks fit several of the Strategic Experiential Modules. However, for the typical theme park patron, it most clearly fits into the SENSE module, which are sensory experiences created through sight, sound, taste, touch and smell.

• Sight: Disney theme parks always have a large icon (which, interestingly enough, Walt Disney coined a “weenie”) that serves as the center of the park. Disneyland has Sleeping Beauty Castle, Animal Kingdom has the Tree of Life, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios has Mickey’s Sorcerer Hat. Besides making a great photo opportunity, these icons are very tall and can be seen before entering the park, sometimes, miles away. These icons serve to build excitement and enthusiasm about the fun that waits inside the gate.

• Sound: The moment that you approach the perimeter of a Disney park, you are surrounded on all ends by Disney music. Like the park icons, this builds excitement and helps to set the tone of the park. At Animal Kingdom, you will hear jungle sounds, while at the Magic Kingdom you’ll hear songs sung by the Disney princesses. Background music is not always noticed at a conscious level, but it plays a huge role in the overall theme park experience. I have several Disney soundtracks that I listen to between trips so that I can close my eyes and imagine that I am in the park.

• Taste: As any Disney fan knows, certain foods are unique to the parks, such as pineapple Dole whips, Mickey ice cream bars, and turkey legs. When I visit a Disney park, I look forward to eating certain foods because I have so strongly associated them with my vacation. (Side note: Many of these foods have changed as a result of me recently becoming vegan.) Disney also does a great job of theming their foods to the land or park in which they are located. You can eat pineapple soft serve while you are waiting to watch the Enchanted Tiki Room, where Polynesian birds sing. In this case, pineapple soft serve enhances this experience, because pineapple and fruits are associated with tropical islands. Likewise, Disneyland serves gumbo in their land themed after New Orleans.

• Touch: Disney parks are a very sensory experience, and touch is no different. One of the best ways that Disney utilizes this sense is the change in pavement texture as you walk from one “land” to another. In Fantasyland, there is cobblestone, while there is wood in Frontierland, and rougher pathways in Adventureland. Ride vehicles and the way that each one is designed for a different feel also helps to enhance each individual experience.

• Smell: Disney intentionally controls certain smell, while other ones are natural. For example, when you enter Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, you find yourself on Main Street, U.S.A., at the turn of the 20th century. Shops and restaurants line the street and you find yourself consumed with the smell of fresh cookies. Incidentally, Disney pumps certain scents into the air in order to drive you into their bakery. Intentionally or not, these scents add to the overall customer experience by involving all the human senses. I could describe a number of other scents that make me think of Disney parks, from the musky smell of the Pirates of the Caribbean boats, to the strange, distinctive smell that emits from the jeeps at the Dinosaur ride.

In addition to being a sensory experience, Disney is also incredibly emotional, placing it under FEEL marketing as well. Disney is widely associated with magic, dreams, wishes, and family fun. A child’s first trip to a Disney park is considered a rite of passage for many parents. Many young couples get engaged, or even married, in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom. The beauty of Disney parks is that they are cherished around the world by people of different ages, backgrounds, and walks of life.

Because Disney is such a personal experience for me, I could abstractly place it into the remaining experiential frameworks of THINK, ACT, and RELATE. As cliché as it sounds, the philosophy of Walt Disney and the entertainment empire that he built from humble beginnings does encourage me to think about chasing my dreams as much as I can. I feel that I am able to relate to certain Disney characters in some ways. I acted upon my lifelong dream of working for Disney and I took a semester of from school to go to Walt Disney World, because I believed wholeheartedly in the company so much.

Experiences are a very personal thing, but also largely subjective. While Disney parks are an amazing holistic sensory experience for me, many people could visit Disneyland (the product) in the exact same way and not have the “experience” that do. For example, I took my best friend to Disneyland hoping that she would share in my love of the Disney magic. While she had a fun time, it was not anything that she wanted to write home about. In short, she just “didn’t get it,” (“it” being the Disney magic). In order to create suitable experiences, it is crucial to understand the consumer, and their motive and usage of the product. There may be universal products, but there are few universal experiences.

I am concluding with this video, because it sums up everything that I just said and demonstrates why Disney is the ultimate consumer experience.