When I started on Disneyland, my wife used to say, 'But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty.' I told her that was just the point - mine wouldn't be.

Walt Disney

When I first visited Disney World as a kid, I was enchanted without understanding why. Later that year, I took a trip to another theme park, either Hershey Park or Great Adventure. I had this vision in my mind of what it would be, and I was prepared for enchantment. When I got there, I'm sure it was fine, nut it was run down in places, in need of some care here and there, and just not as magical as the Disney in my mind. I get the same feeling when I go there, even today.

Now, to the bowling alley. You may remember that I've been bowling with Baby Karl's brothers and sister on Saturday mornings. The bowling alley is nice enough, I suppose, but it seems as if each day, a group of kids has a birthday party at the end of the alley. When this happens, they dim the lights for those lanes and put on these bright disco lights and other lighting effects that make those lanes just SPARKLE. You can see the kids and, I guess, the adults all looking over, then comparing the scene with their own lanes. I especially notice a certain look of envy on alot of the kids' faces.

Now they have the same lights on each bowling lane and, if they wanted to, they could light up everyone's lane, but I can see why they don't. If I were a kid, I might just want to have MY birthday there so I could have the special lane.

That is really the ultimate "Smokescreen and Mirrors" trick. Nothing different but flicking a light switch, and you have a whole different environment.

When I think about the Disney quote above, I see that Walt did not just have housekeeping in mind for his park. I discussed my thoughts on this in the parts of the project at the links here, so I won't repeat myself.

It seems like, lately, I live in a world of cutting corners and acceptable mediocrity. Companies package smaller portions and charge more, or maybe they use cheaper ingredients, but they spend money on marketing and packaging. Some companies (hello credit cards, banks, and utility companies!) don't even try to disguise the way they are willing to slap customers in the name of a buck, but try to distract the consumer into thinking the competition is doing it even more.

And, frankly, sometimes the people, places, and things I see seem run down and neglected that you can see no one is even attemping to create the illusion that something different is going on.

But I'm hoping that the one place that so many of us call our "happy place" will hold firm. I think because the quality is at the core of the training and the philosphy, that sloppiness of all sorts won't set in.

I think when something REALLY is different, you'll know you aren't seeing just smokescreen and mirrors.