I’ve been writing about Disney for a long time.  What you may or may not know is that I started my professional life writing for Disney.  While in college I rewrote the Welcome to Disneyland Tour using the knowledge I was learning from my public speaking professors at CSULB.  It was an amazing opportunity to put my speech communication education to good use.

After graduation, I moved on to writing for the resort’s Guest Communications department.  I helped assist with the high flow of guest correspondence received each day, along with the new email system.  (Yes, this was back when email was new and we all wondered if the whole “Disneyland website thing” would ever be more than a passing fad.)

I was tasked with creating responses used by myself and some of the department’s other Cast Members so that there would be set messages in place that could be tailored to address guests’ issues and questions.  This is pretty standard for business, but it  is important for me to note here that Guest Communications takes every letter, email, and phone call very, very seriously.  During my time in Guest Communications, I wrote a variety of other communications–from the phone recordings guests would hear on the pay phones to many of the Cast Member communications from the resort’s then president.

I left Guest Communications in 1998 to begin my career as a marketing and public relations professional.  Today, I am a freelance communications consultant and writer (and always available for new gigs, I might add) and love what I do.

This may surprise some of you because my blog is not perfect.  As I mentioned in my “Note to readers” tab (which was done in response to my reader survey), most of my posts happen LATE at night or are crammed in during the baby’s nap, which doesn’t leave me a whole lot of time for things like preplanning or extensive proofreading.  In my work as a freelance writer, I have the time to put a piece down and then return to it when I have fresh eyes to find the mistakes. With my blog, I just don’t have time to do that.

At any rate, writing the very best blog is really important to me and in doing so, I try to maintain the Disney way of writing I learned back in the ’90s.  In an effort to bring the very best news and information available on the Resort to my readers, I think it is important to reflect Disney’s voice and style, as well as my own.  I like to keep my blog casual and conversational, yet punctuated with Disney elements by using correct terminology whenever possible.

Last week, I posted a Disney Vocabulary Lesson, which turned out to be a very popular post.  (That post was an except from my book.)  Below are some style guidelines I follow when it comes to writing about Disneyland.  If you are a blogger, I hope you find these guidelines helpful in your own writing.

•  Know the correct names of the parks and hotels.
• Disneyland
• Disney California Adventure Park (Note that it isn’t possessive and it is all four words.  This hasn’t always been the official name of the park, so don’t kick yourself over writing it incorrectly in the past.)
• Disney’s Paradise Pier
• Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
• Disneyland Hotel

• Get it right when it comes to restaurant and attraction names.  You may think you know the name of an attraction or show, but do you really?  Some attractions have possessive names (i.e. Pinocchio’s Daring Journey) while other don’t.  Other names have very specific punctuation and should be written as such no matter when they appear in a sentence.  Here are some names that may surprise you:
• “it’s a small world”
• “a bug’s land”
• Fantasmic!
• Disney Junior – Live on Stage!
• California Screamin’
• Disney’s Aladdin – A Musical Spectacular
• It’s Tough to Be a Bug!
• Muppet*Vision 3D
• Tuck and Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies
• Jumpin’ Jellyfish
• Mad Tea Party
• Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer Island (note that Tom Sawyer is not possessive)
• Sleeping Beauty Castle (note that this one is not possessive either)

• Employees should be referred to as Cast Members.  And yes, Cast Member should be capitalized.

• Disneyland Resort (and Walt Disney World) visitors are referred to as guests.  Officially, Disney capitalizes the word “Guest” but I have chosen not to in my blog.  (I’m such a rebel!)

• If you are going to refer to the Disneyland Resort as the “Happiest Place on Earth,” then it needs to be done with the quotation marks and caps like I have it here.  

• Let’s also get one thing straight so that we are all on the same page.  It’s “FASTPASS” in all caps–whether you are at Disneyland or Walt Disney World.  And along the same train of thought, guests with special needs get “guest assistance passes” and families with little ones can use “rider switch.”

•  In case you missed it, click here for the vocabulary lesson I posted here on my blog last week.  Here you will find a lot more useful information.