Guided to success

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK — The first time I approached the rim of the Grand Canyon, I shuffled toward it, my head lowered.

On purpose.

The national park is a focal feature of Adventures by Disney’s eight-day tour, Arizona and Utah, and at the kickoff dinner in Sedona, Ariz., our two Adventure Guides asked a person from each family to stand up, introduce themselves and state what they were most excited to do on the trip. Not surprisingly, the Grand Canyon was cited frequently.

However, once there, our guides had an idea about a canyon reveal. We would stand in a line, hand on the next person’s shoulders, and walk, eyes on the pavement, from the motorcoach to Mather Point. On the guide’s signal, we’d all look up and catch our first glimpse of the vista together.

When the moment came, there was grinning and chuckling as we got into formation. We probably looked as ridiculous as we felt, snaking our way from the coach to the edge.

But it worked. We lifted our heads in unison, and there was the canyon, subtle colors shimmering in the late-afternoon light, bigger and deeper than any photograph could suggest. And we all witnessed it together.

Perhaps this is what many people call “Disney magic.” Or, as Disney calls it, the Disney Difference.

Adventures by Disney is approaching its 20th anniversary next year. It launched in 2005 with what Lesley Kay Combs, senior manager of land and cruise operations at Adventures by Disney, called a “small but mighty” team, offering tours in Wyoming and Hawaii. Over time, it has grown to 50 destinations and offers a unique positioning: A relatively small tour operation with the resources and pockets of one of the biggest names in tourism.

Kari Dillon, owner of Marvelous Mouse Travels (No. 72 on the Travel Weekly Power List) and a Disney Specialist, said that Adventures by Disney has a big repeat rate among her clients.

“We started selling ABD about five years ago, and we’ve grown year over year,” she said. “We’ll do about a million dollars with them this year.”

The company doesn’t break out tour operation passenger totals in its earnings reports, but the division has grown steadily over those 20 years. Its original, seven-day Wyoming trip is still one of its best sellers, and the Arizona and Utah tour is what Kyle Raser, senior manager of trip operations, land and cruise for Adventures by Disney, called “a great entry point into why we do what we do.”

But these days, their tours are as far-flung as Cambodia, Egypt and Iceland. In 2016, it added cruising via a river partnership with AmaWaterways, and it offers expedition cruising with Ponant and GoGalapagos. 

The company is constantly tweaking and refining its lineup, putting itineraries into the “vault” and then taking them out to “reimagine” them for repeat guests, according to Combs. She said 2026 will feature big updates from the brand.

Like most travel operations, Adventures by Disney relies heavily on guest feedback. But it also leans on input from its Adventure Guides. After all, who knows the product better? 

Disney currently employs about 150 Adventure Guides. There are two on each tour, and like most tour managers, they do more than you’d expect. Ours led sunrise hikes, entertained us on the bus, played photographer, pulled baggage and created friendships — and did it all with a little sprinkle of fairy dust.

The David and Mike Show

With an engaging grin, David Rainey gestured me into his “office”: a table in the baggage-claim Starbucks at Phoenix Airport. 

My daughter and I had just arrived at PHX for the kickoff of the Arizona and Utah tour, and our fellow guests and soon-to-be friends were milling about with bags and gear and wary smiles, looking like you do when you aren’t quite sure what comes next.

Rainey’s task in the moment was to put us at ease. He and fellow Adventure Guide Michael Hage were our first points of contact, and that touchpoint was important. Rainey needed to firm up a few meal choices with me, but he also needed to reset people’s mood from travel stress to what was coming next.

As the trip began to unfold, the landscape of saguaro cactus and the itinerary we had read prior to traveling began to come together and make sense. This was in no small part owing to the rapport between Rainey and Hage, who were setting the stage.

As Combs and Raser put it, guides are trained in the idea of “Show.”

“It’s unique in a theme park and resort environment,” Raser said. “It’s the theme we’re bringing to life. In Adventures by Disney, we’re not out there to present a Disney story; we’re presenting a story of the location.”

My interview with Combs and Raser was over the phone, not written, but I got the impression that “Show” should be spelled uppercase. Show ranges from the practical — like whether the motorcoach is clean — to the overall experience. But it’s not a performance, Raser said. “How do you tell a story, do you engage people, how do you bring it to life?” The core elements of the destination or trip, he said, are “what does it look like, what does it feel like for the guests, and what environment are we creating in these locations around the world?”

The coach was on a specific schedule, of course, so everyone needed to be on time (the penalty for being late was to dance down the bus aisle to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” from “The Lion King” while being heckled by the rest of the group). But the guides also had to keep about 30 guests, who had arrived from around the country, engaged, informed and laughing (a lot) at regular intervals.

In a conversation after the tour ended, I asked Hage what he thought was the most important attribute a guide could bring to the job: Patience? Stamina? Both, he said, and added, “I think passion. I don’t think you can do this job if you’re not passionate about where you’re going and who you’re going to be with.”

Rainey and Hage explained the plans for each coach stop. They told jokes at their own expense. They also knew when not to talk and let the landscape speak for itself. They explained some of the historical background, though when it came to deep local expertise, Disney contracted with step-on guides to join us, such as William Talashoma, a Navajo guide at the Grand Canyon National Park, who spoke about the geological and historical aspects of the area.

Even then, the guides were important to maintaining the momentum of fun. Before local Moab, Utah, expert Rory Paxman boarded the coach at Arches National Park, Hage brought the Adventurers in on a plan: When Paxman called out a formation called Sheep Rock, he urged, we were all supposed to shout “baa.” 

And the joke worked. Paxman paused, and the bus erupted into laughter. A few seconds later, as he pointed out a formation called the Three Gossips, everyone (as previously instructed) burst out with a loud “yakyakyakyak,” followed by more laughter.

Infusing guides with ‘WOO’

Not surprisingly, Disney doesn’t merely hire guides; it recruits, auditions, trains and molds them.

“Every year, we always have over 1,000 applicants to be Adventure Guides,” Combs said. The company weeds down applicants and brings the most promising to Florida and puts them through an all-day audition. It ends up hiring about 1% of applicants, making securing an Adventure Guide job more competitive than getting into Harvard.

Among their attributes, Combs said, Disney looks for the “WOO”: The gift of Winning Others Over. “When you hire a certain type of individual, they can help mold the group and make people be cohesive who might not otherwise be cohesive on a different product.”

Once they select Adventure Guides, Disney brings them back to Orlando to go through a weeklong orientation. They go through classes like Traditions (again, Traditions spelled with a capital T).

“Traditions is the first class that every cast member goes through regardless of role,” Raser said. “It’s not about training you on the tasks … but about giving you the pride and understanding of where we’ve been as a company and where we see ourselves going.”  

He added: “It’s not, ‘Day 1 you’re going to Arizona-Utah, here’s the itinerary, let’s talk through it.’ It’s setting that strong foundation of safety, guest courtesy and attention to inclusion. And then, what is the Show we’re telling as well as the story.”

After the trip-development team puts an itinerary into the works, it give guides leeway when on the tour. And it provides the guides with a bit of fun money (e.g., a “magical moments” budget) to enhance guests’ experience or for seemingly spontaneous antics. 

Upon our arrival in Moab, just ahead of a rafting trip down the Colorado River, we stopped at a convenience store so guests could stock up on practical items like water shoes and waterproof shorts. Rainey and Hage, on the other hand, emerged from the store with armfuls of kid-friendly water guns. 

Thus, the rafting trip included water warfare between the four rafts filled with guests. Those who didn’t have water cannons used paddles to fling water at enemy rafts, while our rafting guides maneuvered us downriver. Once the rafts landed at Take Out Beach, the water battle continued, with unaffiliated beachgoers looking on with bemusement.

The water guns remained in the hold of our purple All Aboard America coach (no outward Disney branding, although our driver, Theresa, occasionally wore Mickey ears), next to supplies like plastic water pistols, which had been used by a half-dozen guests recruited by Rainey and Hage to “hold-up” the bus at the Grand Canyon; after the “thieves” boarded, they distributed cotton bandanas for everyone to use against the dust in Monument Valley.

 But magical moments could be heartfelt, or personal. Rainey engaged my daughter in an impromptu game of chess in a resort lobby, and he joined a soccer game with a local kid during a stop to view dinosaur tracks in the Navajo Nation. 

On one night at the Grand Canyon, Rainey and Hage invited guests with no fixed dinner plans to join them at the Hopi Point lookout for a sunset picnic. About half the group showed up. 

Hage said he enjoyed the “freedom to be able to think out of the box, be creative and create even a better experience for guests that is going to surprise them ... personally I think a lot of guides like that, that we have that freedom to make decisions, or ideas come up as we go on these tours, so they’re always different and fresh.”  

Hage said that guide teams develop a certain rhythm and learn each others’ strengths to play off each other. And they’re working together throughout the tour to trade off talks and tasks and plan out the best magical moments. 

Given Rainey and Hage’s professionalism, expertise and charisma, I felt ready to follow either of them to our next vacation (my daughter and I were on the tour as guests of Disney). 

And I’m not alone. Raser said that guests will seek out opportunities to take another trip with the same Adventure Guide, and Marvelous Mouse’s Dillon confirmed that travelers will “follow the guides” and book a vacation based on where that guide will be. “They put huge value in those guides,” she said.

 But the Disney folks also told me something surprising: Rainey had been a guide before, but our tour was his first with Adventures by Disney. He was paired with Hage, who was one of Adventures by Disney’s most senior guides and a veteran of the Arizona and Utah tour.

“I think that … speaks to the caliber of guides who are coming into Adventures by Disney,” said spokesman Aaron Wockenfuss, who was also on the trip and experienced the David and Mike show firsthand. “I was blown away by David for that being his first trip; had he not told me, I never would have known.” 

The junior dynamic

Part of the training to guide an Adventures by Disney tour is learning how to bring harmony to a group or, as Disney’s Combs said, “mold the group.” I was curious about how the guides harmonize the Junior Adventurers, aka those 12 and under, with the adults on the bus. About half our group consisted of couples traveling without kids.

To cater to the grown-up demographic, the company has introduced adults-only versions of its tours that include events like wine tastings and offer fewer kid-focused experiences like scavenger hunts. 

Many of the adults on our itinerary were also invested, literally, in the brand as Disney Vacation Club (DVC) owners. Combs said that isn’t unusual, since DVC owners can pool their timeshare points for Disney vacations like the Adventures by Disney tours. But Dillon of Marvelous Mouse said that DVC members will also pay out of pocket for the tours.

I wondered at the beginning of the tour whether it might be a leap of faith for some adults traveling without children to book a tour knowing that kids would be underfoot. But thanks to Rainey and Hage, the Junior Adventurers on our bus were superstars. They sat together at meals, swam together at the resort pools and traded iPads during long bus rides. They participated in every trivia game and never failed to put their hands in the air when Rainey or Hage asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” 

During a cookout dinner in Monument Valley with a Navajo band called Dark Sky, the Junior Adventurers jumped into action, playing instruments and leading dances around the campfire. One perk for parents during an Adventures by Disney itinerary is that one night the kids get their own dinner party, supervised by the Adventure Guides, and the parents get a night out. The kids looked forward to this night with relish, and after that evening, which included a (Disney) movie and a glow-stick party, even normally reticent teens were hanging out together. 

“It’s amazing to see the growth of children and how more confident they’ve become over the years,” Combs said of the Junior group overall, citing the welcome dinner on an Adventures by Disney “Backstage Magic” tour she attended where all the kids stood up to introduce their parents (the same was true for the welcome dinner on our trip). “I wouldn’t have done that when I was 6 years old. It’s great to see how empowered they’ve become.”

Raser added: “I think the Adventure Guides really provide that safe space, where the kids are treated as a guest, which they are.” 

One dynamic I noticed was that the kids made friends with the adults, making it easy for the adults to make connections with each other. And the adults genuinely seemed to enjoy the kids. Despite a wide age demographic, our group just felt young.

Raser warmed to the topic. 

“I’ve witnessed on trips where kids allow adults to be kids again,” he said. “Whether it’s kids asking the questions that maybe you’re afraid to ask, because you’re the adult and you should know. Or it’s trying different foods or different experiences. There’s something about travel that makes you feel like a kid again; you’re discovering something new for the first time.” 

“It makes you feel younger, right Kyle?” Combs asked.

“Yeah, who doesn’t want that?” Raser agreed.