Scott Wolf: How are you involved in the Ambassador ceremony?

Diane Killeen: I coordinate the Ambassador ceremony and announcement ceremony with Entertainment and I kind of give them what the theme is and what we're looking for. We really try to bring in that synergy with the company, so like right now we just launched (the marketing campaign) "What Will You Celebrate?" so we're hoping that our ceremony will have that feel of "What Will You Celebrate?" Well, "I was just selected as an Ambassador," so that will be what we launch with. When we did "Dreams," we themed ours around the "Dreams" campaign.

It's also a great opportunity for me to continue to learn and expand my skills, too, because I'm working with Entertainment and learning all these new skills on how to produce a ceremony and write scripts and the things that they're doing, so I look forward to that every year.

We also invite all our former Ambassadors back at that time and we try to find a way to intermix them into the ceremony, too, because we want to make sure that they're recognized, and people have their favorites and it's always fun to have them come out again. They get announced during the ceremony and then from there we do our final announcement and then we have our new team.

They don't officially start until January 1st, so I usually have from that time period until December 31st to get them trained. So immediately, they're usually released from their area between a week to two weeks, depending on what their roles were prior.

Then we start wardrobe shopping for them, so I help them pick all of their professional, business casual, and we also have casual wear now because they participate in a lot of walks. We have our health and wellness initiative here at the Disneyland resort so they're out doing a lot of that for us, so we want to make sure that they have like nice sweats and shoes and things that are approved for guidelines. So I help them select all of that.

We put them through a grooming. We take them to some professional image consultants to say, "You know, we just want to make sure that the haircut you have is appropriate for your face," and, "Remember, you're getting up at 3:00 in the morning and if your hair is something that takes four hours to dry and straighten and all that, you might want to think about that, because you need to be out doing 4:00 media interviews." So they make their choices there, and contrary to rumor I do not tell them they have to cut their hair. We give them that choice. That's a huge rumor.

That rumor's been around long before you.

DK: Yes, maybe Cicely encouraged them a little more, I don't know. We want them to feel comfortable and be able to do their own hair, and for the males it's the same way. I remember Matt Ebeling had some really spikey hair when I met him and we took him in and they just kind of calmed it down and gave it a little bit of a part and it just made him look more professional. That's all we're looking for is that professional image consultant to give their piece of advice.

Then we really hit the training very very hard. We bring all of the Ambassadors worldwide here for a week of training and I coordinate everything on this coast so that they have an exposure to The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney Imagineering, and the entire Disneyland Resort, so they are immersed for seven days straight, from sun up to sun down, in every possible experience of an attraction, food, entertainment, overviews from executives. Everything that we can possibly give them. It's almost information overload. The knowledge that you get from the program is invaluable no matter where you go, whether you stay with Disney or even outside of the company.

So they all do that together here which is great, because they all have their different issues that they're concerned about, or they can bond with one another. Like, "I'm really worried about presentation skills," "Well, I'm really worried about this..." They learn to bond and use that connection throughout the year. They may say, "I'm struggling with how I'm communicating my 'Dreams' message out in the marketplace, how are you doing it?" "Oh, I have a presentation I can share with you." So they're able to pull upon one another.

Then we all hop on a plane at the end of that week and we fly to Walt Disney World and my counterpart Angie puts together and entire itinerary down there. She has a little bit more of a challenge because she has so many property sites that we're trying to get a little bit of exposure to everything down there. By the time we leave two weeks later, they're pretty exhausted mentally.

They all go back to their locations and then at each of our sites we work on presentation skills. We give them media training that's a two day, very intense program that they're put through, learning to handle the media, both on camera and radio, learning what we call good news/bad news and how to get out of that bridge. They're given all those techniques so they feel comfortable by the time they go out there. They're taught etiquette. We put them through print media interviewing. They'll be immersed in every type of event of the current Ambassador team. They'll go and they'll job shadow them so that they know what's going on. It's really working on every skill that they can possibly hone for the Ambassador program, so that on December 31st, when the torch is passed to them they step off on January 1, as the new Ambassador team.

My job at that point is to continue to market them in the company, that their skills or their talents are available to help them with their lines of business, and then to continue to provide ongoing coaching and feedback so that they're just the best Ambassadors. 

More from Diane:
The role of the Disneyland Ambassador

The Disneyland Ambassador selection process

Hospital visits, and Diane's personal favorite Ambassador memory


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