For most children, school means crammed classrooms, soggy sandwiches and bell schedules. For some, it means doing workbooks at Cinderella Castle, writing thank-you letters to Rapunzel and grabbing fresh churros during snack break.
These are the Disney home-schoolers—parents who’ve swapped schoolbuses for monorails and now treat the parks as a classroom.
“We’re not just doing rides and calling it school,” said Haley Sisk, a former teacher who home-schools her three children, ages 5 and younger, and plans to continue for as long as the family lives nearby. “They learn to regulate emotions, speak up for themselves and interact with others. That’s real learning too.”
Orlando is a popular destination for what some call Disneyschooling. Hundreds of families go to the Disney World parks several times a week, or even every day, as part of their curriculum. A “Florida Disney Homeschool Meetup” Facebook group has over 2,000 members.
Sisk’s days start with reading and table work at home. Then she’s off to the parks three or four times a week. If her children are learning about animals, they go see tigers at the Maharajah Jungle Trek. If they’re curious about Paris, they visit the France Pavilion at Epcot.
Park maps are textbooks for orienteering. Wait times for rides are lessons on abstract math, instead of triggers for family meltdowns. “They’ve gotten really good at understanding how long 45 minutes actually feels,” said Sisk.
Some moms go further. Holly Leary, a former middle school English teacher with a 10-year-old daughter, runs an Etsy shop selling Disney-inspired workbooks parents can use at the parks. Titles include “Peter Pan: Role of an Architect, Creating a Blueprint.”
For Leary and her daughter, Pirates of the Caribbean is an intro lesson in economics. (“Do you think piracy hurt or helped the economy?” is a prompt in Leary’s workbook.) Spaceship Earth (the Epcot ball) is an opportunity to study geodesic domes.
Living 10 minutes from Magic Kingdom also means that instead of school bells, fireworks remind them of time. “At first, the nightly fireworks were magical,” Leary said. “Now they’re basically our bedtime alarm. I’ll hear the booms and yell, ‘OK, 9 p.m.! Lights out after fireworks!’”
Disney declined to comment on the use of its brand in learning materials.
For families that use Disney as their educational playground, costs accumulate fast. Many are annual members, which lowers the cost per visit, and budget around $3,000 to $5,000 a year for park passes, food, and merchandise.
Jordan Ashley makes sure her children utilize everything in the parks, even the guests. “We once graphed how many people were wearing Mickey ears vs. Star Wars shirts while waiting for the parade,” she said. Now it’s a tradition.
Her daughters have pitched inventions to cast members, conducted Spanish lessons with Mirabel and written letters to their favorite princesses.
For many visitors, Disney is a busy, chaotic place that involves meticulous planning and gaming the ride wait lines. For some, even crowd management is a learning opportunity.
“The tram, the monorail, the ferry—it’s improved his adaptability,” said Rachael Aderhold, who began incorporating Disney World into home schooling after traditional classrooms were too overwhelming and rigid for her 8-year-old son, who is autistic. Pin trading doubles as speech lessons, and budgeting for snacks is an exercise in financial literacy.
Aderhold said she spends about $3,700 a year home schooling, which includes at least one day a week in the parks during the school year and at least two days a week in the summer. She said this is less than she previously spent on gas, uniforms and lunches at public school.
Jacqui Portwood met her husband John in the Disney College Program, an internship where undergrads and recent graduates work at the parks.
“I met so many local families who brought their kids all the time,” she said. “I wanted my children to celebrate milestones at Disney too, to have that magic in their everyday life.”
Favorite lesson plans for her three children are exploring shark biology at the aquariums and learning cultural stories from the international cast members at Epcot.
Portwood, who estimates the family spends about $5,000 a year at Disney, said her husband’s weekday job is the “adult money” to pay the bills. The money she earns from social media, where she chronicles her home schooling, is their “Disney money.”
Portwood’s social-media videos document their near-daily visits, the treats they buy and how much it sets them back.
“We don’t do the Target runs anymore, the $100 impulse buys,” Portwood laughed. “Now, Disney is our entertainment. It’s where we choose to spend our time and money, and we budget around that.”
And for the children, sometimes school is still school, even at the Most Magical Place on Earth. When a cast member once asked Portwood’s son if he was having a good day, he gave them a funny look and said, “‘No, I’m only here for school today,’” she said.
“If fantasy and imagination captures the minds of children, and you embed it with real life learning goals, then it’s a wonderful context to advance all sorts of learning,” said Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at University of California, Berkeley.
These moms are aware their approach isn’t for everyone. “Education doesn’t have to fit in a box,” said Sisk, the former teacher. To people who would argue that learning at Disney isn’t a legitimate method, she said, “If it doesn’t work for you, that’s fine.”
