#DisneyTravel Weekly Twitter Chat

Tweet, Tweet!

Have you ever had a burning question about vacationing at Walt Disney World or Disneyland, but couldn’t find a satisfactory or current answer? If so, then we think we have something that will be right up your alley: a Disney travel Twitter chat launching today! This Twitter chat focused on Disney travel allows participants to determine the course of conversation and receive multiple answers from unbiased, real people in real-time. Twitter chats have an advantage over books, magazines, and even forums and blogs in that participants can receive an instantaneous response from the actual community.

Organized Twitter chats have been commonplace on Twitter for a while now, but to the best of our knowledge, this is the first organized Twitter chat devoted exclusively to vacationing at Walt Disney World and/or Disneyland.

#DisneyTravel is a weekly Twitter chat that starts at 6 pm Eastern every Wednesday and is identified by the #DisneyTravel hashtag. Twitter users seeking to participate in the chat simply tag their posts with the #DisneyTravel hashtag. Sounds simple enough, right?

Next chat: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 – 6 pm until 7 pm Eastern
Topic: Disney Snacks

Here’s some additional information:

How to participate – Head to Twitter, type #DisneyTravel in the search field and search for results. Once the results are pulled up, Toggle from “Top” to “All” at the top of the page. Then, as new tweets in the conversation are posted, you will see them, in the order they were posted, in real-time. The above screenshot demonstrates this well. You can also use third-party Twitter clients to accomplish this.

All are welcome – One of the great benefits of a Twitter chat is that it’s open to everyone and the community “owns” it. There are no over-arching agendas–it’s all community-driven. It’s a great way to read a wide-array of opinions beyond those from people in your inner-Twitter circles, and learn something new about the Disney theme parks, resorts, or restaurants. Whether you love a particular park, attraction, resort, restaurant, etc., or hate it, you’re welcome to share your opinion!

There are no experts – Along those same lines, there are no experts in #DisneyTravel. We all think pretty highly of our own opinions. If we didn’t…well, our opinions would be different. However, there’s a fine line between spirited discussion and acting as if one is the de facto expert on a given topic and all other opinions that differ are automatically invalid. The former is strongly encouraged, the latter is not. I may like Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater (I do!) and you may hate it (a lot of you do!), but that doesn’t make you right and me wrong, or vice-a-versa. Disagreeing is fine, but saying, “THAT’S A STUPID OPINION, YOU REALLY SUCK” adds nothing to the conversation. We’re all here to learn from one another and collectively help others make vacation decisions.

Topics – To facilitate discussion, there will be a set topic for each week’s Twitter chat. Usually it will be broad (think “snacks” or “hotels” rather than “dinosaur-themed-attractions”) so that everyone can participate. We’re just getting started, so in the beginning, I’ll choose the topic. In the future, I’d like to make the topic arrived-upon by the community. I’m open for suggestions on how to accomplish this!

Format – Besides the obvious since it’s on Twitter, the format will be open question and answer. Other Twitter chats have moderators who are the only ones that ask questions. That seems like a good idea if the chat gets too large. As these #DisneyTravel Twitter chats are still in their infancy, I think an open anyone-can-ask-questions format will work just fine. I will throw some questions out there to steer/spark conversation as necessary, too. Format may be revisited in the future as necessary to accommodate the community.

…I think that’s about enough in the way of “rules” (more like guidelines) for now. I’m making this up as I go along, so if I think of anything else, I’ll supplement this page.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please leave them in the comments!

For those of you who aren’t on Twitter, you can follow the fun here (don’t expect to see anything until the chat starts):