At 3 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8, 12 Stanford students boarded a bus to Disneyland. They arrived in Anaheim with enough time to have breakfast with the Disney characters before being let loose to enjoy the day, concluding with watching the fireworks as a group. They then returned to campus on Sunday, 24 hours after having left.
The whole experience was paid for by Stanford.
This Disneyland excursion was the pilot event of Cardinal Nights’ new Very Important Cardinal (VIC) loyalty program, which will be fully implemented in Winter Quarter. Students who are frequent attendees of Cardinal Nights events may enjoy perks like ticket presales, extra treats at events or future “secret trips” with other VICs.
The students who went to Disneyland were selected by the number of Cardinal Nights events they had gone to in the past year. Cardinal Nights uses the website Eventbrite for many of their paid events, so the top attendees were found using Eventbrite’s data. They then sent an email to these students with the subject “Be Our Guest,” inviting them to come on a “magical trip,” and on the morning of Nov. 8, they were off.
During the trip, these students received goodies like backpacks, phone chargers and additional money to spend on food and stuffed animals.
“I was amazed by how much attention they paid to every single detail,” said Tran Lam ’17, one of the students who went on the trip. “They covered the bus — they covered everything.”
“We wanted it to be like a VIP experience,” said Ralph Castro, director of Cardinal Nights.
The students who went to Disneyland had nothing but positive things to say about the VIC program.
“It’s great that [Cardinal Nights] subsidizes everything that they do, and the fact that we get rewarded for going to their events is even better,” Sam Schreiber ’17 said.
Nicole Giron ’16 added, “I’d been wanting to go to Disneyland for a really long time and it’s always busy, and super expensive, so just having the opportunity to go through Cardinal Nights was incredibly amazing.”
“It was a free trip to Disneyland,” Brendon Go ’17 said. “I have no complaints.”
Using footage from the trip, Cardinal Nights prepared a promotional video for the program to draw more people in. Anyone is eligible to be a VIC, with different bonuses depending on how many Cardinal Nights events they attend — three provides automatic membership, seven provides bonus treats and rewards, and 10 provides eligibility for more secret trips like Disneyland. At Cardinal Nights events, students can just check in with a staff member to mark their attendance and be put in the running to be a VIC.
What kinds of things can we expect from the VIC program in the future?
“An event like [Disneyland] was our launch, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t do those types of things again,” Castro said. “I’m a big advocate of seeing the state, showcasing California — there’s so much natural beauty here, so we want to be able to open that up to students. I’d love for everyone to be a part of it.”
Contact Leela Srinivasan at leelas ‘at’ stanford.edu.