Beauty, Staying awake etc are Management Questions. Where is the supervision that permits this and this goes for your other questions ?
Orientations or what the new hire needs to know at first to be effective. For this try
to involve the organization top to bottom. Put your orientation on your website, How to put out fires is always fun. The safety folks seem to enjoy it more than the new hires or incumbents.
Nero

What does your orientation consist of?

For instance, the first half of ours is completing paperwork with HR - to keep people awake, I designed a funny slide show that lists some benefits and rules of employment (hours, dress code, that sort of thing). They then get photo id's and lunch.

The second half is a video presentation of the history of civil rights and a slide show presentation of the history of the Commission,so that they have some grounding in what they do and why the do it. A discussion follows each presentation. The employees then report to their managers for office orientation.

We're small, so our FULL commission orientation is held quarterly. This consists of a welcome by the director, an ice breaker, an overview of the commission, a presentation on the process of a civil rights claim. Then an investigator, an attorney and a judge speak about their individual roles, with plenty of anecdotes (I try to get them to make the presentations as personal as possible.)

Lunch, team building exercise, then the Department heads have 10-15 minutes to introduce themselves (this is always an issue, because if you're not invited, it's perceievd as "I'm not important enough" so this has to be done with care) and a closing by the assistant director.

Some of the department heads use presentation materials, some have handouts, some tell jokes. It's varied enough to be interesting.

The orientation I designed for the medical insurance company was much different, as they hired between 20 and 30 people a week. The entire orienation was done in one shot and was a LOT longer, but that was a necessity.

How large a group do you have? What are some of the needs that must be met?

My Orientation consists of Health and Safety I work for a medical lab, then some topics under HR, etc. We literally go through highlights of some of the social events, what's on your paycheque etc..I went through it and I wanted to passout I was sooo bored. 8 hours of sitting and listening to someone go on and on....So I really need your help, JM thanks again for your example and to you to Nero... any other ways to include some excitement?

What do you mean by "excitement"?

Anything you do can be exciting - one of the best courses I took in Law School was Federal Income Tax - but that's because the professor made it exciting.

Explaining a paycheck can be exciting, it's all about how you do it.

For instance, you could just go box by box and explain each element, but this is droning, and most of the audience will be sitting there with the "Do they think I'm such a moron, I couldn't figure this out for myself?" expression on their faces.

Are you going through the check because it's critical, or because you have 8-hours to fill and it's something else to fill time?

Once you reduce something to its critical element "Why the hell do they need to know this?" build it back up from there with a fun activity.

ANYthing can be fun and exciting, I swear - even medical coding!

Beauty alot of orientative info can be supplied by your website and other means.
The is no need for "boring" orientations
You are in a medical lab situation therefore I would suggest that you concentrate on who and what your job orientation and job training looks like , in particular with lab mandates.

Nero