Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (13 page)

Disney’s goal was to have a constant cycle of three buses at all times. One bus would be at the bus stop, one bus en route, and the third bus at Magic Kingdom. The bus en route would arrive at West Clock, that bus would leave, then it would drive to Magic Kingdom, and so on and so forth. A nice, constant rotation.

Except, as you can probably guess, that rarely happened.

Keeping these buses running should have been the easiest thing in the world. My god, hundreds of guests can be loaded on and off “small world” in less than an hour, but it was impossible to keep three cast member buses running per schedule.

Sometimes, a bus wouldn’t leave right away. A new bus would show up, but the first one wouldn’t leave — and cast members can only get on and off the bus in a certain location, so those on the second bus were trapped for the time being. Not only did this slow everything down, but also it left a little lag time in-between buses. That lag time grows with each passing second, and often it’d be ten or fifteen minutes in-between buses, and then two would show up at the same time.

Other times, an entire bus would be taken away. So instead of there being three buses, there’d only be two, and it was chaos. So much lag time, and so much waiting.

On top of that, there was always traffic in and out of this area behind Magic Kingdom. It was a very high-traffic area, between buses and cast member cars and Disney vehicles and lost guests. During peak times, it wasn’t uncommon to have an Orange County cop directing traffic backstage.

Even though the bus would make it out onto the road, it still didn’t mean it’d be a quick trip. The bus needed to pass through a security checkpoint to get to backstage Magic Kingdom. Of course the bus was waved on through, but if there were cars ahead of the bus, we’d have to sit and wait for those other cars to be inspected first. Only one car could go in at a time, and we’d just wait and wait while someone
claimed
to have a backstage drive-on pass (they never did).

The bus ride itself was also a disaster. I’ll admit I’ve never been a big fan of any sort of transportation — whether it be bus, taxi, subway, train, monorail, whatever — but the bus to and from Magic Kingdom was like all of your worst transportation nightmares combined. I used to jokingly refer to it as the last remaining E-ticket attraction in the park, because it was certainly worth the price of admission alone.

Just like in the Mouse, there was a hierarchy aboard the bus. Different roles and lines of business could not intermix. Parade dancers and character performers always sat in the back, and that wasn’t up for debate. They were like the “cool kids” on the bus you desperately wanted to join.

The remainder of the bus was free for everyone, but areas did group off. If I got on the bus and saw another Guest Relations cast member already on there, it was sort of required that I sit with them, even if I wasn’t really fond of them. We’d make small talk, like, “Oh, where are you working, what hours are you working, did you bring your own lunch, does it look like it will rain today?” I’d hope and pray that so many people would soon cram onto the bus that they’d be forced to stand in the aisle and separate me from whoever was on the other side, thus stopping the conversation. The bus ride was usually the last few seconds of solitude I had before it was time to be thrust headfirst into the crowds of Magic Kingdom.

That’s another thing: the bus was always horribly crowded. Cast members would be squished in like sardines, and uncomfortable ones at that. No one had any sort of personal space, and even though we were instructed to hold onto the rails for our safety, few rarely did. So the first time the bus hit a turn, everyone would go flying and end up on another’s lap. It was awkward.

The bus also always smelled, too. Sometimes it would smell like urine, and I’d wonder what exactly had happened during the prior ride. Other times it just smelled like BO or a wet dog, depending on if it was raining. Then there always had to be the one jerk who had stopped at Subway before their shift, ordered tuna, and thought it was a bright idea to eat the sandwich on the ride in. So it’d be a pleasant mix of urine, BO, and tuna.

There was no way to avoid the bus. I had to ride it every single day, whether I liked it or not. And I had to ride it
twice
— once in, once out. Leaving, at least it was like a shining beacon of home, ready to whisk me back to my car. Going in, though, it felt like getting into one of those elevators that take you down into the belly of a coal mine. Not as much fun.

I was part time at Great Movie Ride. When I moved to Guest Relations, I was also part time. As part-time cast, remember I was really only supposed to get around 23 hours a week. At GMR, I was getting right around that; but when I moved to Guest Relations and became a Celebrate Greeter, I was working more of a 40-hour week. When I stopped being a Celebrate Greeter and just became a regular cast member working in City Hall, my hours dropped drastically. Most weeks, I’d be lucky to get 12 hours.

That was a really rough time for me. I had just moved into a brand-new apartment with a roommate, and we were both struggling for cash. Thankfully, I had money saved up so I could afford to eat and pay my bills, but I couldn’t afford much of anything else. On top of that, my student loans were going to start kicking in. I’d pick up shifts as often as I could from other Guest Relations cast members, but sometimes I’d go three weeks before I got one of those extra shifts. Hours were sparse in GR because there were so many cast members who wanted to work, and so few hours to actually give them. Even full-time cast members were only getting around 35 hours a week. And since I was brand new, no one really wanted to give me their hard-earned extra shifts, either.

I couldn’t go and pick up hours back at GMR, or even DisneyQuest, any more. When I transferred to Guest Relations, I went from being part of a “unionized” role to a role that was not unionized. I know nothing about unions, but I do know that being statused to an non-unionized role meant I couldn’t go back and work something union. I could only take extra GR shifts. And there weren’t any.

I had been assigned a GR homeroom manager, Dennis, and he’s the guy I was supposed to go to for all questions and concerns. Dennis was an older gentleman with a big potbelly and greying slicked-back hair. He spoke with a heavy Puerto Rican accent that sometimes made him difficult to understand. His catchphrase was also “Make-a da magic!” and he’d say that to us every time we passed by the office.

“Hi, Dennis, can we talk for a second?” I said as I stuck my head into his office. He was sitting behind his desk on the far left side, eating something that smelled unpleasant, and staring at his computer screen.

“Annie! Annie, my girl, come in. How are you?” He pushed the rolly chair next to him toward me, my cue to sit.

“I’m fine. How are you?” I never knew how to answer that question with the managers, because I was never sure if I was supposed to complain about the last guest I had handled, or if I should brag about the last magical thing I did for a guest.

“Ah, living the dream.” Dennis looked away from me and back toward his computer screen, clearly in the middle of doing something important, and only had half an ear for me.

“Can we talk about my hours for a second?” Not only was Dennis my homeroom manager, but he was also in charges of schedules. “I know I’m not supposed to get, like, 40 hours a week, but I’ve only been getting like, 10. I kinda need more than that to live.”

“Ten hours? That’s not right.”

“I know no one is getting a ton of hours, but could I have a few more? Maybe?” I felt weird asking for more work, since it wasn’t really my place to do so. Disney was the employer, I was the employee, and that’s just not how it worked at Disney World. This wasn’t a retail store where I could say I had open availability every single day and then expect to work six-days a week. There were a hundred other cast members begging for work, so what made me worthy of receiving a few more hours?

But, I was worthy because I was surviving on $60 a week, at best.

Dennis scratched his head. His hair was salt-and-pepper grey, and it always looked like he was using an entire tube of gel to keep it back on his head. Scratching his head messed up his hair a little bit. “I’ll see what I can do. Have you been asking for hours from others?”

“Yeah, but no one’s giving hours away.”

“Come, let’s go.” Dennis stood up and walked out of the room. I followed.

He marched across the short hall and pushed open the door to the break room. Fifteen cast members were sitting inside. “Does anyone not want to work next week? Annie will work for you.” Dennis pointed at me standing out in the hallway.

No one volunteered his or her shift. Why would they? They wanted the hours themselves, and who in their right mind would just willingly give away hours like that? It was impossible to come by hours, as I was learning first hand. And then—

“Do you want my closing shift?” one of the girls in the back asked. She was one of the new interns in Guest Relations, and they always got closing shifts. They weren’t my favorite, but they were hours.

So I had snagged one more shift. Dennis gave me another. But the following week, it was back to the same thing. I was barely working any hours, and my bank account was taking a huge hit for it. I was mostly surviving off of cereal, bread, and milk at this point. I thought about trying to get another job elsewhere, but I felt that I could get Disney to come through for me. I asked Dennis once again for more shifts, and he told me he’d do his best to see to it that I had a few extra hours.

Schedules for Disney cast members come out on Sunday. They’re supposed to be uploaded into the system at midnight, but usually they don’t start showing up until the next morning, right around 7am-ish. If I didn’t have to work on Sunday, I’d still get up in the morning and check, because I wanted to know if I could relax that week, or stress about my lack of hours.

I rolled over in bed just after 7:30 and grabbed my phone. I could sign into the Disney website from there. Half asleep, I punched in my information and waited for the page to load.

There were two shifts on my schedule. One from 8:00–17:30, and the other from 23:00–5:00. Hmm, I thought, not too bad. Two shifts, one early morning and one mid day. I could handle that for a week. I rolled over and went back to bed.

Two hours later when I woke up and was thinking clearly, I realized that something was horribly wrong. Disney works in military time. That means my morning shift was from 8am to 5:30pm. In my half-awake state, I didn’t register the “23:00” part of my second shift. I just saw “5:00”. Now, fully awake, I realized what the shift really was.

11pm… to 5am.

Yes, my friends. Sometimes, when you are sound asleep in bed at your Disney value resort, cast members are still standing out on Main Street. These were overnight shifts, and they were the least magical.

If you’ve ever stayed at a Disney resort, you know about Extra Magic Hours, or EMH. In the morning, they’re for an hour before the park opens, and nothing really changes operationally. If the park opens at 9am, most cast members show up at 7am to start preparing for the day, but on an EMH morning, things just open up a little bit faster. There’s nothing too exciting about them.

At night, though, the park stays open for three extra hours (they have since been scaled back to only two hours). Everything changes with this, since it means that more cast members have to keep working in the park, and usually work extended shifts. Or, in my case, work a shift that literally no one else wants to work.

So, if regular park close is at midnight, then EMH hours would run until 3am. Yes, because sometimes people are still riding Space Mountain at 3am. That means that Space Mountain cast members can clock out around 3:30am and go home to bed.

Guest Relations cast members, on the other hand, have to stay in the park until the last guest is gone. So, if the guest gets off of Space Mountain at 3:10am, and decides to take their time walking down Main Street, we have to wait for them. Let’s say this guest wants to stop at the Emporium real fast and pick up a few things. We still wait for them. The Emporium won’t start shutting their doors until around 4am-ish, so guest can wander in and shop.

Guest Relations continues to wait.

Then, these wandering guests finish up their final purchases and decide to take pictures on Main Street, because literally no one else is around. Guest Relations does what? They wait. And they keep waiting until those guests can finally be ushered out of the park and everyone gets to go home.

Oh, but
wait
, Guest Relations still needs to complete their closing procedures: shutting down City Hall, turning off all the computers, collecting money, banking out, locking up, and then walking through the tunnel all the way back to RCC so we could drop off the money and go home. On these nights, I might find myself standing in Magic Kingdom at 4:45am, pleading with the Disney Gods to let me go home.

The worst part was waking up in the morning at 9am and realizing I still had almost 14 hours before I went into work. I’d tried to go back to sleep, but it never worked. I’d get up and try to not drink coffee for as long as possible, so I could take an afternoon nap. That never worked, either.

I’d try taking an evening nap, too, around 7 or 8, and that would also fail miserably.

Instead, I’d get dressed for work at 10pm, and leave to head into work after that. I’d arrive at MK just as the second parade of the night was getting ready to step off, with weary cast members who had worked all day out in the sun. Then there was me, just coming in.

I’d pass by people I knew who were going home for the evening, and since everyone is a comedian, they’d look at me and joke, “Have a great day!” and I’d silently curse them under my breath.

For the first hour of the night, there was stuff to do. The park was getting ready to close for day guests, so they were coming in for last-second breakfast reservations in the morning, and lost and found, and just general questions. Guest Relations is usually busy around park closing time. No one ever wants to walk all the way back up to the front of the park for one simple question, so they save them all for the end of the night. So, from 11–12, I’d see guests. I’d talk to them. They’d help me forget that it was midnight, and I still had five hours left of work.