Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (17 page)

But Dad did lean back down, and whispered through the tiny hole, “Thank you letting me be a hero.” And it was true. I could have easily been like, no sir, you owe me $800 to buy brand new tickets, SORRY. But none of it was his fault. It really was all Disney’s fault. So why was I going to fault him for that?

So Dad left my window a hero, because he walked up with a problem and left with three comp tickets for six days. I wasn’t just going to give them comp tickets for one day, was I? Oh, gosh no.

And I probably wasn’t supposed to give him six-day park hopper tickets, but… MAGIC.

If you’re reading this right now, you more than likely consider yourself pretty well versed in Disney. I’m willing to wager that you’ve been to the parks at least half a dozen times, if not more. That’s not the norm for Disney guests. It seems that those who visit every single year, and those who visit once, maybe twice, in their lifetime divide guests in half. There’s really not a whole lot of in between.

You either know a lot about Disney, or you don’t know much at all. And if you are planning a Disney vacation for the first time, everything can be overwhelming. Since we are living in the digital age, most of this can be done online. But one wrong click, and your whole vacation can go horribly wrong.

How so?

Well, for starters, instead of purchasing tickets for Disney World, you accidentally purchase tickets for Disneyland.

I know that sounds crazy. How could someone purchase tickets for the completely wrong park? I know it’s funny, but don’t laugh too much, because it happens at least once a day.

If guests aren’t paying attention when they click through buttons on Disney’s website, they will accidentally be taken to the wrong theme park. Listen, both have castles and both have Mickey Mouse, so it’s easy to make that mistake. The other big kicker is that Disneyland tickets are usually cheaper than Disney World tickets, so if a guest doesn’t realize that one ticket can’t be used interchangeably at both parks, OF COURSE they’ll buy the cheaper one. I’d buy the cheaper one, too, if I thought it could work in both Orlando and Anaheim.

Buying tickets for the wrong park is a huge issue, naturally. You cannot use one park’s tickets at the other, because the two parks run off of different ticketing systems. It’s an easy enough process to fix, but there are a bunch of steps involved. And most of the time, guests were less than willing to let me try and fix it for them.

For starters, I couldn’t touch the Disneyland tickets, so I couldn’t issue refunds for them. I had to swear on my life that Disneyland would refund the tickets if they asked nicely and explained the situation, but guests didn’t believe me. The tickets do say “non-refundable” in big bold letters on the back, so I can see their concern.

One time, a woman came up with Disneyland tickets and demanded a refund on the spot for them. I explained that I couldn’t refund them, but I could sell her new Disney World tickets, and when she got home later all she’d have to do is call Disneyland, and they’d refund her the money over the phone. Easy enough, right?

Well, the woman didn’t believe me. She thought we were taking her for all of her money, and demanded to speak to someone at Disneyland to confirm this. Calling Disneyland is easy. It’s a speed dial button. So all I’d have to do is hit the button to call Disneyland, and I’d be connected to someone inside the West Coast edition of City Hall.

However, this woman was standing at my window at 9am, and since Disneyland is three hours behind Florida, no one was going to answer the phone at 6am over there.

I tried my best to explain to the woman that Disneyland wasn’t open yet, and I promised her, repeatedly, that she’d have her money refunded. She still didn’t believe me. So I did the only thing I could think to do, which was call the front desk of the Disneyland Hotel, and have the woman talk to them. They couldn’t refund the ticket for her, but she did feel a little bit better talking to someone in California.

This happened a lot. There were lots of calls to California, and lots of confused guests with Disneyland tickets.

There’s one guest that I’ll always remember as being the most confused about the Disney World/Disneyland separation.

It was early in the morning, and I was standing out at the tip board, staring off into the distance, trying to find some sort of activity to help pass the time. The park hadn’t opened yet, so there wasn’t anything to do and no one to talk to. I was just standing at the tip board, waiting.

The only activity on Main Street was guests entering the park for breakfast reservations. They came down to the tip board and either split off to head toward Crystal Palace or continued on straight ahead toward the Castle. Those are the only two places anyone ever went.

One family started making their way down Main Street with the castle in sight. It was a mom, dad, and two little girls in a stroller, both dressed as princesses. Mom was pointing ahead at the castle, and the girls were laughing. Dad trailed behind them, looking at a map. As Mom’s pace quickened the closer she got to the castle, I noticed that Dad’s pace was slowing down.

Then Dad stopped. He looked up from his map, looked at the castle, and then looked to the
right
of the castle. He looked down at his map again. Then up. Then to the right. He did this about four times before I finally called out, “Are you looking for something?”

Dad called back, “Yeah, the Matterhorn.”

My color must have washed out of my face, because Dad made a shocked and scared face right back at me. He rushed over to me, clutching the map in his hands. It was a Disneyland map.

“Where’s the Matterhorn?” he asked. In Disneyland, the Matterhorn is in fact to the right of the castle. In Disney World, it doesn’t exist.

“Um,” I started, not really sure how to break the news to him. He had gotten so far into the park, and now I was about to ruin his day. “The Matterhorn is in… Disneyland?” I offered up, like I was trying to be unsure of the answer myself.

“But I have the right park tickets for the right park.” I could see the wheels in Dad’s mind spinning, as he tried to figure out where he had gone wrong planning his Disneyland vacation for Disney World.

“Yes, you’re in the right park, so you have Disney World tickets. You’re good there. Don’t worry. This can be our secret.” I grabbed the Disneyland map from his hands and gave him a stack of Disney World maps. “Don’t tell Mom or the kids.”

Dad didn’t seem too freaked out. Sure, he thought he was coming to Disneyland this whole time, but hey, he had the right tickets and had flown to the right location after all. He couldn’t have messed up that badly—

“Wait, what about my Blue Bayou reservations?” he yelled back at me from now a good distance away.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” I could hear the wife yell from up ahead.

“Nothing!” The dad yelled back as he hurried off behind them.

I never saw him again in the park, and I have no idea if he canceled his Blue Bayou reservation in Disneyland. They make you pre-pay for that stuff.

A lot of times, guests would be yelling at us and there just simply wouldn’t be anything we could do. It would be over something silly that they had blown out of proportion, and suddenly they’d be demanding ticket refunds and meal vouchers and I would want to tell them, “Sir, Peter Pan broke down while you were waiting in line, that’s all. A costumed Donald Duck didn’t punch you in the face, so chill out.”

I had all the power of a Guest Relations manager. I could do anything they could do (but I would need their approval for a few things). Guest didn’t understand that. They saw me, and all the other cast members, as peons in the pecking order. If they wanted something done, they needed a manager. Sometimes guests would walk up to me, and before I could even say “Hello!”, they’d demand to see my manager.

Then, the manager would come out, and even that wasn’t good enough for the guest. They wanted to talk to someone else. They wanted to talk to someone more important.

But after the manager, there really wasn’t anyone else. That was as high as it could go. The guests would often demand to see the VP of the park, but like what the hell was he going to do? He had NO IDEA what was going in the park, so to drag him out of his office down on Main Street would be pointless. (A few guests actually took the time to Google the name of the MK VP so they could call him by name, and demand him by name. Those were always the craziest guests.)

At one point we started joking that we should keep the boss on retainer in the back. The real boss, Mickey Mouse. Guests would come in, slam their fist down on the counter and scream, “I want to talk to your boss.” And we’d shrug, say “OK”, and then lead the guests into a room just off of City Hall. Inside, they would meet Mickey, who wouldn’t talk of course. He’d just tap his foot gently on the ground and rub his fingers together — the universal sign for “more money”.

Yeah, you can talk to your boss. Come right this way and meet this character. He’s just going to imply that you probably owe him money.

A little known fact about Guest Relations is that they have their own vehicle. All Guest Relations departments do, actually. It was in case someone needed a “van run”, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Sometimes there were stations in GR where a guest just
had
to be transported out of the park. These were situations where something happened, and we couldn’t turn to the guest and say, “OK, now go get on a bus back to your hotel.” These situations included instances where one member of their party had fallen walking down Main Street and needed stitches, so they were transported to Celebration Hospital. Well, we’re not about to make their family hail a taxi and pay a ridiculous rate to get there, right?

That’s where this van came in. A Guest Relations cast member could pick up the family and drive them to the hospital. That way they didn’t have to fight with any bus, and the trip took roughly twenty minutes, compared to two hours.

I hated driving the van. From day one, I hated driving that van. I’ve never been a big fan of driving, and I’ve always had a small company car. The GR van? It was a 15-passenger giant white van, with a million blind spots, and it always smelled like someone had just peed in the back. I hated being assigned to van runs, but sometimes there wasn’t anyone else around, and I had to jump behind the wheel.

These van runs were not fun. Sure, it seems like a really neat idea to drive guests around Disney property, but most of the time the guests are stressed and confused, and the last thing they want is a bubbly, perky little Guest Relations cast member — so basically no one wanted me to drive them around. Many times I jumped behind the wheel of the van, not knowing what situation I was getting myself into, and chirp, “So, family, where are we going?”

And the family would be like, “Grandma just had a stroke, so we have to go see her in the hospital, and also can you swing by All–Star Music so we can drop off the baby with the in-laws?”

And I’d think,
I didn’t sign up for this, but OK!

One night, I was standing in City Hall, not doing anything, and a call for a van run came in. A dad needed to get back to his car in the parking lot ASAP, and for some reason, it had been decided that a GR cast member would drive him, instead of having him take the monorail. I don’t know why this guy needed a ride. It was completely foolish to put him in the van and drive him back to the parking lot. Honestly, the monorail probably would have been faster, but whatever.

The guest was already waiting for me in the backstage Tomorrowland parking lot. Thankfully, that’s also where the GR van was always parked. I grabbed the keys to the vehicle and headed over to meet him. He was standing over by the gate at Tony’s and introduced himself. I said, “So we’re going back to the parking lot?”

Dad nodded. “Yeah, I gotta get the car.” His reason for a van run, still unknown.

So this dad and I climbed into the giant 15-passenger van, with room for 13 more. I pulled out of the backstage parking lot, which led me out across the street from the Contemporary. I had to turn left at this point, since that was the only way to get into the parking lot on the other side. I couldn’t very well pull in to the parking lot through the regular entrance, through the toll plaza. Instead, I needed to sort of sneak in on the other side, by the Grand Floridian.

As we passed the Grand Floridian and I turned on my blinker to enter the parking lot, I turned to Dad and asked, “So what area is your car parked in?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but there was a character.”

“What character?”

“A Disney character.”

“OK, do you remember what Disney character, though? They’ve all got characters.”

“I think it was one of the Seven Dwarfs.”

“All seven of the Seven Dwarfs are in the parking lot.”

“Well, then the one who’s really cranky.”

“Grumpy?”

“Yeah, maybe him.”

The dad and I drove through the Grumpy section of the parking lot. Halfway through, he made me stop the car so he could get out and set off his car alarm. He couldn’t find his car. “It’s not here. Can we try another one?”

Dad and I tried all of them. Finally he rolled down his window, stuck his head out, and hit his car alarm button every other row. It took us roughly a half hour to find his car, parked all the way in the back of the lot. I still have no idea why I drove him on this van run, but I did.

Then there’s the time I got stuck at Animal Kingdom.

The van run was for an older woman. She had been brought to First Aid earlier in the day for dehydration, but it wasn’t a serious enough case for her to be sent to Celebration Hospital. Her family was still in the park, but she didn’t want to return back to them, and rightfully so. Florida is hot.

Instead of making this woman take a bus back to her hotel, it was decided we would bring her in the van. It would cut out all of her walking time, and a majority of her trip time, too. On a bus, Animal Kingdom Lodge is roughly a half hour away. In the van, it maybe took ten minutes if I didn’t hit any traffic.