Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (6 page)

The eight of us grouped off and sat together at one table. We did not socialize with anyone else. Within ten minutes, we had inside jokes. We were exchanging phone numbers. We were talking about watching fireworks and parades every day, so yes, we were experiencing pladitude, especially as the two people going to Animal Kingdom sat together, alone, and had no parades or fireworks in their park. Sorry, Animal Kingdom.

Training was a lot of information to take in over the four days. And then immediately afterwards, there was a three-day ticketing class. My group dwindled down to four, since it was a lot of hands-on stuff, and Disney wanted to teach it to us one-on-one. There were two trainers and three other guys plus myself in the final group. We drank a lot of coffee and made a lot of lame Disney jokes during those three days. At one point, we all looked around and realized that one of the guys, Joseph, had wandered off, and 20 minutes later we found him asleep in a hallway because the class had completely wiped him out.

That was the perfect way to describe this week-long training: it tired us out. And it was still only just the beginning.

For every role at Disney, there are all sorts of little facets built into it. There are a hundred different things anyone needs to know before they can start in their actual role, and sometimes there are mini-roles built into bigger roles. Guest Relations had one of these mini-roles, but I didn’t realize it at the time. When I showed up for my first day of true Guest Relations training, I learned that I first needed to be trained as a “Celebrate Greeter”.

What the hell is a Celebrate Greeter? It’s OK if you haven’t heard of this position. I hadn’t either. You will probably never hear of it again, seeing as how I was one of the last cast members to learn the position, and I was one of the cast members working it on the day it officially shut down. If this role ever makes its way back to Magic Kingdom, something will have gone
horribly
wrong.

Though you might not have heard of Celebrate Greeters before, you’ve of course heard of its predecessor: the Year of a Million Dreams. It was the promotional theme for the 2007–2008, and it’s the year that the Dream Suite, aka Cinderella’s Suite, in the Castle first opened. You probably went to Disney World that year and left upset that you never encountered one of these “dream” gifts, like 42 years in the Disney Vacation Club or a 14-night Mediterranean cruise. I never got one of them, either.

The Year of A Million Dreams was made up of a “dream squad”. They were cast members who wore blue shirts and white vests and walked around the park and made dreams come true. Really; that was their job. They handed out these dreams, and when they weren’t handing out dreams, they did little magical moments for guests, like free ice cream and FastPasses and balloons. Little things like that.

The Year of A Million Dreams ended in 2008, and so did the Dream Squad. But, the VP of Magic Kingdom thought it was such a great idea, he wanted to keep it going in his park. He turned to Guest Relations, and the Dream Squad soon became Celebrate Greeters.

I honestly didn’t even realize this was a thing. When I showed up on day one of Guest Relations training, I was given the usual red plaid vest, but I was also instructed to pick out a pair of dark blue pants and a white Oxford shirt with a big golden G on it — G for Guest Relations, obviously. I didn’t understand why I was picking out this costume, but I was so excited and scared at the same time, I didn’t think about it. I just changed into this foreign white GR ensemble, no questions asked.

From there, I met a woman named Kate. She was going to be my Guest Relations trainer. Oddly enough, I knew Kate. While I had never worked with her before, five years prior I had taken a Keys to the Kingdom tour, and she had been the tour guide. I was so excited and nervous about starting in Guest Relations that I blurted this out the moment I met her.

“Kate! I took a tour with you awhile ago, the Keys to the Kingdom tour! It was amazing, I loved it!” I was so excited; I’m surprised I didn’t try to hug her.

“Oh, you did? Cool,” Kate said, without any sense of emotion in her voice. This is not how she came across in the tour five years ago. Five years ago she was a lively animated woman who talked in all sorts of different voices and spoke at length about her time as a character in Magic Kingdom. This woman, while the same, was completely different. The real version of Kate was mean. The real version of Kate was an old woman who had been scorned by the Disney Company time and time again, and felt entitled to the place, and walked around like she owned everything. She was rude, snide, and would throw you under the proverbial parade float if she needed to. I didn’t know these things yet, but I would learn them soon enough.

There was another girl training with me. I hadn’t seen her in the training sessions, so she was still a stranger. Her name was Jessica, and she was a tall girl, right around the same age as me, with bleach-blonde hair. Like, super bleached. Like, I wondered why no one had told her yet that her hair wasn’t part of Disney Look at all. On top of that, she wore red lipstick, had bright pink nails, and large gold hoop earrings. I had no idea how she had gotten through all the Guest Relations interviews looking like that, since nothing about her was in accordance with Disney Look. She was a nice enough girl, but still. I was freaking out about my tan nail polish, and here she was, flashing a pink manicure.

Kate took the two of us from costuming onto the bus (YES, the bus, hold that thought for a bit) and brought us to Magic Kingdom. She walked us from the mouth of the tunnel, all the way down, underneath the park, and up at the very front, just outside Guest Relations. Along the way she pointed at things and made comments about people and places, but I can’t remember any of them. My nerves had completely taken over, and it was like I was running on autopilot. I still couldn’t even believe that I was here. In Magic Kingdom. Training for Guest Relations. Nothing made sense to me, and it was all like a very good dream. I didn’t want to wake up.

Kate brought us into the City Hall, where all of Guest Relations was housed. People ran back and forth, always in a hurry to either find a manager or get an answer for a guest, and it was very chaotic. Kate told us not to pay attention to those things right now, and brought us upstairs to the second floor. There was a tiny little breakroom inside there, with three tables and far too many chairs for the space. Kate sat down at one of the tables, and we followed suit.

I expected Kate to start going over stuff right away, like what we were going to be doing, and how much fun we were going to have. Instead, we sat for 45 minutes while Kate made some personal phone calls and then got a cup of coffee. Jessica and I sat there and twiddled our thumbs, too nervous to do either one of those things on our first day.

Finally, after close to an hour, a manager came in. His name was Brandon. He looked startled to see us at first, and then realized that we were the brand-new trainees. “Oh, hello!” he said through a bright smile. “Is today day one?”

“Anything you want to tell the new recruits?” Kate drank more of her coffee. It was like a little hint that she wanted Brandon to talk to us, and not her, because she wasn’t done with her coffee yet.

Brandon sat down at the table, more than happy to meet two new people. “Don’t be intimidated by anyone. Everyone was new at some point here, and don’t be afraid to ask questions! We’re all here to help you, even if it seems like we hate each other at some points.”

“Yeah, we’re like the most functional dysfunctional family.” Kate interjected.

“If there’s ever anything you need, feel free to reach out. The manager’s door might be shut, and we might ignore you for a while, but eventually we’ll help you out! And don’t forget to make the magic!” Brandon put a lot of emphasis on the “make the magic” part, like it was some sort of joke that I didn’t get yet. Kate snorted a little bit. At least she was finally done with her coffee.

Kate gave Jessica and I white binders with our names on them. She then gave us “EARNING YOUR EARS” ribbons, which we stuck onto our nametags. Then she went to the bathroom, made another phone call, talked to someone for fifteen minutes about plans for the weekend, and THEN it was finally time to take us into the park and show us our new job.

At this point, I was still under the impression that I was training for Guest Relations. I didn’t realize I was training for Guest Relations, subscript, Celebrate Greeter. I kept asking Kate when I could expect to start in City Hall, and what kind of black shoes I needed to go with my skirt, and all sorts of random ticketing questions. Kate glazed over most of these questions, not bothering to answer any of them. After our walk down Main Street, she finally explained that we were not training to work in City Hall.

“You’re going to be in charge of making magic in the park. City Hall handles all magic that comes to them. What about the regular guests who don’t come into City Hall for an issue or a question? They’re the ones you’re going to focus on,” she explained. “I’m going to show you how to make magic for everyone else.”

“We just walk around the park?” Jessica asked, looking down at her shoes that were not made for walking.

“You walk around the park and interact with guests. We want every single guest to feel special in their own right, and you’re going to make that happen.”

“So, stuff like, handing out ice cream when we see someone with a birthday?” I spotted a kid with a big birthday button on his shirt and pointed.

“Exactly!” Kate cried.

“Can we go give him ice cream?”

“No, not him, we’ll go find someone else.” Kate pulled us off of Main Street and we made our way over toward Adventureland. She made us walk the entire park. Twice. Both Jessica and I weren’t prepared for that, and I’m surprised that the short and stout Kate could even handle it.

There wasn’t really a point to this walk. All Kate did was indicate places where we could stand to “make magic”, such as the exit of the Swiss Family Tree House, because after coming off of that guests needed a little bit of magic in their lives. We could stand inside the Hall of Presidents and quiz people about history, and then give them ice cream for correct answers. Or, we could challenge kids over at Teacups, to see who could spin faster.

But, we weren’t allowed to ride any of the rides. “Well, except for some exceptions,” Kate said, but never gave a further explanation as to what those exceptions were.

The role was just about magical moments. That’s it. I would have eight hours to stand in Magic Kingdom and create these moments for visiting guests. I had FastPasses at my disposal. I could hand out ice cream. I was given a means to actually purchase merchandise for guests, so if I wanted to buy someone a Stitch stuffed animal, I could. It was the weirdest, and most loosely monitored, Disney position on all of property. It was basically like, “do whatever you want for guests”.

After this one day of training, I would be set free into the park. I’d have eight hours to roam around the Magic Kingdom, talking to guests and handing out ice cream. It was weird. It felt like a big joke, because there’s no way this was actually a job that I was going to get paid to do.

There was only one thing all Celebrate Greeters needed to do each day: we needed to watch the parade. I know. Torture. But really, that was the only thing we
needed
to do each day. There’s a grand marshal family in the parade, and they ride through first. They then watch the parade in Frontierland, in a nice shaded spot off to the side. Celebrate Greeters had to get to that shaded spot at 2pm each day and rope it off so no other guests would stand in the shaded spot. We basically needed to guard it. That was the only thing we were required to do, and it spanned from 2pm–3:45pm each day. That was the only set thing.

After that, I could get back to throwing Mickey confetti over random strollers in Tomorrowland, and awkwardly hanging outside of “small world” in Fantasyland, because there was air conditioning there. These are the things I learned as a Celebrate Greeter.

There were five Celebrate Greeters per day, one for each land. The five of us would show up, and we’d spend the first hour of our day fighting over who was going to go where in the park. No one ever wanted to spend the day on Main Street, because there was no suitable place to hide there. You could only walk up and down the street so many times, listening to the Trolley Show, before you started to go insane. There was also no suitable shade on Main Street, so if you wanted to stand out of the way for a little bit, you couldn’t. You had to go into a shop. And one of the first things you learn as a Guest Relations cast member is that no matter where you go, you look like a manager, so if you wander into the Emporium you will be swarmed with guests demanding to know why you don’t have any more [insert Princess here] toys. Going into the Emporium was like a suicide mission.

Adventureland was OK. Adventureland meant that you could spend a majority of your day by Pirates of the Caribbean, doing pirate-related things with small children like buying swords and eye patches for them to wear on the ride. There’s also that little courtyard that used to be in the Pirates queue, where you could just sit for a while, out of sight, listening to the sounds of the ride.

Then there was the tiny Jungle Cruise breakroom, called the Oasis, which is actually the structure you see just to the left of the queue. I don’t remember what it was originally used for, but at one point or another the front windows opened up. I think it was for Shrunken Ned’s boats, which are now gone. Disney World keeps changing.

But Jungle Cruise’s Oasis was the best. It was heavily air conditioned, and there was a water cooler inside. It was a great place to get away from the heat, especially when I needed to check my phone. Or just wanted to sit for an hour and not do anything. You’re quickly going to catch on that most of the day was spent just trying to find shade and a place to sit down for a little bit because being paid to walk around Magic Kingdom all day was extremely tiring.