Ema Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary (Earning Your Ears Book 2) (5 page)

“Oh, you mean chips. You British people make my day with your funny words.”

This was the response I got for my stupidity of asking, “Where can I find the crisps?”

Although the initial look I received in response to this question was hysterical, the assistant at Walgreens had no idea what I was on about. I was glad I could make her laugh at my expense; I enjoy making people laugh, but I really just wanted some Pringles.

Today was May 10. I’d been in Florida for 5 days, and I wasn’t used to saying the correct word for what I wanted—I kept asking for chips and getting a packet of crisps. I definitely wasn’t used to the backwards dates, or being 5 hours behind.

For my fifth day in Florida, I was going to have my first encounter with what I would spend my summer doing. I traveled to Disney University once again for a class called Housekeeping Core. I can’t say the title of the class overly excited me. One of the girls who was on my flight, Charlie, was going to be a housekeeper at the Polynesian, so she was taking the class, too. It was another early morning, and we’d been watching multiple videos on various topics that were supposed to be useful to us, like blood-borne pathogens. I wasn’t feeling the magic. I was bored out of my brain and hadn’t come here to watch videos of bloody bedsheets. I probably would have learned a lot more had I been passionate about what my role involved. But really, who can be that passionate about cleaning up after someone? I did perk up every time there was a video from a cast member talking about their experiences of guest interaction.

Next, we went to a computer room where we completed a number of online assessments. These covered all the topics that we had been taught throughout the morning. I panicked. I knew I should have paid more attention.
I’m totally going to fail this, and then they’ll send me home!
Each assessment was more daunting than the next, and I was very much aware that I had to pass the them all to progress to the next stage, on-the-job training.

And what do you know: I passed. I don’t think Disney wants anyone to fail, not at this point.

After the assessments and a short, much-needed break, the class leaders shared some Housekeeping stories, which became more of an informal chat and a welcome respite from the boring stuff. We heard some of their personal stories, and even a few legendary ones. They introduced the stories by telling the basic rules about entering a room and finding an unattended child or unauthorized pets or animals. One story, in particular, stayed with me:

One of the class leaders was working on the front desk in a Disney resort at the time of the incident. The housekeeper had encountered something very rare. She knocked on the door and, having gotten no response from any guests inside the room, opened it to reveal a cow standing between the beds and the TV. If you think that’s funny, then it gets better: this room was on the second floor, and whoever put the cow there had to get it onto Disney property and past all the cast members working at the resort, before taking it to the second floor.

The moral of the story: EXPECT EVERYTHING.

The second day of training was my location orientation at Port Orleans Cast Services. My roommate Abbie was also working at Port Orleans in Quick Service, which meant we had the same location training and could get the bus together.

Our class was due to start at 8:30am. We were going to be getting bus D. The college program buses are lettered, and each bus goes to various resorts, parks, and recreational locations off Disney property. It was going to be the first time either of us had got on bus D, and it would soon become our second home as we would use it every day to get to and from work. Cast Services is the hub for the cast members working at the resort, with lockers and wardrobe for our costumes, and where we could drop off old costumes to be washed and pick up fresh ones. Port Orleans is actually two resorts—Riverside and French Quarter—and the bus stops at each, plus the central Cast Services, and we had to remember to get off at the right stop.

We arrived at Cast Services (known here as “Jazz Alley”) to find a lot of people rushing around, but we ignored them and followed the signs to a room off the main corridor where we found a few people sitting at tables. All of these people were middle-aged, and I felt very young walking in on them. As Abbie and I sat down at our own table, a male Disney cast member came over to us and introduced himself as our trainer for the day. He gave us some plastic colorful, metallic, Mardi Gras necklaces. That, and the glitter all over the table, made me feel like I’d stepped into a kid’s school disco. But there was also free cookies and pop, and I did judge myself a bit for eating three cookies and drinking a can of Diet Coke at 8:15 in the morning, all on an empty stomach.

After everyone arrived, I realized that the two of us were the youngest in the room, and the only non-Americans, and the only ones who were on the college program. Obviously, the first activity we were going to do had to be a “let’s get to know each other” task. It required us to pick a colored coin out of a hat. The color of the coin corresponded to an additional question we had to answer on top of the basic set of name, where are you from, and what role do you have. My additional question was to name my favorite Disney character.

Port Orleans French Quarter is themed on New Orleans and Mardi Gras, and its sister resort, Riverside, on the antebellum South. Riverside then splits again into Magnolia, which has the royal Princess rooms, and Alligator Bayou, which is themed on
Princess and the Frog
. We had a PowerPoint presentation where we learned basic information on the whole resort, such as when it opened and how many rooms are available.

We then went on a tour of both Riverside and French Quarter, taking us from the front desk and the grounds to children’s activities. When we got back to Cast Services, the Housekeeping manager was there to greet the new cast members and to see if whether he had any newbies joining his group. He seemed excited when he realized I was joining, and even more so when he heard me speak and found out I was British. He looked just like the man from the Skittles advert (well, at least the one we have in our Skittles adverts).

I still wasn’t overly excited, even after seeing the resort and hearing Housekeeping stories, but I was keen to get my costume and move on to the on-the-job training. I just kept telling myself it was a huge opportunity and that loads of people who didn’t make it to the second interview would kill to be in my position.

Positive thinking was going to key here!

It got a bit better when the Costuming Department measured us and picked out a set of sizes to try on and see what we were most comfortable in. We could always change our sizes whenever we returned our old costumes. You can have four sets of your full costumes out at any one time. My full set consisted of a skirt, apron, and shirt. The system doesn’t work so well for everyone, because some of us don’t have access to Costuming everyday—for example, Abbie gets off the bus at French Quarter, not at Cast Services, which is the next stop. Even though it was a pain to have to wait for a bus from French Quarter to Cast Services, and then have to wait for an hour for a bus from Cast Services back to the apartment, she had it easier than most. I knew of some cast members whose Cast Services was a stop before their resort, which meant they either had to get up earlier and go there before work (as long as they weren’t at work earlier than Costuming opened!) or spend part of their day off getting fresh costumes. But I also knew people who just washed their own costumes because it was too much hassle to take them back. It isn’t mandatory for you to have Disney wash your costumes.

After collecting our costumes, I spent about 20 minutes laughing with Abbie over the fact that she is the girl with hair redder than Ariel’s, and she gets the orangutan orange costume!

With that out of our systems, we returned to Jazz Alley where we were given more fizzy drinks and chocolate before we were sent into the big wide world ready to start on the job training.

There is only so much that you can learn from watching PowerPoints and videos and listening to stories. After having two days of doing just that, it was time for me to learn the job I’d be doing for the next three months. I still hadn’t had a day off to go enjoy myself in the theme parks, and I especially wanted to visit Hollywood Studios. But first I had four full days of training to get through. I was to start work at 8am, which meant I had to board the bus just before 7, but to save myself the stress of cutting it so closely, I decided to take the earlier 6:30 bus instead. We were told during orientation, and I’d read the same on many blogs, to never expect that a bus will get you to work on time. They were not kidding.

On the bus that first morning, there were a few people wearing the same costume as me, but I didn’t dare talk to them as they all had earphones in, and I didn’t feel that I had gained the right to talk to them first. It felt like a high school hierarchy; they were the jocks and I was the geek in the library who sat on their own at lunch. Once I got to Cast Services, I had a 45-minute wait, but luckily there was a TV in the canteen and this began my love for American television shows.

I saw plenty of women sitting in the canteen, and the only way I could tell that they were in Housekeeping was because they are wearing the same costume as I was wearing. The Disney magic seemed to stop at the door here; I got my share of dirty looks as I walked around the canteen looking for a place to sit. I was hoping that someone would swoop over and take me under their wing. This never happened, and between the dirty looks and the foreign language most of the other women were speaking, I quickly got the impression that I was not welcome here.

I didn’t speak to anyone all day that wasn’t a trainer or a manager, despite my efforts to be polite and smile at everyone, without having it reciprocated. I soon learned that the full-time cast members don’t like internationals because they think we are here to take jobs from them, and the part-timers don’t like college program cast members in general because it is hard enough for them fighting to get full-time status or extra hours without us taking the hours.

As I was given no direction as to where to go once I arrived at Casting, I just followed a group of people dressed the same as me. I found myself faced with an overwhelming number of people who didn’t speak English as their first language. I wandered over to a huge room with two blocks of chairs set out like an assembly hall at school. After being told I couldn’t have a particular chair because it was being saved for someone else—twice!—I finally found somewhere to sit.

Once the manager came and it looked like everyone was here, I noticed that one of the chairs where I had asked to sit in was empty. I felt sick at the thought of someone lying to me just because they didn’t want to sit next to the new British girl. I was looking around in hopes that someone knew who I was, and that they would show me where to go. Only by chance did I see a green folder on a lady’s lap with my name on it. I made a beeline for her. Even though her name tag said “Jenny”, I could tell English wasn’t her first language because she looked confused when I said “excuse me.” I pointed at the name on the folder and said “that’s me.” She laughed and said “I understand.” I think she found it funny, because she could tell that I knew English wasn’t her first language, but saying “that’s me” was maybe a bit too basic, and probably sounded very funny to someone that did understand.

Jenny was from Puerto Rico, like a lot of the housekeepers at Port Orleans. Although she did, in fact, speak very good English, there were moments when I could tell she didn’t understand me, but with my accent and the speed at which I speak, I don’t blame her. I spent the first two days with Jenny. She would show me what to do and how to perform each job.

The first thing we had to do was get a pargo. Pargos are like little golf carts that are used to get the housekeepers from Cast Services to their work locations at the resort. Before we could do that, however, I had to go get a ‘‘Royal’ apron. It was blue and yellow and I didn’t like it as much as my white one which made me look like Cinderella. So it was back to Costuming to find an apron in my size, scan my ID so it went on my costuming log, and then off to find a pargo going to our assigned section of the resort. Once we got on the pargo and traveled to Riverside, we went straight to a linen room. These were behind doors that looked like every other door, but had a plate on them that read “Cast Members Only”.

It was quite exciting to have access to cast member-only room, even if it was just full of towels. As lovely as Jenny was, her co-workers weren’t so welcoming and kept talking to her and to each other in Spanish, looking at me and talking to each other again. I felt so awkward not being able to join in with the conversation. What made it worse is I knew they could speak English, because they spoke to the manager in English.

It wasn’t all negative that day. I found my first hidden Mickey in the design printed on a table in one of the guest rooms. Jenny was really excited to point the hidden Mickeys out to me. I also got my first tip of $2. Technically, it was Jenny’s, but she halved everything with me, which I thought was the nicest thing, because these women really do work hard and the extra money in tips means a lot, so for her to share it all with me was a kind gesture and very much appreciated.

I had the most fun learning how to make towel animals. Before I left for Disney, I’d seen a video of an elephant being made out of a towel. I really wanted to learn how to make it, and Jenny taught me on my first day.

On the second day, Jenny started giving me my own section of the room to clean and would then come over and assess how well I did and tell me where I needed to improve, because on my third day I’d have my own cart and my own board with my own rooms.

I knew nothing of carts or boards at this stage, but I quickly had to learn. The carts were the simplest things to work out; they had all the equipment and supplies we needed to clean. The boards were pretty easy to follow. They consisted of a piece of paper with a table on it, each row for a different room, and they were color-coded based on room status. White meant an occupied room with a guest who was going to be in that room again that night. Blue meant that a linen change was required, and pink meant that a family was checking out. There is more to do in a checkout room than in an occupied room, and so if you had a lot of pink on your board, you knew that it is going to be a rushed day to make sure you get all the rooms done in time.