Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (11 page)

Like all things at Disney World, the Utilidor serves a few purposes, but the main one is simply moving cast members to and from their work location without being seen by guests. If you’ve ever been to Disneyland, you’ve more than likely stood on Main Street and watched cast members from all different lands walk back and forth across the area, on their way to their work locations. On Main Street, you’d see Frontierland cast members, and Fantasyland cast members, and New Orleans Square cast members. This drove Walt INSANE.

But, when he was building Disneyland, he wasn’t thinking about how cast members were going to have to walk through other lands in full costume. He was just thinking about building Disneyland. For his next park, he needed a way for cast members to get around without being seen, and henceforth not breaking the show or theme of any of the areas. If you see a Frontierland cast member walk down Main Street in Disney World, something is horribly, horribly wrong.

The Utilidor also took care of things like deliveries, and it had a few breakrooms scattered throughout and lockers and other typical employee stuff. Honestly, there wasn’t anything too exciting about the Utilidor. Guests would always ask about it, as if I were going to spill its marvelous secrets, and I’d always tell them, “It’s dark and kinda smelly.” It was the truth.

It had its moments, like when it was raining and you didn’t want to walk across the park in the rain. But for me, as a Guest Relations cast member, I had to walk outside to get to City Hall, no matter what.

The grand plan was to put a Utilidor in every park. One was started at EPCOT, and it’s still there. It runs from one side of Future World to the other. Disney quickly realized that Utilidors are outlandishly expensive, so all plans for future Utilidors were scrapped. Hollywood Studios never really needed one, since their park was built with lots of backstage space to get around. There’s no way an Utilidor could have ever been built at Animal Kingdom, just due to its massive size.

So Magic Kingdom gets the Utilidor, and no one else does.

For about two days I decided that I should call the Utilidor the Magic Kingdom Catacombs, and I was quickly told by a manager not to call it that.

You never forget the first time a guest yells at you for something ridiculous.

It was late in the evening. It wasn’t quite park close yet, but it was late enough that guests were starting to leave, and no one else was wandering into the Magic Kingdom for the day. It was after parade, but before fireworks. It was an all-around awkward time without much of anything to do. I was leaning on the counter with my head rested nicely in my palms, staring out the big glass doors ahead of me. I probably shouldn’t have been leaning this way, but I think guests always understood that sometimes we needed a break, too.

From the side, I heard the low rumbling of an EVC. It pulled into the middle of City Hall, and that’s when I noticed that all other GR cast members with me had suddenly become “busy” and couldn’t help this guest. That was typical, because after a while it was like you could sense when a guest was going to be trouble.

“Can I help you?” I called out to her, my head still in my hands.

“I just wanted to let you know something about the park.” She parked her ECV right in front of me. “I’m hoping you can pass this information along.”

This statement was a bottomless can of worms. I braced myself for whatever she was about to tell me. “Yes, I’ll see what I can do.”

“The park music is awful.”

“Oh?” This was a new one.

“The park music is way too soft and I should be able to hear it everywhere.”

Two sentences in, and this guest had already stumped me. “How so?”

“I should be able to hear the carousel music the second I enter the park.”

“But the carousal is in Fantasyland,” I reminded her.

“Haven’t you ever been to a real park before?” She leaned forward in her ECV, as if she was going to tell me a secret. “You can hear the carrousel music from everywhere. I’m disappointed that’s not the case here.”

“Well, the carrousel is in Fantasyland, and that music wouldn’t go well in, say, Tomorrowland.”

“That’s not the point. The second you walk into Hershey Park you can hear that carrousel from everywhere, and it gets you excited to be there! I enter in here, and I hear nothing. Nothing at all. I can’t hear the music and I expect to hear something. Why can’t you turn the carrousel music up a little bit higher?”

For some reason, guests always thought that there was some master control room, full of buttons, so if they told me to do something — like, turn up the volume of the park — I could just walk to this room and do it, and be back in a few minutes. Not that the music, including the background music, was controlled in some locked room way down below Magic Kingdom, and also it’s automatic. So there’s no turning it up or down.

“The carrousel is only supposed to be heard in Fantasyland, and it’s not supposed to overpower everything else.”

“Then this isn’t a true amusement park. What are you selling us then?”

“Walt Disney World is a
theme
park, with different themed areas immersing you in the different settings.”

“You’re not listening to what I’m saying, honey.” The woman leaned back. “I’m telling you exactly what I want done, and you are arguing with me about it.”

“I’m not arguing with you, just telling you that Disney World is not Hershey Park, and we can’t control the music like that. You’re not supposed to hear the music from Fantasyland on Main Street.”

“You’re still not listening. The music needs to be changed.” There were also guests who assumed that their opinions were the only ones that mattered, and if they had a suggestion for how we could do things differently, we better damn well do it.

Clearly, this conversation was going nowhere. This woman wanted me to go and change the music for the entire park, so you could hear the carrousel in Frontierland, and probably over in the lobby of the Grand Floridian, too. I wasn’t going to win this discussion, and I was already thinking of ways to get out of it, like faking a phone call for me in the back, or pretending that there was a parade coming I needed to get ready for.

That’s when I saw the most gigantic cockroach in the entire world start climbing up the wall behind the guest’s head. HUGE. A cockroach tall enough to ride Space Mountain by itself. My first instinct was to scream, because that’s my initial cockroach reaction. But I couldn’t exactly scream, even though that would have been a great way to get away from this guest and her music mania.

Now my goal was to get out of this discussion ASAP, because if that cockroach reached the ceiling of the lobby, I was going to lose it. I needed to get someone to kill it for me, or I needed to get it out of the lobby before a guest spotted it and caused a scene. Let’s be frank about this, there are cockroaches in Disney World. There are cockroaches everywhere. But it’s not a magical experience to find a cockroach in Disney World, so I needed to deal with it, and fast.

“I’m sorry the music isn’t agreeable for you. I’ll be sure to pass that along to my leaders,” I told her, thinking I was ending the conversation.

“Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“Oh, yes, sure.” I grabbed the first piece of paper on the counter and scribbled MUSIC?? across it. I looked up at the guest and smiled.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, um…?” I tucked the note into my vest pocket.

“I’m going to wait here. Go tell your manager I want the music of the park changed.”

This wasn’t even a situation where I could sort of see where the guest was coming from. If the guest had come in and been like, “You’ve got too many strobe lights in the park, that should change,” I’d totally see their reasoning. Yeah, maybe too many strobe lights are bad, I’ll pass that along.

However, this guest was complaining about music. The music could be a huge factor in her vacation, and she wanted it change for her right now. She wasn’t leaving until I changed it. The cockroach was crawling closer and closer toward the ceiling. The music was not going to change. But the cockroach could fall from the sky.

“Yes, I’ll go tell them right now,” I said, and smiled again, before turning and walking away toward the back.

I weighed what was the more pressing situation. Getting the carrousel to pump through the entire park and maybe EPCOT, too, or getting rid of the cockroach. I hurried into the Bank Out Room.

“I need someone tall!” I yelled as soon as I turned the corner. There were two boys in there, neither one of them exceptionally tall, but they were both taller than me. I grabbed the broom we kept hidden behind the computer desk. I handed it to the taller of the two boys, Matt.

“I need you to go out there and tell the guest in the EVC that I’m currently down in the mission control center of the Magic Kingdom, turning up the carrousel music for her.”

Matt took the brook from me. “Um, OK?”

“I’m serious. She’s not leaving until the carrousel music gets turned up, because she’s crazy, so just go tell her I could be awhile, but that I’m taking care of it. And then once she’s gone, kill the cockroach on the wall.”

“There’s a cockroach on the wall?” the other boy cried.

“Yes, there is, and I need it dead and gone before I go back out onto the counter.

Matt didn’t look too happy about his new task, but he did it anyway. He disappeared through the curtain leading back out to the front, and was gone about ten minutes. He returned with the broom.

“The guest in the ECV didn’t really believe that you were changing the music, but she left. She was fun.”

“And the cockroach?”

“Dead. I brushed it over into the planter in the Princess Garden.”

“Thank
yooooou
,” I sang to Matt, as he handed me the broom. I tucked it back behind the computer, for the next time. And that’s how we dealt with problem guests and bugs.

“What time is the 3 o’clock parade?”

This is actually a question that gets asked quite frequently. Half of the time it’s asked by snotty teenage boys, who think they’re the funniest comedians to ever step foot in the park. I remember that they used to run in from the side doors of Magic Kingdom and interrupt whatever I was doing with another guest. The kids would slam their hands down on the table, like they needed immediate assistance, and then the punks would yell, “WHAT TIME IS THE 3 O’CLOCK PARADE?” before running out of City Hall again. This got real old
real
fast.

There were guests who really didn’t understand that the 3 o’clock parade meant that the parade started at 3 o’clock. They thought that the parade was simply called “the 3 o’clock parade” and couldn’t piece two and two together. These guests really would wait in the long City Hall line and move their way to the front and politely ask, “What time does the 3 o’clock parade start?”

It was so hard not to laugh at them. But I understood. Their minds weren’t in the right place, because they were already on vacation time, not real time. I’d explain that the parade started at 3, and then asked where they planned to watch it. If they were going to watch it in front of the castle, for them technically the parade wouldn’t start until around 3:15.

Then there were the times during the year, namely Christmas, where the 3 o’clock parade would start at 12:30 and 3:30, so that really confused everyone.

You never forget the first guest you made cry, for a happy reason.

In my opinion, the best time of the year at Disney World is Halloween. I love it. Part of that is probably because I grew up in New England, so I’ve always had a soft spot for fall colors. In Florida, leaves never change color. But at Disney World, they do.

In early August, Magic Kingdom would get a complete makeover for Halloween. Main Street became my favorite place in the world because it was decorated with pumpkins, haystacks, scarecrows, and so many beautiful shades of orange. This theming carried over into Liberty Square, where you could find even more pumpkins. And since it was Halloween, there were some over at Haunted Mansion, too.

The second best thing about this new makeover is that it meant the Halloween partiers were coming. Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party is the best time of the year. I love those parties, and I love the Boo to You parade that runs during the party. I could watch it every day and never get sick of it. I found myself getting excited come September, because I knew the parades would start and I’d get to see them.

At night, when there was nothing to do in City Hall, everyone working the counter would go out onto the front porch and watch the parade together. It was an odd bonding experience, and we weren’t really supposed to do it, but we stood outside for 45 minutes anyway. All the GR cast members knew the lyrics to the songs, and after a while we knew the dances, too.

But before we could ever watch the parade, we had to suffer through what we called “crossover”. It was the period of time when day-guests started leaving the park, and guests for the special hard ticketed event started coming in. It was nothing short of chaos.

For one, we had guests who were upset to leave the park. Many stormed into City Hall and wanted our heads on a platter since they were unaware the park was closing early. I get that. I get that you’ve just spent $95+ on a day ticket to the Magic Kingdom, and you have to leave the park by 7pm, rather than the usual 11pm. That makes total and complete sense.

However, guests who stormed in and told me that they “hadn’t been told” about the early park closing were usually lying. They had been told. If they purchased their tickets at the park, we told each and every single guest that the park would be closing early that night. Even if they bought their tickets somewhere else and then came into the park, they knew about the early closing time. From the auto plaza to the front of Magic Kingdom there were no less than EIGHT different signs that clearly stated the park would be closing early that night. They had seen the signs. But now, they wanted their money back for their half a day in the park.

(I never gave them their money back, or set up more tickets for them. The great thing about the ticketing system is that I could swipe their tickets into the computer and see the exact time they entered the park. Most day guests enter at around 9am, so people yelling at me at 6pm really had a full day. Even guests who came in at 11am or noon still had a full day before it was time to leave.)