Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (15 page)

I couldn’t return to the guests now without looking foolish. So, I smiled politely as I walked back toward the counter, but moved to the other side of the room. I watched as Chrissy also pulled out a wand and a stuffed Belle.

The guest had completely forgotten about me by this point. I hadn’t raced over to the Emporium to buy their daughter stuff. I was too busy taking care of the issue they had actually come in for, which was a lost cell phone. I handled the lost cell phone. I didn’t realize I needed to shower them in princess merchandise.

Chrissy turned away from the guests quickly, and I figured she was finally done with them. But no, she turned around to the coordinator standing behind the City Hall desk and whispered something to them. I saw Chrissy point at the guests, specifically the little girl. She whispered something else. Then, she disappeared in back.

A few minutes passed, and Chrissy emerged back on the counter wearing the biggest smile in the world. “You guys don’t want to leave the park yet, do you?”

“No!” the little Belle shouted.

“Awesome, because we’re going to go watch the fireworks in VIP viewing!”

It felt like I had been punched in the stomach. It was a weird feeling to have, especially since I was watching something happy play out for a family. I suddenly felt like I was the worst Guest Relations cast member in the world, because I hadn’t thought to set up VIP viewing for this family originally. But then again, they came in for a lost phone. They didn’t come in because they were having an awful day and wanted me to fix it. They came in because they had lost something, and I was trying to fix that. I had followed the necessary steps to find the lost item. I didn’t think the situation needed VIP fireworks viewing to rectify everything.

Chrissy and the guests marched out of City Hall, and the little Belle grabbed Chrissy’s hand. She looked back at the coordinator and gave a huge smile, as if to say,
Did you see that? This girl loves me!

I stood on the other side of the counter, hating everyone and everything.

That’s how magic could be abused. Chrissy had taken something completely inappropriate for the situation and blown it out of proportion. Yes, the family had missed their boutique reservation earlier in the day, but there wasn’t much I could do to fix it. Nothing I had at my disposal was appropriate, available, or achievable.

Was fireworks viewing available? Yeah, because that’s a thing Magic Kingdom does for VIPs. Was it achievable? Yeah, if you call the right managers and ask nicely to put a family in there, sure. But was it appropriate? No. In extreme situations it would be appropriate. But not for a lost phone and a missed boutique reservation.

Chrissy returned to City Hall roughly an hour later, well after the fireworks had ended. Of course she’d stayed to watch them with little Belle and the parents. She strolled back into City Hall, boasting about how it was “so
so
magical” to hang out with this family that she “loved so so much” and how the parents were so sweet and tried to tip her, but Chrissy refused.

“I cried all through Wishes!” she told anyone who would listen, which was just me, because I was the only cast member out on the counter.

“Oh, that’s so special.” I told her through gritted teeth.

A month later, it wasn’t at all surprising when an internal memo was sent around Guest Relations reminding us of these three As and how we shouldn’t be abusing things like fireworks VIP viewing, and that those recovery items should be reserved for severe situations. Not just for when Chrissy wanted to throw her magical pixie dust in my face.

Let’s talk about
they
for a sec.

Yes, “they”. Who is they? They is literally everyone, and everywhere, all of the time. They is messing up your vacation plans, and causing problems, and telling you things that aren’t necessarily true. They is literally the enemy of every single Disney World cast member.

Walt Disney World cast members, and heck, all Disney cast members in general, wear nametags. There’s a reason, of course. For one, it gives everything a much more personal experience, since now you can automatically learn everyone’s name. It’s also for guests, who might want to refer back to a cast member at a later time. Oh, who made this dinner reservation for you? Annie at Guest Relations in Magic Kingdom did, she’s great.

However, guest rarely learned anyone’s name. Or, if they did learn it, they immediately forgot it, because vacation is not a time to make new friends. Guest would walk up to me on the counter, and I’d ask them, “So who made this dinner reservation?”

“They did.”

They.
They did.
They
said this.
They
said that. They told me I could do this. Guests never had an actual answer, other than “they”.

So, wait, who told you that if you showed up on Magic Kingdom on your birthday, it was not only a free day of admission, but also you got to be in the parade? “They did.”

Who told you that if you challenged Chip and Dale to a duel, they had to fight to the death in Frontierland? “They did.”

Who told you that if you wore a green shirt on Thursday, you got a front-of-the-line pass for all attractions? “They did.”

Who told you that you could park hop on a one-day water park ticket from 1992? “They did.”

This was the most difficult thing in the world. A lot of times, I’d be trying to get to the bottom of an issue. Some guest had shown up with a million things wrong, and as I tried to sort out where everything had jumped the tracks, I’d ask questions like, “Who did this for you, who set this up for you, etc.”

All they could answer was, “They did.”

THEY.

In 1993’s
Jurassic Park
, Dr. John Hammond is complaining that everyone is giving his park, Jurassic Park, a hard time. He yells, “This just a delay. That’s all it is. All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!” And yes,
Jurassic Park
hilariously gets the opening date of Disneyland wrong (it’s 1955).

In response to this, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played wonderfully by Jeff Goldblum) replies, “Yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.”

When an attraction goes down in the Magic Kingdom, it’s broadcast over the radio system for the park. The code is 101. So, if Pirates goes down, it’s broadcast as “Pirates, 101”, and then the time. If it’s a bad enough downtime situation — guests on the attraction are being evacuated — then Guest Relations gets a call about the downtime, too.

When Pirates would go down, and guests would come in wondering why it was down, I always used to tell them it was because the pirates were eating the tourists. You’d be surprised by how many guests do
not
find this joke funny.

On a serious note, if Pirates
does
go down, Magic Kingdom has a problem. You don’t want Pirates to have any downtime.

The rule of thumb for all attractions is that it can sit “stalled” — basically, just hanging out, waiting — for roughly 20 minutes before an evacuation is ordered. If you get stuck on the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, you will sit there in that Heffalump dream for 19 minutes before the manager of the attraction says, “Okay, lets get them out of there.” It’s just assumed that most attractions can be fixed within 20 minutes, and the ride will resume.

However, at 21 minutes, it’s time to get the guests out of there. Usually, it’s an easy process with just cycling the attraction through: no more guests board, and the ones still on exit safely. Sometimes the attraction can’t cycle through, so cast members have to walk to each vehicle and personally escort each group of guests off.

In all my years at Disney World, between visiting and working, I was only ever evacuated off of one attraction, Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. It was a pretty boring experience.

Pirates, on the other hand, is a much more exciting experience, and also pretty daunting.

For starters, the attraction is made up of boats. When an evacuation of pirates is ordered, you’ve already been sitting on that boat for 20 minutes, maybe even longer. And more than likely your boat is nowhere near one of the platforms needed to exit. Because you’re on a boat. You can’t just step out of the vehicle and start walking away, because, boat. Your boat has to make it to one of the platforms along the ride, where you can actually step out of the boat, safely, and walk to an emergency exit.

What happens if your boat isn’t near one of these platforms? Well, that’s where the cast members come in. If Pirates breaks down, and there are boats out in the water nowhere near an exit platform, the Pirate cast members have to put on those pants you see people wear in cranberry bogs and wade into the water. The water’s only a foot-and-a-half deep, at most, but they’ve still got to walk through it to get to your boat.

Once arriving at your boat, wearing their cranberry waders, the cast members then have to push your boat to an emergency exit. This is a task that requires at least two cast members per boat, and they have to do it one boat at a time. It’s not an easy thing to do, and could take awhile.

So there you are. Stuck on Pirates, and it’s being evacuated. You’ve already been sitting there for twenty minutes, and you’re the sixth boat in line to be evacuated. You could easily find yourself sitting in a stalled pirate boat for upwards of an hour if every factor is working against you.

Were you planning to be stuck on Pirates for over an hour? And that’s not even including the 15–20 minutes you spent waiting in line, too. Suddenly, a half-hour attraction is turning into an hour and a half, maybe even more.

It’s never a good day when Pirates goes down.

It was late one summer evening, and Guest Relations got the call. Pirates was down, and the guests were being evacuated. It was more of a courtesy call than anything else, to let us know that guests might make their way down to City Hall to complain about the downtime. But there was one other thing mentioned in this phone call, and it was that one little boy on Pirates had an accident, where he just couldn’t hold it any longer, seeing as how he had been stuck in the attraction for an hour and a half. Someone else in the boat happened to have a plastic baggie (since, I guess when you’re stuck on a pirate boat, you become friends with everyone) and this little boy relieved himself into this bag. He was only four, so it wasn’t a huge deal. But still. The little kid had to go to the bathroom on a stuck boat, into a plastic bag, and this isn’t exactly something the Walt Disney Company likes to hear about.

The phone call from Pirates told the general teller that the dad of this little boy was coming down to City Hall to have a talk with us.

Very quickly, City Hall became a ghost town. Every other cast member disappeared from the counter, and I realized I was the only one standing out there. There was no use in trying to hide myself, because I would be discovered, no matter what. This was my destiny. I was here to talk to the dad whose son had just peed on Pirates.

Less than five minutes later, the dad showed up. I knew it was him. He walked forcefully into City Hall and looked right at me. “Can I talk to you?” he asked. He wasn’t rude or mean about it. He really wanted to know if he could talk to me about what had just happened on Pirates.

I needed to confirm it first. “Did you just get off of Pirates?” I asked, a little hesitant.

“Yes.” Dad walked over to me at the counter.

“And do you have a son?” I didn’t want to ask, but I had to ask.

“So you heard I was coming down here, huh?”

“We got a call from Pirates.” Dad went to say something else, but I cut him off. “Are you OK? Is your son OK?” I was genuinely worried.

Dad didn’t expect me to ask that. “Yeah, we’re fine. Well, we’ve been better.”

“I’m so sorry you had to experience that. It’s … well it’s not something that we hope for every day here, you know?” I grabbed the needed paperwork in front of me and put them in front of Dad. “I can only imagine what you guys are going through right now.”

“The wife is furious. I’m doing a little bit better. I don’t think my son even realizes that what he did was odd,” Dad laughed. In hindsight, for him the situation was a little bit funny. I mean, it’s not a
hysterical
situation. But the kid peed on Pirates into a plastic bag because he really had to go, and he was stuck on a boat. It’s kinda funny.

I wasn’t here to fight with Dad. I wasn’t here to argue with him about how his family had to resort to this weird situation to help their son out. I totally got it. It was still just, you know, weird. And it wasn’t his fault, or his son’s fault, by any means. It wasn’t Disney’s fault either, since downtimes and evacuations happen. I just needed to fix this situation, so no one ends up really at fault, and Dad leaves happy.

“And your son’s OK? Does he need a change of clothes or anything?”

“No, no, he’s fine.”

“OK, I don’t want him to remember this trip forever as that one time he peed on Pirates. So, what can I do for you guys, to make it better?”

“Uhhh…” Dad wasn’t expecting me to ask that question. “I don’t know. What can you do?”

“I can do a lot of things. Do you want FastPasses, or do you want me to set up any meals or fireworks for you guys?” I figured I had the full gamut of magic at my fingertips, seeing as how this was an odd situation.

“We’ll, we’re leaving tomorrow.” Because everyone is
always
leaving tomorrow.

“Have you thought about your next Disney trip?”

“Oh, I don’t know if we’ll take another Disney trip after this one.” Dad didn’t mean it at as joke or anything. Many guests save up their whole lives just for one Disney trip, never knowing if they’ll be back again.

“How about I do this? How about if you do decide to come back to Disney World some time in the future, I give you tickets?”

“How are you going to give me tickets?”

“I’ll set them up here in my computer and give you a claim number for them. So you just have to book your trip, buy plane tickets and get a hotel room, and I’ll take care of the park admission. How does that sound?”