Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (9 page)

These other cast members were nice. They’d show me how to do things, slowly, because I was training. They told me not to worry about Whitney and that she was always like this. They told me they actually called her “dementor” because, just like the evil spirits in
Harry Potter
, she could walk into a room and suck all the life out of it. It was a horrible joke to make about someone, but it was one-hundred-percent true about Whitney.

I buddied up with others, and they showed me the GR ropes. A few of them even walked me through complicated ticket things so I could see them done
slowly
, and remember the steps for later. That’s what I really wanted. I didn’t want someone to talk down to me, or even take 35 minutes to explain something to me. I just wanted to be shown how to do things like an adult.

Whitney did sit with me for a while in the Bank Out Room while I went over ticket things. Even though she was sitting next to me, it’s not like she was really sitting with me, as she spent the majority of the time on her cell phone. Someone else mentioned to me that she had recently gone through a pretty bad breakup, and she was seemingly taking it out on me — someone she had known for three days.

On the last day of training, I was set to open. That meant arriving at the Magic Kingdom for 7am, and actually opening up Guest Relations (and the park) for the day. I wasn’t supposed to meet Whitney in City Hall, but rather wait for her at the mouth of the tunnel underneath Magic Kingdom. I showed up at 6:50am and Whitney was already there, sprawled out on one of the benches, a sweatshirt over her costume and sunglasses over her eyes.

“I’ve been up all night and I’m really hung over.” She pushed herself into a sitting position. “Don’t talk to me unless it’s urgent.”

The two of us walked to City Hall, her mostly straggling behind because, as I heard her tell someone else, she didn’t sleep last night since she left the club at 4am and needed to be at Magic Kingdom three hours later. She smelled like cigarette smoke, beer, and desperately needed a shower since her hair was matted to her face. This is the woman who was here to train me for Guest Relations.

On this last day, I needed to pass a GR test. I was tested first on ATS, showing another trainer (not Whitney) that I knew what I was doing (and thankfully, so many other cast members had stepped into help me out, I knew what I was doing). And then I needed to pass a written test. The written test included questions like naming all the smoking areas in the park, where certain quick-service locations were located, and how to get to such and such hotel. It was easy. I passed.

Passing this test meant that I got my Guest Relations golden D pin. It’s the bling-bling you see GR cast members wear on the opposite side of their nametags. The pin is supposed to represent that this cast member has passed all the tests and knows the answers to all the questions. There’s a small little “ceremony” where a trainer hands their trainee the D pin, and everyone else in Guest Relations cheers and congratulates the newest member of their family.

It sounds like fun and,
oh wait
, Whitney didn’t do that for me. She pulled me into the VIP room with three other random cast members she had found, handed me my pin, and then told me to go out onto the counter and actually work.

“That’s it?” I pinned the giant golden D to my chest.

“Yeah, now go do something.” She shooed me away and then demanded an early release since she was hung over and tired, and wanted to go home.

Just like that. I was a brand-new Guest Relations cast member.
For real.
I headed out to the counter to actually work
for real
.

It was a Saturday in June, and I think Whitney knew what she was sending me into after training. She had gotten released from work early, so she didn’t have to deal with the craziness of the park. She didn’t bother to warn me about what was happening out there, but I’m pretty sure she knew what I was stepping into.

This was
my
first day. It also happened to be Gay Days in Magic Kingdom.

Most guests are now familiar with Gay Days. It’s not a Magic Kingdom-sanctioned event. It’s like Dapper Day, in the sense that it’s organized (and promoted) by an outside party — not Disney — and after a day is designated to attend, anyone who wants to attend can show up. It would be like if I posted on the internet, “Hey, April 22 is going to be Orange Shirt Day”, and then everyone on the internet showed up at Magic Kingdom wearing orange shirts on that day.

Gay Days just happened to be a day when the gay and lesbian community (and their straight allies) come together at Disney World and wear red shirts. That’s really all it is. It’s an event totally organized offsite from the parks, and on the first Saturday of every June, Gay Days heads to Magic Kingdom. There’s just a surplus of extra red shirts in the park. For me, it was nothing out of the ordinary, considering that a majority of the people I knew and worked with at Disney World were gay and lesbian themselves. Just another day.

Thankfully, we live in a progressive world where all lifestyles are (starting to become) accepted. So, for a lot of families in the park, they just saw the day as an opportunity to celebrate love, and loving whoever you want, no matter what gender or sex.

However, for any conservative and religious family in the park, they literally thought Satan was waiting in line for Thunder Mountain with them. These were the families who came storming into City Hall, demanding Mickey’s head on a platter because their precious children were being exposed to — gasp — lesbians.

I didn’t know this was a designated day in the park. Whitney probably knew it. Which is why she booked it out of Magic Kingdom as quickly as possible. I, on the other hand, went on the counter excited to start. The first guest I had asked for a few celebration buttons. The second guest I had asked for dining reservations. The third guest I had asked for his tickets to be refunded because he was disgusted at what was taking place in the park and refused to spend a second longer in the Magic Kingdom.

When he told me this, I had no idea what he was talking about. I was trying to figure out what he could have encountered out in the park that would leave him feeling this way, but I couldn’t think of anything. Had there been a bad interaction with a character? A cast member? Was a guest rude to him? I asked him to explain to me why I needed to refund his tickets.

“I was not told at the start of my vacation that today the park would be over taken by gay men,” he said, with a completely straight face.

“Walt Disney World doesn’t discriminate like that, sir,” I replied back, still not having the slightest idea what he was even getting at.

“Today is the last day of our vacation and you expect me to put up with this?” He gestured out into the park, and I noticed that there was a sea of red shirts out there. It still didn’t hit me as odd. “Does Disney know this is going on? How can you let something like this happen in your park? This place is going to shit. I can’t believe I come back here year after year and you’re going to let the park be overrun with men in tight clothing, fondling each other. What am I supposed to tell my children?”

Still no idea what he was getting at. I thought he was asking me to, personally, walk around and politely ask every single gay man to leave the park, because it made him uncomfortable. “Sir—” I started again, but another cast member on the counter cut me off.

“Sir, I understand your frustration, but Gay Days is not run by, or promoted through, Walt Disney World. We don’t have any control over who comes in and out of the park, and if everyone wants to come in today wearing a red shirt, that is fine.”

“No, you should have someone standing outside, refusing to allow these people in. This is a family environment. It’s not meant for people like them. We are leaving, and I want you to refund my money.”

This other cast member was named Julie. She was nice, but a little high strung and intense. The guest slammed his tickets down onto the counter, and Julie picked them up. “Unfortunately, sir, we can’t refund tickets.” She pointed to a tiny line of print on the back. “See? Tickets are non-refundable. We can’t force you to stay, and we can’t force you to leave, unless you do something against our rules, but you cannot have your money refunded.”

“This is completely unacceptable. I cannot believe that you let something like this carry on.”

“They are not causing harm to any other guests, and we are not going to have them removed from the park. That’s just not a thing we’re going to do. Is there any other way we can help you?”

“I want to speak to your manager.”

Julie did a quick headshake. “They’re in a meeting right now, so you’ll be waiting awhile, but I can go tell them you’re waiting if you want.”

“How long will I be waiting?” The guest snatched the tickets back from Julie.

She shrugged. “An hour or so?”

“Forget it. I’m never bringing my family back here. You just lost a customer!” The guest stomped out of City Hall so loud others stopped to watch him go.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Julie as soon as he was out of earshot. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

“You get used to jerks like that.” Julie moved a few papers around on the City Hall counter, like it was a nervous tick of hers, “And you learn to always say ‘the managers are in a meeting’ and that they’ll ‘be a while’ because no jerk like him ever wants to wait. They want us to do whatever they want, no questions asked. Don’t worry about it. You’ll get used to it.”

The rest of my day was full of more guests like the first jerk. More families came in complaining that it was ridiculous for Disney World to allow such a thing to happen, and as the day went on I found myself actually having a voice. I’d tell them Disney wasn’t responsible for who they let into the park, and if a lot of gay and lesbians wanted to come in, they could. I learned I could say no to guests who were demanding ridiculous things, and even though they’d yell their vacation was ruined, it really wasn’t. I was learning the ropes of Guest Relations.

This was a standard regular day:

I’d drive from my apartment just off of Disney property and pull into the massive Magic Kingdom cast member parking lot. I’d park my car, immediately forgetting where I parked it. Then, I’d get on the bus — I promise to explain the bus soon — and that would take me to the mouth of the Magic Kingdom tunnel.

From there, I’d join a pack of other Magic Kingdom cast members, all heading off to start their work day. The bus drops cast members off at only one location, the mouth of the tunnel. It is in Fantasyland. It is actually directly behind Pinocchio’s Village Haus, but roughly an entire story down, technically “underground”, but technically not at the same time.

Immediately to the right is the Mousekateria, or the Mouse, the cafeteria for all of Magic Kingdom. It is a giant open seating area that houses a Subway, a salad bar, and a grill. Sometimes the cooks inside there would make “special” dishes, but they always looked odd and I never wanted to eat them. This food isn’t provided by Magic Kingdom or any part of Disney food services, but rather hired out to a third party, Amark. They’re probably the same people who provided the food at your college (if you’re someone who has been to college recently).

The food is … okay. I was never big for eating in the Mouse myself because 1) it was ridiculously overpriced, and 2) it was ridiculously far away. Remember, this is all underneath Fantasyland. City Hall is on the other side of the park. I never wanted to walk from one side of the park to the other just to get a grilled cheese and pay $4.00 for it.

I also just didn’t like sitting in the Mouse. Cast members are cliquey, and no one ever mingled with another line of business, or even another area, in the Mouse. All the parade dancers sit together. All the Tomorrowland cast members sit together. Custodial sits together. It’s like a high school cafeteria, and for me it was mildly depressing.

Past the Mouse, the tunnel underneath the Magic Kingdom split into two different directions, right or left. Going right takes you toward Liberty Square and Frontierland, and eventually wraps around to Adventureland. Going left takes you to other parts of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. I needed to go to Main Street, so I’d go left, and then I came upon another tunnel that went straight down the middle of the park. I’d walk this path.

This was the top of the tunnel, and there was always a lot of congestion. This is also where the money of the park was housed, in a location called the RCC, short for the Revenue Control Center.

Inside this closed-off room were machines to count money at the end of the shift. There was also a sort of teller inside, who would actually issue money to cast members who needed to bring it back to their location. This is also the birthplace of Disney Dollars. If I ever needed to get a stack of Disney Dollars, I had to hike here.

Walking past the RCC, the tunnel path dipped down about thirty or so feet. That’s to account for the Castle moat above this area. This is the
true
tunnel of the MK tunnel, which seems like it will never end. It’s a long, straight hallway, and it’s awful to walk it more than once a day. It’s probably the length of at least two-and-a-half football fields, maybe more. It’s also either unbearably hot or miserably damp and chilly: since this part of the tunnel is literally underneath the Castle moat, it can’t be insulated. So when it’s hot outside, all the heat gets trapped in there. When it’s cold outside, everything freezes and you feel like you’re walking across a frozen tundra with no end in sight. It’s not a fun walk.

On the opposite side, there’s an incline, and once again a fork. Right or left? Going left takes you to toward Tomorrowland, but first you have to walk through the Tony’s Town Square area. Going right takes you to the other side of Main Street, where I wanted to be. There were lots of staircases with numbers on them, and then signs that would tell me where I’d end up if I were to walk up a set of stairs. First, there was the stairwell for Crystal Palace, and then I came to a staircase that said GUEST REALTIONS. I’d walk up this one, of course.