Amber Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary (12 page)

I didn’t really go to the parks with co-workers. We spent so much time working in EPCOT that we weren’t eager to head to the parks on our days off. During one of my last days on the program, Emily and I did spend the day in EPCOT, riding Spaceship Earth and buying massive Minnie Mouse bakery cookies. The parks were reserved for expeditions with my roommates, whether it was walking around the World Showcase with Danica; watching Wishes with Jenni, Leah, and Alex; or hunting for Lou Mongello in the Contemporary Resort with Paige.

Parties among CPs are not uncommon; there is always a party if you’re in the mood to seek it out. I wasn’t really in the partying sphere, and therefore only heard about the parties in Vista Way or at people’s apartments outside of the complexes via co-workers, a number of whom were hung over on a couple of occasions as they labored over the fryers.

But group gatherings were something that I would attend, especially as I was comfortable in our little EU family circle. So when two of the people I worked with offered to have our CP group over to their apartment one night after work, I offered to drive those who lived in Chatham, while the people from Vista caught a ride with Betty.

Rachel, Sarah Mae, Yoshie, Betty, and I headed over to the apartment. Don and Morgan had arrived before us; Don had already begun the drinking. We were a little late — and by a little, I mean probably an hour or so; I had to wait for Betty to get ready, because I had to follow her there — and we all collapsed on the floor. There were half-finished card games, chatting, and I witnessed for the first time that unappealing game that is beer pong. I watched as the rest played a few games, poor Yoshie drinking Betty’s cups since Betty was the one driving home.

At one point, Don got quite upset with me. He’d already had a lot to drink, and I had been given the task of distracting him from the game. I was doing a wonderful job, and eventually he got quite peeved and began yelling at me. I went to sit down while someone walked him outside to calm down. There had already been noise complaints from the neighbors, and a drunken screaming guy was not going to make anything better at three or so in the morning.

Our energy was pretty much sapped by this point, and by the time Don had cooled off enough to join us, we were all slumped around the apartment or lying on the floor. After chatting for a little while longer, we decided to leave. As Don lived in Chatham, I was given the distasteful task of driving him back, although I was quite honestly so vexed I would have paid someone else to drive him had I had any cash on me. But Betty already had a carful, so I agreed to meet her, Sarah Mae, Rachel, and Yoshie at Steak 'n Shake after I dropped Don off — there was no way in hell he was joining us.

I got in the car, pulled out behind Betty, and blasted my music so I wouldn’t have to listen to Don talk. With the windows rolled down, you could still smell the alcohol roiling off of him, and at one point I had to pull over on the side of the interstate so he could throw up. Which just made everything better, especially as, directionally challenged as I am, I needed to stay in sight of Betty’s car to know where I was going. By the time Don climbed sullenly back into the car, I had lost sight of her, but still somehow managed to make my way back to Chatham. Stony-faced, I unlocked the door outside of security, totally unwilling to even drive in and drop him off in front of his apartment. Without so much as a thank you, Don staggered out, and that was the last time I talked to Don for the rest of the program.

Paige and I, as roommates within an actual room, not just roommates sharing an entire apartment (and also the only two original members of 22301 to make it through the entire program), had the strongest connection. We had gone to meet Lou Mongello together that first time at the Dawa Bar, and we had taken Pete the Imagineer up on his offer to take us to Universal with his comp tickets. I had never been there, and spent the day riding roller coasters solo — Pete and Paige both got sick on roller coasters, and used up all of their tolerance on the first coaster we hit. We had lunch with the guy who did the voice of Donkey from the Shrek attraction, and I spent the entire ride in Dr. Seuss Land rotating in my seat, trying to keep the elusive Hogwarts castle in sight.

(Pete, a little unsettlingly, would call or text to see if I wanted to hang out afterwards; we found it odd that he never called Paige, and I was too wise to hang out with him on my own, Imagineer or not. He kept calling for a while, and Paige and I saw him a few more times, but that was all.)

As Paige and I were both tremendous Harry Potter fans, there was much talk of the series in our apartment. Paige had brought her Xbox — complete with
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4
. I would come in from work as late as eleven or twelve at night, toss my bag on my bed, and walk back into the living room, accepting the controller Paige held out as my little Ron avatar waited patiently (I never played as Harry). She would tell me about the cool prizes she had unlocked playing solo (our avatars would be wearing masks or brandishing carrot wands) as we tackled the levels together, playing for hours before conceding to exhaustion.

Around the second week of June, I had just printed out my schedule through the end of the following week. I was lounging around the apartment with Paige, and she mentioned something about the opening of Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal. I lamented for a minute or so about how I wished I could go — I hadn’t asked for the day off, assuming that everyone else in Orlando would be trying to get the same day off. And then I froze mid-sentence. Without saying anything, I ran up to my bag and pulled my schedule out of whatever book I happened to be reading at the time.

“PAIGE! Paige! I’ve got it off! I’ve got the 18th off!”

Somehow, miraculously, the schedule gods had known that I had wanted to go to the grand opening of Wizarding World. One of the part-timers that worked at EU, Matt, had somehow managed to get in to Wizarding World early, and rhapsodized about it to me for hours once he realized that I was a fellow Harry Potter nerd. And somehow, somehow, I had gotten the day off.

Paige was just as excited. She didn’t have to go in until six p.m., and immediately we began planning an expedition that might very well prove to be the best day of our entire program. We agreed that we wouldn’t even touch our next paycheck, aware that we were going to spend obscene amounts of money at Universal.

June 18 dawned grossly early, and Paige and I were up and in the car before five. My playlist of Harry Potter soundtracks playing softly in the background, we chattered excitedly about what to expect. Around five, we pulled into the parking garage that was already starting to fill up. We made our way quickly to the front of the park, where they had already planned for a large line. We took our seats on the ground just beyond the Hard Rock Café, a fairly good position. And we waited.

After the sun had risen, and hundreds more had crowded in behind us, they slowly began to filter people into the park. Paige and I had both forgotten that we could have bought tickets ahead of time, so we lost our great spots as groups of people were let in behind us. We watched, anxious, as we stood in line to buy our tickets.

Finally, tickets clutched in our hands, we rushed into the park and began to catch up with the line. We hit a wall of people somewhere in the Jurassic Park area, and there we stayed for hours. I had started a new book (
Columbine
, by David Cullen; what every teenager brings to read while waiting to get into Wizarding World), and made quite a dent in it before we even shifted forward. Paige and I alternated between chatting and nodding off, or casting disparaging looks at the group behind us who had come outfitted in
Twilight
gear and could only converse by shouting.

Sometime around ten, we made it out of Jurassic Park. We heard fireworks go off, and cheering just around the bend, and listened excitedly as people nearby read updates off their phones.

Less than thirty minutes later, we were in.

It was a madhouse. Now, people like to warn me about going during peak times, and I just shake my head. Because nothing, nothing, could compare to being some of the first people into Wizarding World on the day of its grand opening. While I appreciated the effort to make the buildings feel as cozy and as English as they were in the movies, it didn’t help to accommodate the hundreds of people who were trying to sandwich themselves near the shelves. The entire day was nothing but heat and lines. And more lines. And some pumpkin juice. While waiting in line. We made it onto the Forbidden Journey, the ride inside the castle, fairly quickly, and rode it multiple times. We bought wands and bags and banners and chocolate frogs. We waited four hours in line to make it into a clothing store, me nodding off, waking up only when Paige tapped me on the shoulder to scoot forward a foot. We had lunch in the Three Broomsticks (the framed picture of our first butterbeer mustaches accompanies me on every move), and pointed out the Extendable Ears hanging from the ceiling in Zonko’s. Paige called in to work, telling them she wouldn’t be coming in, taking the point rather than forcing both of us leave (I had driven, and she didn’t have a way back, though I would have taken her). Fourteen hours we spent in Wizarding World, fourteen hot, sweaty, crowded hours having the time of our lives.

Of course, Paige and I did other activities besides indulging ourselves in Harry Potter infatuation. And it wasn’t all fabulous; we got frustrated when one of us got in the shower the same time the other of us planned on it, and I’m sure that time she came home from a bad day at work to find some of her belongings upside down and myself secreted away in a fort in the living room, complete with brownies and a movie on my laptop, she was wishing for her own room. But really, we have little to complain about. There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and toasting with mutual first mugs of butterbeer is one of them.

“HEY, AMBER, THIS IS Elchanan. You’re going to train him tonight on Beverage Island.”

Now, I don’t honestly remember if Elchanan was the first person I trained. All I remember is that one day I walked in for my shift, clocked in, and a leader — Eddie or Patrick, someone — pointed out a new Cast Member with the “earning my ears” ribbon attached to the back of their nametag. And that’s how I became a trainer.

This is the kind of thing that made the Electric Umbrella different from other locations — part of why I enjoyed it so much. And also part of why some of the people who still work there aren’t such big fans. Electric Umbrella avoided the procedures that would have made becoming a trainer tedious, like having to take a qualifying series of classes (though the reason for the classes is understandable), much the same way it avoided using CDS to assign positions throughout the restaurant. I walked in, they told me to train some people on Beverage Island, and I did it.

I enjoyed being a trainer. Sometimes I felt awkward, giving orders to people often much older than myself, but it was a baseless anxiety, as most of the people I trained were fabulous. Luckily, EU is an easy place to train; my method was to show trainees how to do something once or twice, explaining as I went along, and let them have at it, helping out as needed. We would wander around the restaurant, me demonstrating how to bus tables or disassemble the hot chocolate machine at the end of the night for cleaning, and then letting them take over. We would chat while we worked, getting to know each other, them often asking questions about working at Electric Umbrella. We would head downstairs for our break (I never forgot to take my trainees on break!), and I would walk with them over to the cafeteria if they didn’t know where it was and needed food.

Being a trainer was an interesting position. It was a good way to further develop my socializing skills as I got to know the trainees, and to present myself as someone they could come to if they had any questions. I learned to recognize people’s personalities, and how they learned best. Some people, like Michelle, preferred to learn things hands-on, asking questions only when they got stuck. I remember training her and Elchanan on Beverage Island, and she was right in there before I had even finished the demonstration, repeating things she’d already observed and asking a ton of questions. Beverage Island isn’t a particularly difficult position — taking apart the hot chocolate machines to wash, melting ice, wiping down counters, and refilling soda lids and straws — but it can be a lot to remember.

Others, like Will, were…more interesting. Will had not been having a great day when I trained him on ovens, and I was a little uncomfortable throughout the entire evening, looking helplessly at Patrick, one of my leaders, as he tried to explain to Will that punching the top of a box of chunks to fit them into the freezer was not exactly in accordance with our Safe-D rules, whether he actually felt pain in his wrist or not.

My move to trainer heralded the approach of a new batch of CPs. The CareerStart Program is set up exactly like the Advantage College Programs — rather than staying the four months, as in a regular program, the Fall or Spring Advantage CPs lasted about six months. The beginning of May signaled the gradual loss of all the CPs who had been working at EU since I started. Marc, from Iowa State, who had kept us entertained with his wry sense of humor and eagerness to ensure the chunks were cooking well, went home. Ann, who was also part of our EU group, left us, too. Others, like Emily, Sam, and Betty, extended to stay at EU until August. Extending into another role was also an option; Don, for example, extended, but transferred to working attractions in Frontierland at Magic Kingdom. Sarah Mae and Rachel, our Australian friends, transferred a little later as part of their International Program; Sarah Mae moved to the other side of Future World, working merchandise in stores like the Art of Disney. Poor Rachel, who worked so much at EU that often she would sleep during her breaks rather than eat, was transferred to Dinoland in Animal Kingdom; working the carnival games out in the heat was definitely not a pleasant switch.