The Ride Delegate: Memoir of a Walt Disney World VIP Tour Guide (17 page)

Do you think we’re going to eat? I’m staaaaarving.

Maybe we can talk them into ending early? Contempo Café? I want cupcakes.

I want pizza.

Pizzafari?

Hell no. I’m not bringing them in there.

Could we squeeze them into Tusker?

We’re doing that tomorrow for breakfast.

Uggggggghhhhhhhh.

The Orange family had Abby and I for five days. We started early in the day and we went way late into the evening. They also loved eating, which wasn’t a problem for either Abby or I, but we slowly realized we were running out of places to take them to eat. We had already exhausted all of our options in Magic Kingdom and we had only spent eight hours there.

“Tim, seriously, you need to step away,” I said to the kid, as he took a big step into my personal space, trying to get closer. He was not a child I’d choose to spend additional time with. Usually I get along with tween boys perfectly because I can talk about video games and superheroes, but Tim was in a complete league of his own. He never had anything to say, and when he had something to say he was usually yelling it. “How about you go walk with your parents?”

He didn’t even bother answering me. He leaned forward and poked Sasha in the arm again. Even she wanted him to stop. Sasha took a step closer to me, as if to shield herself from her brother.

“Tim, please,” I said, pointing towards his parents behind us. He looked at them, and then he looked back at Sasha and I. I watched the scene play out in slow motion. Sasha, standing slightly in front of me, took a step forward as Tim took a big step towards her. Tim, with all his power as a skinny eleven year old, reared his arm backwards, formed a fist, and then plunged it forward and right into Sasha’s stomach. Sasha, being a skinny twelve year old, took the punch hard. It was so loud and hollow I swear birds from the trees flew away, startled by the sound. Sasha flew backwards into me. I wasn’t expecting that, so I didn’t have time to react properly to keep her from falling. She crashed into me, I stumbled backwards, and she fell hard onto the dirty Animal Kingdom ground.

Everyone reacted at the same time. I could hear Abby scream from fifteen feet behind me. She thought I had gotten punched, and immediately came rushing to my side and grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the violent twelve year old. Tim’s dad rushed to him and scooped him up, as he flailed in the air. One of the aunts rushed to Sasha, who was laying flat on her back in Animal Kingdom. We had accumulated the same kind of crowd that a parade normally receives. One Cast Member from a merchandise cart asked if he should call security.

“No, we’re fine,” Abby called to him, as she continued to drag me through the mêlée.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it was Sasha.” I fought in Abby’s grasp.

“He punched her.” Abby couldn’t believe what she had seen. “We knew he was a little weird, but
he punched her
.”

Sasha, who had really been a mild-mannered kid for the last three days of the tour, sat on a bench in Animal Kingdom and cried hysterically. She had gotten the wind knocked right out of her and the fall to the ground had startled her more than anything else. Her aunt consoled her as she sobbed.

The rest of the family had stopped a few feet behind us. I had been in the lead of the group, so there’s no way anyone had missed what had just happened. The other aunt was trying to calm the girls in the stroller down, telling them that everything was okay and that Sasha was only a little hurt. A little hurt? Sasha will probably never recover from this experience.

“How about we take the kids into one of the shops and let them pick something out?” Abby and I turned to see Mrs. Orange standing next to us, as calm as ever. The woman never broke a sweat and everything was always peachy-keen with her. She also loved to shop. “Isn’t there a big shop near us?”

“Down by the Tree of Life,” Abby told her. “Maybe we should just end for the day?”

“No, lets go to the shop.” Mrs. Orange smiled at us. It was a half smile, one where she didn’t even bother to smile through her teeth.

Mr. Orange refused to put Tim down as we walked through the rest of Animal Kingdom. He carried him like he was game that had just been shot, slung over his shoulder with his legs high up in the air. I was scared Tim might kick his dad in the face, or worse, a passing guest. But Mr. Orange didn’t seem to mind this at all, and I wondered if this was a normal occurrence in the Orange household. Sasha was still crying.

We stopped at Island Merchantile and the girls jumped out of the stroller and rushed inside to shop, dragging their mothers with them. Sasha stumbled into the store, tightly clinging her mother who could be heard saying, “You pick out whatever you want, sweetie!”

“When are we going to get something?” Abby mumbled to me, as she pushed the empty stroller to the side of the building. She leaned against it. “Seriously, what kind of shit was that?”

I shook my head. “I just never thought he would react like that. Completely unprompted! Would it be reason to end the tour if he had hit
me
?”

“Do you want to pretend he hit you?” Abby asked. We both were having the same thoughts about this family. We had been scheduled to be with them for five days, and at the end of day three we wanted to give up. At least we were halfway to the actual conclusion of the tour. The family was just a mess. I had been with messy families before, but none like this. Mr. and Mrs. Orange wandered around in some haze-like state. We weren’t told that Sasha hated darkness until after we took her on Haunted Mansion. We had to deal with her freaking out for a half hour while we rode Peter Pan again and again on loop.

I didn’t think we could pretend that Tim had hit me, even though we desperately wanted to end this tour. The Office probably wouldn’t let us. This was one of those tours where we would feel awful pawning off the guests from another guide. Sometimes it was just necessary to take one for the team.

After a while, when Abby and I realized that the family wasn’t coming out of the shop anytime soon, we found two stools and sat down on them. We weren’t supposed to sit onstage for any reason, but this was one of those scenarios where the two of us together would be fine. We nestled ourselves behind a closed hair-wrap stand, so at least we were a little bit obstructed. Abby pulled out her phone to text her boyfriend.

I didn’t have anyone to text, since I didn’t have a boyfriend and I knew that my two best friends were still at work somewhere in the Magic Kingdom. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through new Twitter updates, but nothing exciting was happening.

I heard Mr. Orange approach before I saw him. He came around the corner of the store, still holding Tim tightly in his hands. The boy was thrashing violently, and Mr. Orange motioned to put him down like setting a squealing pig free.

“Are you going to behave?” Mr. Orange asked. Tim nodded. Mr. Orange handed Tim a pair of shoes. Both Abby and I looked down at Tim’s feet, to see that he wasn’t in fact wearing any shoes. Tim sat down on the ground and put them on.

“That’s punishment,” Mr. Orange said to us.

“Um,” Abby started. “He always has to be wearing shoes at Disney World. It’s a policy,” she said, struggling for the proper phrasing.

“He’s my son. We’re looking at reform schools. There’s one in Florida.” Mr. Orange told us the name of the school and wandered inside with Tim. Abby immediately Googled the school.

“At least eight boys have reportedly died at this school,” she said, showing me the news article. “I don’t want to be on this tour anymore.”

“Do you think we could both get suddenly sick? Something we ate?”

“But we ate with the family. Shouldn’t they get sick, too?”

“Abby, I am willing to let you push me into the moat around the Tree of Life. There’s a change of clothes in my van, anyway.”

Abby mulled this idea over for a moment. It might be the only way to escape.

We spent the next half hour concocting different ways we could end the tour (“Maybe I fell off Dinosaur?” “Maybe I fell into the crocodile river?” “Emotional breakdown during It’s Tough to be a Bug?” “Lice?” “2319?”) but nothing seemed plausible. We became so invested making up a believable story to get ourselves off of it, that we didn’t realize that so much time had passed. Abby suddenly perked up, worried that the family had exited out a different door in the shop, and went rushing in to check on them.

I continued to sit on my stool hidden behind the hairwrap stand and watched guests slowly exit out of the park. It was late in the day, so activities at Animal Kingdom were quickly winding down. Safari was already closed, and there weren’t any more shows of Festival of the Lion King or Nemo. Why were guests still even in the park? Animal Kingdom should really be considered a Fun & More ticket option.

“They’re still shopping,” Abby said, like it was the worst news she could ever give. “Are you hungry?” I nodded. Abby ventured a little ways down the path and returned with two Mickey ice cream bars and diet Cokes. We ate in silence.

In all, Abby and I spent two and a half hours sitting on the stools waiting for the family. I was $300 an hour, Abby was $300 an hour, and together we were $600 an hour. For two hours, $1,200. For two and a half hours, $1,500. We could have bought all of the Mickey ice cream bars in the park and then some for that amount of money. When the family emerged after what felt like an eternity, they had more shopping bags than they could carry and had the littlest ones walk so the stroller could be used as a shopping cart. Abby and I pushed it tandem out of the park, so we didn’t have to interact with any of the family. Tim was forced to take his shoes off again, and we wanted no part in that.

When the family returned a year later we opted out of hosting them again. God bless the tour guide who was tasked to them.

A majority of guests told me that I was more than welcome to join them for meals, but often I politely declined. I described mealtime as “family time” and it was usually just as awkward as you’re imagining it to sit with a bunch of strangers I had literally met four hours beforehand. Every family asked me the same Disney questions every single time. Sometimes I really wanted to sit behind Brown Derby, completely alone, and eat a bagel and a cupcake from Starring Rolls. It was frequently my only downtime.

If I became attached to the kids I always accepted the meal invitation. Sometimes there were so many kids in a group that they got their own table, and I became Head of the Kids Table, an honor I happily accepted. The kids and I would sit and wait for our meals and do the word searches on the menus with crayons I had in my bag and I never minded that responsibility.

Sometimes if it was raining and I didn’t want to have to go looking for food somewhere else in EPCOT, I stayed. Sometimes it was pouring, and I weighed the options of staying with the family I didn’t care for, or running through the rain to America quick service, and took the latter. Sometimes it was just worth it to get soaked to eat alone.

And sometimes, I started approaching Teppan Edo in Japan and all I could think about was eating the food inside. Regardless of whether I liked the family or not, or if they had kids or not, I was going to eat in Teppan Edo. I checked the family in at the podium, told the hostess there I would be joining the family, and then returned back to the family to tell them we’d be seated in a moment.

Mom rummaged around in her purse. “Annie, can you do me a favor?” Mom pulled out a long white cord and handed it to me. “Can you go charge my phone for me?”

“Oh, Annie, take mine, too! It’s almost dead.” The teenage girl handed me her phone. She turned to her teenage brother. “How’s your battery?”

“Dead,” he said, handing me his phone and his charger.

Dad did the same. Four phones, three different phone chargers. One tour guide to charge them all.

The family was called seconds later and they got up and disappeared from my sight down the long hallway into the restaurant. I stood in the Teppan Edo lobby wondering how many other guests had seen this transpire, and if I was going to acquire any of their phones as well.

I stumbled out of Teppan Edo and down the steep steps to the ground. I walked around the entire Japan pavilion until I found two separate wall outlets, about ten feet apart from each other, and sat in-between the two of them in the Japan loading dock. Countless International Cast Members came over to ask if I was okay, and I explained as best I could that I was doing a favor for my guests. One hospitable Cast Member brought me rice in a take-out container. I sat on the cold ground and ate rice with the provided chopsticks.

An hour later, when all of the phones had at least 50% battery life, I returned upstairs to claim my guests. Mom came down the hallway, grinning because she had just savored a delicious meal at a delicious restaurant.

“It was so funny, Annie, they sat us at a table and there were outlets right next to us!”

“That’s so funny!” I said, but it was literally the least funny thing I had ever heard.

I trailed behind my guests, my nose buried deep into my Blackberry like Belle’s nose buried in a book. I watched all 37 guests pass through the back entrance of Tower and I reluctantly followed in behind them. First it was through an entirely white hallway, the airlock of Tower, and then through a door that led out directly next to the PhotoPass view. It was like a giant parade for guests doing the rider swap at the exit.

Hanna gathered all the guests in one giant group. She acknowledged my presence with a wave of her hand. “The elevator will only fit nineteen people. So we’re going to have to split into two groups.”

No one moved. It might have been the language barrier. Hanna stepped into the group and divided them herself. She beckoned for the first group to follow her. I instinctively stayed behind with the second group.

Hanna disappeared around the corner and through the door located between the two elevator shafts of Tower. It led down a hallway and towards the bypass elevator, or the chicken elevator, or the elevator you take if you’re too scared to ride Tower and opt out. It was also the only way to PEP tower; a literal back entrance through the exit.