The Ride Delegate: Memoir of a Walt Disney World VIP Tour Guide (6 page)

Due to this cockamamie arrangement, it also took forever to actually be seated. I needed to check the guests in 15 minuets before their reservation time, not 10 minutes after. But they had wanted to sit through Voyage of the Little Mermaid, and who was I to object to that.

But now Mom and Dad were taking their time, strolling past the outdoor merchandise carts, and asking Sally if she wanted a light-up Minnie hat. Of course Sally wanted a light-up Minnie hat. I wanted a light-up Minnie hat. The light-up Minnie hat turned into a Minnie doll, and an autograph book, and a baseball hat for Dad, and we were still nowhere near Sci-Fi.

“I’m fine pushing, you lead the way, Annie!” Dad told me. “Oh, cool, is that American Idol?”

“Yeah, you go check the show times. Let me push!” I said, once again trying to take control of the stroller with Sally. Dad relinquished his grasp, and I grabbed it before Sally had time to roll away.

Dad wandered over to the show times, and I pushed the stroller as quickly as I could in the direction of Sci-Fi. Mom saw me dart away, and she hurried after me. She had to hurry after me. I had Sally and I was pushing her into a crowd, which I had learned was the easiest way to make sure the family kept up with my pace. As long as I had the kids in a crowd, the parents would follow me blindly no matter where I went.

I pushed down the slope towards the ABC Commissary, and Dad saw us disappear around the corner. He left American Idol and followed us. “I can take the stroller back,” he said, reaching the bottom of the hill.

“No, I’m fine, I’ve got it. I have a degree in stroller pushing,” I said, like it was a true fact.

Dad laughed. “Then lead on!”

I parked the stroller across from Sci-Fi with literally seconds to go before the family would be deemed “no-shows” for their reservations. “Hey, Sally, can you jump out?” I leaned down to ask her. She mustered the strength and swiveled her legs out. I ran to the podium and checked the family in, apologizing profusely to the seater that we were late for the reservation, and she told me not to worry about it. They were called less than five minutes later.

“Aren’t you joining us?” Dad called, as they disappeared down the darkened hallway towards the dining room.

“No, you guys enjoy! I’ll be waiting here when you’re finished!” I called back, as they turned the corner and disappeared from my sight.

I looked at my watch. It took about an hour-and-a-half to eat at Sci-Fi. Not only were the seats stupid, but service also took a ridiculously long time, like they drove their own fifteen-passenger van to EPCOT to pick fresh greens from The Land. I looked at the ABC Commissary next door. It was time to feast like a king. It was time to eat like I might never see food ever again, or at least until the end of this tour.

There’s this scene in
UP
where Carl and Russell are walking though the jungle, and Russell is complaining about everything. He’s yelling that he’s tired, and that his knee hurts.

“Which knee?” Carl asks.

“My elbow hurts,” Russell whines. “And I have to go to the bathroom!”

“I asked you about that five minutes ago!”

“Well, I didn’t have to go then! I don’t want to walk anymore. Can we stop?”

“Russell, if you don’t hurry up, the tigers will eat you.”

Replace the word Carl with Annie, the word Russell with every-single-child-on-a-tour, and the word tigers with Mickey’s Jammin’ Jungle Parade. That’s the quintessential essence of every single VIP tour.

You never forget your first time driving out onto the tarmac to meet an awaiting plane. Mine happened two weeks into my tour guide tenure.

One of the coordinators printed out a detailed map for me to follow to get to the private airport located way down Route 192 in Kissimmee. I got lost twice and kept turning into the same pawn shop parking lot. Then, finally, down a long and dusty dirt road, I found the tiny little airport. I was early to meet the plane, so I pulled into the parking lot and sat there for about a half hour. The plane was late.

I turned the car off and walked into the tiny terminal. There was one woman standing behind the desk and a technician seated on the couch in the waiting area. Both of them asked me if I wanted anything to eat or drink, and even though I declined I was given water and a bag of popcorn.

“Where’s your car?” The technician asked. I pointed outside to the parking lot. “Nah, bring it around, I’ll open the gate for you!” The technician was up and moving before I had time to protest.

I got behind the wheel of my Suburban and waited for the metal gate with barb wire lining the top to open. It slowly crept back as I moved my giant car forward. I have only ever seen cars on tarmacs for the president, or in the movies, and usually immediately followed by a Bond villain reveal. It was just a vast empty space, and I didn’t know where to go. There were no parking spots on the tarmac. The technician pointed for me to drive a little bit farther, and then park. “You’re off the runway!” he yelled with a smile, like that made me feel a whole lot better. I just had this imagine of the plane coming down right on top of me and having to explain to the Office how a small charter plane destroyed my Suburban.

I sat in my car on the tarmac, like this was a normal thing for anyone to do.

I saw it appear in the sky, a little white plane with a blue racing stripe on the side. It slowly began to descend from the sky, which probably happened a lot faster than I thought, but it was still a great distance away from me. It got closer and closer and I heard it now, the loud low rumbling of an engine flying through the sky. It landed on the tarmac with a screech, and I smelled burnt rubber.

The technician went running over to the plane, and waved for me to follow him over. At first I assumed I should get out of the car and walk over, then I thought about how I shouldn’t really be walking across the tarmac like that. I drove my Suburban over and parked it next to the plane like something so commonplace I had done it a million times before.

The stairs lowered down. A tall gentleman stood at the top, wearing a blue polo shirt and drinking a beer.

“Do you want some steak?” he called to me. I stuck my head out my window.

“I’m fine, but thank you.” I meekly replied back.

“No, you gotta have some steak, the cook’s already made it.”

I don’t eat steak, though. And here was this guy on his own plane telling me that I needed to eat the steak that was already prepared. “Okay.” I got out of my car to ascend the steps of the plane, but Dr. No brought the steak to me. He handed me a plate, and an accompanying fork and knife, and told me to eat it while his henchman loaded the car with suitcases.

I ate like three small pieces of the steak, and then politely handed it back to the flight attendant from the plane, who looked at me with such disgrace because I had cast aside a piece of steak probably worth both of our daily salaries combined.

Next on Dr. No’s roll call was the pilot of the plane himself, who got out of the plane and handed me his business card. It said his name and then PILOT in big letters. He asked me if I had a business card, and I fumbled around in my tour bag for one of the general cards tour guides were given. I wrote my name on the back of it with TOUR GUIDE in big letters.

Dr. No had two kids, and I wondered if they had ever traveled on an actual commercial airline before. I was told that the trip to Disney World was just a “layover” before their actual destination of the Bahamas. They were stopping for twenty-four hours to see Mickey Mouse like I had stopped on my drive to Orlando at South of the Border to pose with that giant billboard.

Little did I know this was actually a commonplace thing. Guests with their own private airline transportation would literally just pop in and out of Disney World like they were spending the afternoon at grandmas. I’d be told to meet guests in the middle of the afternoon, and I’d need to get them back to their plane before the end of the night. The pilots would just sit in the plane like I’d sit in my Suburban, and spend the time by watching Netflix on their iPhones.

Of course these guests had money to blow; they had hired me. A smart and savvy Disney guest knows how to navigate the park without the use of a $5 a minute tour guide ($300 / 60 minutes = $5. A five minute bathroom break cost $25.). But these guests didn’t want to have to worry about learning their way around Disney World, which is where I came into play. I had countless guests tell me over the years that being with me was the first “stress- free” vacation they had ever taken. It
was
stress-free, because I was the one stressed and on edge so they didn’t have to be. I had to think about fifteen different things at once, and then account for the fact that Dr. No wanted to see Fantasmic at 8:30pm and the pilot wanted the wheels up at 9pm.

Dr. No and his family were a wonderful tour group, but I watched him throw money every which way and I thought about casually suggesting that he adopt me as an adult child so he could help pay off my student loans, which he could easily do in about fifteen minutes while it would take me fifteen years. Superfluous money dumbfounded me. The fact that Dr. No had his own plane continued to bewilder me. I was eating a steady diet of grilled cheese and eggs to try to save money because I was spending all of it on grande iced coffees at Starbucks. I wondered if Dr. No’s kids had ever even had grilled cheese before, or was their life just full of prepared steak on airplanes?

The biggest lie I ever told a guest was, “Animal Kingdom’s closed!”

Sometimes it’d be 4:30pm, and we’d all be standing in Studios, and I could tell that the family was winding down, but then the hyper fifteen-year-old boy would yell out loud, “Yo, Mom, can we ride Everest again?” Mom would look to me for approval of this plan, and I had one of two options:

Take them to Animal Kingdom at 4:30pm, knowing that there was no way I could get in and out of there in less than an hour, and as soon as we made it into the park they were going to want to ride Safari, again, and probably see Festival of the Lion King for its last performance of the day at 5:30, so we wouldn’t leave the park till after 6, get them home just before 7, back to the Office for just before 8, out of there before 9, home for 9:30pm. Asleep fifteen minutes later. Pass.

Or I could tell them, “Oh gosh, Animal Kingdom closes in a half hour. The animals have to go to bed!” No one was ever going to argue with the animal’s bedtime. Animal Kingdom’s closing time was always shaky to begin with, because it did closer earlier than the other parks, and were guests really keeping track of that time? Sometimes they’d ask, “Can we see the fireworks at Animal Kingdom?” A serious question, with a serious answer of, “The animals don’t like fireworks.” Just like how the animals don’t like straws or balloons or lids on cups. I spilled so many diet cokes for the sake of the animals.

Fountain View Ice Cream (as of late, a Starbucks) always smelled like waffle cones. I would stare longingly at the ice cream location as I trudged with guests from one side of Future World to the other. I always desperately wanted to stop, because they not only had waffle cones, but they had waffle bowls for ice cream, and they’d also make ice cream cookie sandwiches. It’d be a thousand degrees, and I’d be racing guests from Soarin’ to Test Track, and vice versa, and I’d only think of ice cream. There was no scenario where I could stop in and get myself a scoop, though. My guests needed to want the ice cream, too, and they never wanted to stop to get a hot fudge sundae. No, we needed to be in and out of EPCOT in about an hour and a half so we could make our dinner reservations back at the hotel. There was no way I could position them in front of the fountain so I could be, like, here watch this fountain show for fifteen minutes while I go wait in this line to get myself a snack! I couldn’t step away and get a snack. The guests needed to want the snack for me to get one, too.

Sometimes I’d casually suggest it. Like, hey guys, it’s really hot, how about we stop for a refreshing treat? And the guests would always be, like, but Annie we wanted to ride Test Track twice before dinner. Take us to Test Track, Annie. We want to ride in a yellow car.

My plan for ice cream always fell through.

Billy tugged on my sleeve. “Annie, can I have ice cream?”

“Can
I
have ice cream?” I asked Billy, as we walked from Future World West to Future World East, Billy keeping up with my pace as I pushed Sally in the stroller in front of me.

“Yeah, we all can have ice cream!” Billy happily cried. Sally cheered from her seated position.

“Billy, I’m not in charge of the ice cream.” I told him, as we passed by Fountain View and I longed for some mint chocolate chip.

“But I want ice cream!”

“So do I, but your parents are the ones who make that decision. I’m not in charge of the ice cream.”

“Then what are you in charge of?” Billy asked, looking at Fountain View himself. He struck me as a kid who would enjoy chocolate chip or cookie dough ice cream.

“I’m in charge of the rides, Billy,” I sighed, as I pushed the stroller.

“Huh?” Billy didn’t get it.

“Like the Lorax speaks for the trees, I speak for the rides.”

“Who’s Lorax?” Great, I had Billy the kid who had never read a Dr. Seuss book in his life.

“Like, I make the decisions about the rides, for the rides,” I tried to explain. “I’m like the delegate from rides. The ride delegate.”

“What’s a delegate?”

“Like in government…” I started, and then I looked over at seven-year-old Billy and I realized he didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. The kid just wanted some ice cream. “Never mind. Maybe you can have ice cream with dinner.”

Here’s a stupid word for a really simple thing,
porte-cochère
. What in the blazes is that, Annie? It’s a covered driveway. It’s that location where you drive up to the hotel to drop off your bags and your kids and the valet guys come running forward to open doors and take your belongings. I kept on hearing this term again and again during training, but I didn’t want to be
that kid
who asked for a proper definition. I let this word slide for weeks and weeks and people kept on telling me I needed to go to the
porte-cochère
to get guests, and I’d show up and say, well, they were waiting at the valet stand for me, so…