The Ride Delegate: Memoir of a Walt Disney World VIP Tour Guide (7 page)

I just never put two and two together. Every time I tried to Google the word I spelled it horribly wrong because it’s French. Finally I asked one of the valet guys, and he looked confused and then he had to go and ask someone else and finally it got back to the Grand Floridian duty manager who laughed at me. He explained it was just the valet area. It was the covered area so guests could unload their luggage in a rainstorm without getting wet. It suddenly made so much sense.

During training, we were told that we should arrive at least fifteen minutes early to the
porte-cochère
, or, as it will henceforth be known as, the valet. For my first week of tours, I arrived to the valet fifteen minutes early. Then I quickly learned that guests are notoriously fifteen minutes late, if not more. As much as I’d love to stand outside and await the hordes of guests who will ask me questions just before they get on a bus for the parks, I’d much rather spend those extra few moments at the Office getting Starbucks coffee from the coffee cart.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t fit in with the Disney theming of the Grand Floridian; I was wearing a nametag and looked important holding car keys and a Blackberry in my hand, and everyone honed to me like guests to Dole Whip. Most of the time the questions were like, Where is the character breakfast? Where is the bathroom? Where is the bus? What time did the park open? What time are the parks open until? Can you bring my car around for me? I slowly started noticing that the guests would come to me for every question, leaving the actual hotel greeters with nothing to do. So they’d socialize. So the later I showed up, the more it gave the actual hotel staff something to do.

To become a tour guide, I had to pass a driving test. It was nothing like the driving test I took to get my license. This test involved driving an obstacle course backstage at Animal Kingdom in a 15-passenger van. It was the same driving course they used for bus drivers, so obviously that’ll translate well to tour guides. I showed up to take my driving test a week before my tour guide interview, and I was wearing shorts and a green sweatshirt hoodie. I jumped behind the wheel of the 15-passenger van and I drove the course twice. I had to accelerate correctly, I had to maneuver around cones, I had to back the van into a parking spot without turning my head around (“What happens if there are guests blocking your view out the window?”), and I had to do so without hitting any cones (“What happens if you’re backing in next to Phil Holmes’ [vice-president of the Magic Kingdom] car?”). I have no idea how I passed my driving test, but I did.

The test did not fully prepare me to actually drive the 15-passenger vans every day. They were literally like driving a small mini bus. I took ridiculously wide turns, I was constantly adjusting my mirrors, and I felt every single bump I went over. The vans were noisy and smelled funny. But, they fit fifteen people, so they were necessary.

If I wasn’t driving a 15-passenger van, I was driving a Suburban. Spoiler alert: the Suburbans became the bane of my existence. I found them to be worse than the vans. The Suburbans were like driving a mini bus on steroids. They had a million blind spots, but they also had heated seats. I couldn’t get a car seat into the third row, but I got satellite radio. I felt powerful driving a black Suburban around Disney property, but I also hated having to pull into and out of every single parking spot. In 1971, the Imagineers did not design parking spaces suitable for a Suburban.

Thankfully, though, mini vans were eventually added to the fleet of VIP vehicles, and every chance I got I begged to drive a mini van. The mini vans were roughly the same size of my own little car, plus they also had satellite radio, plus it comfortably fit everyone in for soccer practice.

Driving a Disney company vehicle was intimidating. I mean, my mom didn’t even let me drive her own car, and here was Mickey handing me the keys to Lightning McQueen. Every morning after I arrived at the Office I had to find my vehicle assignment, grab my keys, and then check to make sure that the vehicle was in good condition for my guests. Sometimes it was clear that a popcorn fight had happened in the backseat of a car; sometimes it was clear that every single person in the tour had gone through the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique since glitter was sprinkled everywhere.

At the end of the tour I had to fill the car’s tank up with gas, and conveniently the Disney gas pumps were in the scariest locations on property. My favorite gas pump was located right behind Magic Kingdom, but that was so far away from everything. The closest gas pump was at Caribbean Beach, waaaaaaay in the back of the complex and tucked behind the hotel’s service center. This location also appeared to be the graveyard for discarded items from Pop Century, and as I would fill up a mangled looking 5-foot Mr. Potato head watched me suspiciously.

I’d drive around property, a little tour guide in a giant car, and on nice Florida days I’d roll the windows down and turn up Radio Disney as loud as possible and sing along to whatever One Direction song happened to be playing. I listened to a lot of oldies, too. Sometimes if I was late to meet guests it was because I was listening to “What A Feeling” from
Flashdance
in my 15-passneger van.

One day I bought myself two chocolate chip cookies (from Sunshine Seasons) and I only ate one of them; I put the other one in the center console of my van. The tour was long and difficult and it was ridiculously hot in the park, and when I dropped the family off at the end of the night all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I climb into my van and started unloading my belongings and popped open the center counsel only to remember that Past Annie had left Future Annie a chocolate chip cookie, and it was the best thing I could have ever done for myself. I started constantly buying multiple cookies and hiding one of them in my van for the end of the tour. There was nothing like finishing off a long tour with a Sunshine Seasons chocolate chip cookie.

98% of all my tours started at Disney deluxe hotels, and 95% of those tours started at the Grand Floridian. Next year for Christmas the Grand Floridian should ask Santa for a bigger valet.

For being the most popular and desirable resort on property, the valet was a tiny little thing. The hotel opened in the summer of 1988, and way back then I guess the Imagineers never thought that someday there might be fifteen tour guides with fifteen gold Suburbans waiting to pick up guests at 9am. We’d all stand together like the motliest gaggle you had ever seen, all with our Blackberries in hand, furiously checking updated park information. We were psyching ourselves up for the day.

It was 8:57am one morning, and I was just pulling up to the Grand Floridian security booth. Even the security guards recognized me after a while. I flashed my ID badge at them, and the security guard told me to have a “magic day” as I drove forward and towards the valet. It was already crowded for so early in the morning. There were two Magic Express buses and three tour guide cars, and what felt like three dozen other cars belonging to guests who were somewhere in the process of checking in and checking out of the hotel.

I pulled underneath the monorail station. The valet manager signaled me forward, and then signaled me to back into a spot next to the white carriage outside the Grand Floridian entrance. I shook my head “no”.

He shook his head “yes”.

I shook my head “no” again and pointed farther down the valet, towards the actual parking. The valet manager shook his head “no”. He held up his finger to signify “one second” and attended to the car ahead of me first. Once they had pulled away he came to my driver’s side. I rolled down the window.

“Can you back into that spot for me?” he said, pointing towards the white carriage again. I could see that there were three other suburbans already parked over there, and all of them had been backed into their spots.

“Do
you
want to back into that spot for me?” I asked him.

“It’s not that hard, I’ll help,” he offered, but I kept shaking my head.

“How about I jump out and you can do whatever you want with this car?”

“You’re scared? What, did you hit something?” the manager asked. I looked at his nametag. It said TREVOR.

I made a face. I actually had hit something once. I got horribly lost at Old Key West on one of my first VIP tours, and wedged myself into a really tight space by accident. I’m a short little tour guide, so no, I couldn’t see out all of my blind spots in the suburban. The car had a reverse sensor, but it couldn’t tell when things were to the direct side of the back bumper. I was backing up, backing up, and as soon as the back sensor registered that I was about to hit something, it was too late. CRUNCH. I jumped out of my Suburban to discover that I had completely shattered a taillight against a pole in an Old Key West parking lot. The best part is that my tour family watched it happen, and then made fun of my driving for the next four days. The only damage done was the broken taillight, but the Office reacted like I had hit Pluto.

I told Trevor this story. He laughed. “Here, let me.” He opened my door and I jumped out. He climbed in, readjusted the seat (“It’s like you’re driving on top of the wheel.”) and seamlessly backed the Suburban into a tiny space next to the white carriage.

Trevor tossed my keys back to me. “Let me know if you’re going to need help pulling out, too,” he said with a chuckle. He was very tall and lanky with short brown hair curled over the top of his forehead. He had wire frame glasses and wore black slacks with a purple shirt and a skinny gray tie. If I were a Disney Princess, and he a Disney Prince, that’s where our love story would start: the Grand Floridian valet.

Considering I spent most days waiting at the Grand Floridian valet, I learned Trevor’s schedule. I knew that if it was Wednesday, and I was picking up my guests at 10am, I wouldn’t see him. But if I were dropping my guests off around 8pm, he would be there. He’d see me drive up and he’d wave, and I’d wave, and then he’d gesture for me just to park wherever I wanted because he was just going to move my vehicle anyway. It was a really nice relationship. He’d ask me about my tours, and I’d ask him about what it was like moving cars. Whenever I’d leave the Grand Floridian he’d wave goodbye, and observant mothers on tours would ask, “Is there something going on between you two?”

Yes, because he moves my car for me so I don’t have to. There’s a lot going on right there.

Sometimes, the hardest thing for me to explain to a guest was that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride came before the
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie.

“That’s so cool, they made a ride about the movie!” Little Billy excitedly cried as he rushed towards the Adventureland building. I should have just let it go. I should have just let Little Billy assume that this ride had been built in 2003 and not four years after the park opened.

“Actually,” I started, as we made our way into the winding queue line. “The ride came first.”

“No way!” Billy said with wide eyes.

“Yes way. This attraction has been here since 1975.”

“That’s so old! How did they know the movie was going to be so popular?”

“No, Billy, the ride was here first. In 1975. And then the first movie came out in 2003.”

Billy tried to do this math in his head, though math wasn’t needed for this explanation. “So, the movie is actually, like, really old?”

“No, the movie came out in 2003. Captain Jack was added in 2006.”

“So, they made the movie and the ride at the same time? Did they make the movie here?”

I should have just said, yes, Billy, they shot
Pirates of the Caribbean
inside Pirates of the Caribbean. Synergy. “No, Billy. The ride was built here way before the movie. Then, Disney decided to make a movie based off of the ride.”

“Did Walt Disney direct the movie?” Yes, Walt’s last project was not
Mary Poppins
, but instead
Curse of the Black Pearl
.

“No, Walt passed away in 1966. Before the ride. Before the movie.”

“That’s so cool that they made a movie about one of the pirates inside!”

“No, Billy. Listen to me. The ride came first. Then they made the movie. And then the movie was so popular they put Captain Jack inside of the ride. It’s a ride that inspired a movie that inspired the ride.”

“Wait, this ride’s been here the whole time?” Billy’s dad piped in.

No, oh my gosh, was I going to have to Wikipedia this for the guests? “The ride was built here in 1975. Then a movie was made based off of the idea of pirates in the Caribbean. And then, with their success, figures from the movie were placed inside the attraction to tie it all together.”

“Cool. So did they do any of the filming here?”

Yes.
Pirates of the Caribbean
was shot on location at Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland, Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA. Tell your friends.

Actually, don’t. The Pirates Cast Members already have enough trouble reminding guest not to take flash pictures and to keep their hands out of the water; I don’t want them to have to snuff any other situations.

After three months of being a tour guide, I started telling guests that I had been doing it for six months. That seemed reasonable. I wasn’t new anymore, but I was still very much figuring out my footing.

“We requested a seasoned guide,” Mrs. Grey said to me as I drove the 15-passenger van down World Drive towards Magic Kingdom. “I hardly think you’re qualified to be doing the tour.”

There aren’t enough superlatives in my vocabulary to fully capture how awful the Greys were to me. I was their fifth guide; they had already destroyed four other guides before me. When I first learned of the tour I was pulled aside by one of the coordinators and told in a hushed voice, “They’re pretty mean, so just don’t let anything get to you.”

When one of their former guides heard that I was hosting them, he asked, “Why are you being punished?” It was just one of those cases where I was the only guide available, and sometimes sacrifices need to be made. I was prepped on the fact that they were going to be rude, ungrateful, loud, obnoxious, and complain about literally everything.