The Ride Delegate: Memoir of a Walt Disney World VIP Tour Guide (8 page)

I met them at the Waldorf valet promptly at 9am, but they would later claim I was a half hour late and thus impacted their day in the park. They were the motliest crew I had ever met. To put it nicely, Mrs. Grey was overweight and Mr. Grey looked like he was still a teenager. One of the other guides had told me that it was an arranged marriage for the two of them, and it made complete sense. They had one daughter, age four, who refused to acknowledge my presence. She spent most of the day crying to the nanny who wouldn’t buy her anything in the park. Along with the four of them were an uncle and an aunt and their two kids. There was also another adult male in the group, who I assumed was another uncle, but turned out to be Mr. Grey’s Lover. He informed me he was Mr. Grey’s “mister” and I didn’t really have anything to say back to that other than nodding my head like I completely understood when really I wondered why he felt the need to divulge that information to me.

I spent six hours with the Greys. These are the some of the things that went wrong:

We weren’t even in the park yet
. We were standing in Park 1 when Mrs. Grey informed me that she didn’t feel our VIP tour service was that “VIP”. She went on to explain that she had been to other theme parks in the area, and found their tour services
much
more desirable. These other parks treated their guests like real royalty, and would literally cut every single line and jump right to the front to expedite all wait times. I tried to explain to Mrs. Grey why other parks can get away with doing that, but she cut me right off to inform me that, “We’re only using you for the transportation to and from the park.”

Oh. Okay.

Mrs. Grey then explained that she had one of our “assistant passes”, the now-retired GAC (Guest Assistant Card), for guests with disabilities, that would help her navigate the lines without me, anyway. Mrs. Grey then told me she had cancer.
We still weren’t even in the park yet
.

Knowing their daughter’s age, I decided that “small world” would be the first attraction. It didn’t have a FastPass, and if we were going to ride it, it needed to happen as early in the day as possible. We arrived at the park just after 9:30am, before there were too many other guests trying to fight their way onto “small world”.

It took us a half-hour to walk from where we had parked the car to “small world”. It took us this long because we had three strollers for three different kids, and every kid wanted to go in a different direction and buy something else. They must have dropped over $100 before we even made it to Fantasyland. And by the time we reached “small world” there was already a fifteen-minute wait. It didn’t look like it would be that long, and I didn’t even mention to the guests that it might take a few extra seconds. I ushered them into line. We managed to get through the queue in less than five minutes.

I rode “small world” with them because I always like to ride the first ride of the day with the guests, whatever that may be. That sets up for them that I’m a fun tour guide, and I don’t mind riding rides if I have to. I foolishly rode “small world” with the Greys.

By the time we got all the way around “small world”, the queue line was a little bit backed up. I was sitting in the last row of the boat, behind the family, and Mrs. Grey from the front row turned to look at me.

“Can we ride again?” she asked.

“Yeah, we’ll just jump right out of the boat and get back into line…”

Mrs. Grey cut me off. “I’m not getting out of the boat.”

I was so taken aback by the comment I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. My mouth moved, but I formed no actual words. It took me a solid five seconds to formulate dialogue. “We can’t ride again without exiting. The line isn’t that long, we’ll just jump right out and get back…”

“You are going to make a woman
dying of cancer
get out of this boat and
wait in line again
?” Mrs. Grey roared. She was a large woman and her voice bellowed through the open atrium. We were close enough to the unload dock that the Cast Members loading the boats turned to look at us. The guests waiting in line to get into the next boat looked at us. The guests who had just exited the ride looked at us. The only thing that could have made this moment better was if the boat started sinking.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Grey, we have to exit out of this boat to get into another boat…”

“I am not leaving this boat.”

“…they’ve already loaded this boat for the next ride and I don’t want to hinder other guests.”

“I don’t care about the other guests. If I want to ride “small world” again, I am going to ride it again.”

Our boat reached the loading dock. The unload Cast Member looked at me with such pity and sadness in her eyes I thought I might cry. I stood up to exit.

“Anne, sit down. We are riding again,” Mrs. Grey barked at me. I got out of the boat. Every single person in the “small world” vicinity was looking at me. I believe time stopped for a second in Fantasyland. I stood on the unload side of the dock and looked down at my guests. Mrs. Grey clenched her jaw.

“Unfortunately, we cannot experience the attraction again. We are all going to have to exit.” But no one in the boat moved. Maybe some of them wanted to move, but they were terrified of Mrs. Grey. I was scared that she was going to start yelling at me, and her words would not be “small world” appropriate. The load Cast Member on the other side of the dock sensed that this situation was not going to have a happy ending and launched the boat with the Grey Family still sitting inside. Off they went once again on the happiest cruise that ever sailed.

I, meanwhile, called the Office to explain that Mrs. Grey had literally commandeered a “small world” boat.

Mrs. Grey pulled this stunt two or three more times before she realized that I actually wasn’t going to stand for her behavior. And neither were some of the Cast Members at other attractions. At Winnie the Pooh they refused to send the honey pots around again, and made it clear to everyone waiting in line what the hold up was. I didn’t ride another ride with them again all day.

We’d approach an attraction. I’d maneuver myself into the FastPass return line, gesturing for them to follow me. Mr. Grey would take one look at the queue, and if he thought it was “too long” he would shake his head and no family members would join me in line. The family literally needed to be able to walk all the way through the queue to be appeased. Guess what never happens in Disney World? That. There is no such thing as a “walk on” attraction, even if you can walk right through the entire line. There’s always going to be a stop somewhere, whether it be to count heads as to who’s riding in what car, or simply just a slow loading vehicle. There were six guests in line before us for Peter Pan, and Mr. Grey told me that was too long. The pirate ships take off literally every five seconds. We were going to wait for fifteen seconds for a pirate ship, but the family couldn’t manage that.

That’s cool, Grey Family, you actually don’t have to pay for me to eat anything all day. Mickey covers all of my meals since I don’t get a true “lunch break” at any point during my shift, so I can cover all of my own meals and snacks, don’t worry about it…

Mr. Grey turned to me. He had pulled on his pastel cardigan and looked like a JCrew ad from Connecticut. “Doll, could you cancel our lunch reservations?” Lunch was supposed to be at Tony’s Town Square.

“No problem, would you like me to reschedule it somewhere else?”

Mr. Grey turned to Mrs. Grey, and Mrs. Grey shook her head. “I find park food to be disgusting.” Oh, good, tell me how you really feel about this place.

I was still trying to make the best out of this awful situation. “Do you mean you just don’t want quick service? I know other good locations for table service food, how about Liberty Tree…”

“We don’t want to waste time eating somewhere,” Mr. Grey said, exchanging a look with Mrs. Grey, who nodded in agreement.

“Lunch will only be forty five minutes.”

“We don’t want to take the time to eat lunch while we pay you to sit around and do nothing.” Mrs. Grey reminded me of Ursula. They were roughly the same size. “It’s just poor service for you to charge us to eat
our
own lunch, while you get to go and have a forty-five minute lunch break yourself.”

This was the first and only time that topic ever came up. Yes, there were certainly other times guests moaned and groaned about being charged to sit down and eat a meal (there was no pause on the tour guide clock) so I always made sure to reassure them that lunch would be fast. God bless Liberty Tree’s soul; they could have guests in and out of there in less than 35 minutes. No real time was ever lost. I always factored in a 45-minute lunch break into my daily planning. Sometimes I did have guests who told me that they didn’t want to stop and have a full meal, but they were more than willing to snack all day. So we weren’t going to sit in air conditioning for a little bit, but we were going to stop and get popcorn and ice cream and maybe a pretzel. That’s all I really needed, too. I just needed something to eat to keep me going.

This was different. The Greys had just told me that they didn’t value me enough as a person to let me eat. No one tells me I can’t eat. I spent the next few hours stopping Every Single Chance I got to eat something. They were constantly coming off of rides and I was eating something else. It’s not my fault they decided to ride the Speedway and I got myself an ice cream sundae and a frozen mocha Frappuccino and a soft pretzel in the shape of Mickey.

I walk abnormally fast. I understand that. Mrs. Grey did not move fast. I moved fast, she moved slowly. I’m more than willing to slow down my pace to keep up with any guest, but she took this whole issue to the next level. I’d be walking and walking and I’d turn to check on the guests and they’d be nowhere in sight. I was wearing a BRIGHT RED PLAID VEST HOW CAN YOU LOSE ME IN A CROWD. I’d retrace my steps fifteen yards and find the guests all standing there, huddled together like a pack of wild roaming buffalo that had gotten turned round at the last rest stop. I’d wave to them in a friendly way, showing which direction I was heading and which direction we should all travel in, and all of them, as if on queue, would scoff at me. How dare I walk faster than any of them? How dare I try and maximize our day.
How dare I.
In the email follow-up that Mrs. Grey sent to the tour Office regarding my “poor behavior” during this tour, that was the first thing she highlighted. How I kept “wandering into crowds, leaving everyone else behind”. I wasn’t even trying to do it on purpose. Probably subconsciously it was just happening.

Walking across the Liberty Square Bridge, I overhead this exchange:

“We checked into the Animal Kingdom Lodge, but checked out four hours later. We tried to take an afternoon nap, but the sheets were so uncomfortable. Called down to the front desk, told me they were only three hundred count sheets. Three hundred count? Considering we’re paying three hundred dollars an hour for this tour, I feel like the resorts can get better sheets. We checked out that afternoon, didn’t even spend a night there, and came over to the Waldorf .”

Part of me wanted to tell the guests I had bought my sheets at Ikea on sale and then have everyone guess what count they might be. 100? 50?

Walt loved progress. He loved adding new things to the park, making it better, evolving it with the changing times. He called this process “plussing”. Walt once said that, “Disneyland would never be complete as long as there is imagination left in the world.” He loved the idea of moving forward and constant change, which he represented in Carousel of Progress, one of his favorite attractions. It’s a perfect thing for children and adults to do if they don’t want to go ride Space Mountain.

Only two people in the group wanted to ride Space. The Uncle Grey and one of the kids. I offered to take them, and suggested that everyone else go ride the PeopleMover. Mrs. Grey informed me that she did not want to ride PeopleMover, and asked about Carousel of Progress. I told her it was an Audio-Animatronics stage show and would roughly coincide with us riding Space. She seemed to like the idea of sitting down inside for a bit, so I pointed her in the direction of the area to load and I took Uncle and Kid on Space.

We returned about twenty minutes later.

The rest of the family was just exiting Carousel of Progress; they saw us and slowly started making their way over. Aunt asked Kid if he liked Space, and he replied that it was “fine”. I turned to Mrs. Grey and asked her what she thought of Carousel of Progress.

We were standing right in between the Buzz Lightyear merchandise cart, and the strollers, and the entrance to Buzz. There were a lot of people around us, since it had turned out to be a pretty busy day in the Magic Kingdom. Standing there, in clear view of other guests, and at full volume, Mrs. Grey turned up her nose at me and scoffed. The next sentence she said to me will forever be ingrained in my memory.

“There aren’t enough words in the English language to explain how horrid that show was to sit through.”

Sometimes I don’t really think before I speak. I’ve kind of trained myself to do so while on a tour, because the last thing I want is a guest with more money than God calling to complain about me. But I didn’t care about this family. I didn’t care if they had a good day, I didn’t care if their children got to hug Mickey, I didn’t care if they got through all of the rides they wanted to do and if they would ever come back to Disney World ever again. I was done with this family and I wanted off of this tour.