Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (14 page)

Then those guests would leave, and there’d be nothing to do. Literally, nothing. I wish those overnight shifts were full of crazy guest situations, because then at least time would pass quickly. When there’s no one standing in City Hall, it feels like time moves in reverse. I’d stand there behind the counter, begging for someone to come in and talk to me about
anything
. No one ever did. The park was full of guests staying at resorts on Disney property who didn’t need my help for anything. They could figure out their own dining reservations.

During these shifts I always used to get myself a treat. Usually, it was a Dole Whip. So I’d take my break before Aloha Isle closed for the evening, and I’d shed my plaid vest, shoving it into my locker in the bathroom. Traveling backstage, it wasn’t a long walk from City Hall to Adventureland, and I cut across the parking lot to get there. At 1am, not too many people are waiting in line for Dole Whip, so remember that for next time. The shortest line for Dole Whip is after midnight.

I’d get my Dole Whip, which came with an added boost of sugar and energy, and I’d head back to City Hall, still with four more hours ahead of me.

Come 3am, the park would be “closed”, with rides running through for the last time. Guests would slowly start trickling out at this point, but anyone already in the Magic Kingdom at 3am is going to see how long they can linger in the park before they’re politely kicked out. These guests would head into the Emporium and loiter there. And then at 4am they’d emerge; surprised that everyone else had left.

I understand how awesome it is to close down the park, but listen, not at 4:30am. I remember one time everyone else had left the park, except for one family who was over looking at PhotoPass pictures. It was 4:30am. The family couldn’t decide what pictures they liked best, and were having a tough time figuring out which ones to purchase. Well obviously they couldn’t think straight. It was 4:30am. It didn’t seem like they were going to decide on pictures anytime soon, either.

That’s when Dennis, being Manager Dennis, marched over to Photopass, bought all of the pictures for the guests on a PhotoPass CD, and then personally escorted them out of the park. He was done for the night and he wanted to go home. So if you really want Disney to buy you your PhotoPass pictures, just stay in the park as late as possible, which will really irritate a Guest Relations manager. Consequently, he will purchases a $200 photo package for you.

(But please, don’t really do that.)

Once the last guest had left the park, and everything had been closed up, it was time to march all together down the tunnel to drop off our funds. There were always five closing Guest Relations cast members, plus the general teller from the Bank Out Room, so six of us in total. We’d load our money into a little vault-cart, which the general teller would push through the tunnel for us. During the day, this walk probably would have taken us ten minutes, maybe. But at 4:30am, it usually took us twenty. We were tired, and didn’t really want to do much of anything.

This is, of course, always when something would go horribly wrong, such as when we get to the RCC and there would be fifteen other cast members from quick service inside, all waiting on machines to count down their money. Or, someone would start counting down their money on a machine, and the machine would freeze up and eat all the money. Or, someone just completely forgets to count their money, and drops it into the giant safe like, “WHATEVER!” I witnessed all of those things happen. At 4:30am, even the simplest things become a struggle.

Still, the five of us would stick together, as if we were worried one of our comrades might fall over from exhaustion at any point. By this time I was pretty loopy, talking in nonsense circles about nothing, and waving my hands around in the air like an excited Muppet. To anyone else, we might appear drunk. But really, that’s just what happens after you work a six-hour shift in the Magic Kingdom overnight.

There were some nights where we actually would get out early. The last guest would leave the park around 3:45am, and we’d book it down to RCC and have everything dropped and counted by 4am. We’d be so ready and excited to go home and then….

We’d realize that we couldn’t clock out until 5am. Even though our work was done, we couldn’t go anywhere.

Well, we actually could go home, but first we’d have to walk all the way back to City Hall to get the manager there to approve us leaving early. None of us ever wanted to walk all the way from RCC, back to City Hall, and then back to RCC again. It was easier, and less work, for us to just sit around for an hour and try not to fall asleep.

Thankfully, the doors to the seating area of the Mouse are always open, so we’d head in there, and
thankfully
, the Mouse itself starts opening up just before 5am, for cast members coming in for early morning opening shifts. Often, I’d sit there with the rest of Guest Relations and we’d semi-fall asleep on top of each other, and then wake up as soon as we would hear commotion from over in the Mouse kitchen.

Know what the Mouse cooks at 5am? Pancakes. The most delicious pancakes you will ever eat. Or maybe they were just delicious because I had been up all night, and it was 5am, and I was still dressed in a skirt and tights and I desperately wanted to go home. Whatever the reason, those pancakes were the best damn thing I have ever had. And if that’s not enough, they were ridiculously cheap — 99 cents for a pancake. At Disney World! Practically unheard of!

So at 5am, all the Guest Relations cast members still on the clock would stumble over to the grill in the Mouse, order pancakes, and we’d sit together and eat them, mostly asleep. I used to order three pancakes, and eat one at 5am. The other two I would take home and eat once I woke up again at 2pm.

Leaving on the bus was a whole new experience, since we’d get off at West Clock and sometimes come face to face with people we knew were heading in for the day. We’d quickly exchange pleasantries, and then hightail it to our cars. I have no idea how I even made it home on those nights (mornings?) since I was so tired. My roommate would sometimes be up, since she would be getting ready to head into work herself. She’d give me an odd look, wondering where I had been all night, but I mostly ignored her. My only goal was getting into bed and falling asleep. I was beat.

This is what my life was like for an entire summer. From that time I asked Dennis for a few more shifts a week, until September, when the parks stopped having a normal close of midnight. I started working one mid-day shift a week, usually on Tuesday or Wednesday. And then every Friday and Sunday, I’d work 11pm to 5am. Sometimes I’d even work 8pm to 5am.

I still have no idea how I survived that summer.

In Guest Relations, I had the ability to do a lot of things for guests. Basically, I had free rein to do whatever I wanted, as I saw fit. I could issue FastPasses and comp tickets, plus lots more. But, there were limits.

Guest Relations followed the role of three As: appropriate, achievable, available. That’s how we doled out magic. If I wanted to do some sort of service recover for a guest, whatever the situation, I had to ask myself those three things: Is this appropriate to do? Is it achievable to do? And is it available?

If the magic I wanted to do fell short on one of those factors, I couldn’t do it. But if it hit all of them, I could go for it.

For instance, a small child loses their Minnie Mouse doll. OK, well, did they buy it in the park and can I easily get another one? Is it appropriate for me to replace a lost Minnie Mouse doll with a new one? And can I actually go running over to the Emporium right now and get one for her? Yup. Getting that Minnie Mouse doll hit all the three As: it was available to me, it was appropriate to do, and it was actually something I
could
do.

Now let’s say that same little girl comes in with her dad and has lost her Minnie doll. Dad says it’s ruined the entire vacation and he wants his money back for the trip. He wants comp tickets. Sure, the tickets are available for me to give him, and I can give him the tickets if I want to, but is it appropriate to give him comp tickets just because a little girl lost a plush toy somewhere in Magic Kingdom? No.

Those are the things I had to think about when performing magic. If a ride went down, guests were issued FastPasses to make up for their lost time because that was the appropriate, achievable, and available response. They were not issued meal tickets or park hoppers for something like that, because in this situation, it wasn’t appropriate.

Sometimes magic could get tricky. Sometimes I wanted to do things for guests that just weren’t achievable to do. There were lots of instances where little girls just wanted to meet that
one
princess, and something or other prevented them from having that coveted picture. Even though I wanted to set up a private meet and greet for them, I couldn’t, no matter how hard the little girl cried, and no matter how hard I had to fight back tears so I wouldn’t cry at the little girl crying.

Since it wasn’t achievable, I had to do other things. Often these other things were signed pictures of the princesses and a princess crown or something. It wasn’t a private meet and greet, but it was the next best thing that was easily achievable.

There were the other Guest Relations cast members who greatly abused this magic. They’d walk around like a goddamn fairy godmother, waving their magical GR wand every which way, doing way too much stuff for guests, and going way above and beyond what was needed.

Chrissy, for example (not her real name, just as none of the names in this book are “real”, though the events described did occur). I’ll state up front that I didn’t care for Chrissy. We were never close friends, but we got along at work. That was it. I tolerated seeing her behind the counter in City Hall, and our friendship was never going to extend to anything more than just work acquaintances.

Chrissy had bleach-blonde hair that she’d wear half up, half down, and it was long and always got in the way. The easiest way to describe Chrissy is saying that she was her own character, and it was like we had all showed up for the Chrissy meet and greet; 24/7 it was the Chrissy show. Her laugh was so loud, and so shrill, it could stop all conversation in City Hall.

This one time, I was helping a family who had lost their cell phone. The dad seemed to think he put it down somewhere in Tomorrowland, but wasn’t sure. I was going through the whole process of having him fill out the paperwork for the lost phone, and that’s when I got to talking with the mom, who told me all about their day in the park. They had a daughter, maybe around six years old, and they had trouble getting into the park that morning, with bus delays, and ticket issues, and had missed their reservation for the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. I looked down at the little girl, and sure enough, she was wearing a Belle dress, but sans all the glitz and glitter from the boutique.

Situations like that just broke my heart for two reasons. For starters, the boutique is something you pay for ahead of time, and if you miss your reservation, chances are you aren’t getting your money back. And second, my heart just melts at the sight of sad little girls dressed up as princesses. This little Belle didn’t seem to be too upset about missing her time at the boutique, but I felt bad for her. I knew I would have cried missing my own reservation, and I wanted to ask if she had.

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Chrissy leaned into this conversation. “Do you want to see if we can rebook you another time at the Boutique?”

“No, no, that’s fine, we’re heading home tomorrow anyway,” the mom replied.

“Is there anything we can do for you right now?”

“Yeah, I’m filling out this lost item report for Dad,” I shot back at Chrissy, also shooting her a
look
. I wanted to tell her to stay out of my guest situation.

“There’s got to me more we can do,” Chrissy whispered into my ear.

“I asked if they wanted FastPasses, but they’re heading out of the park,” I whispered back. “Go see if we have any of those Cinderella wands in back.” Cinderella’s Royal Table gave out cheap plastic wands to every little princess that dined with them, and kids immediately lost them. We always had a ton hanging around backstage at City Hall.

“The wands are stupid. I’m going to go see if any of the princesses are still out.”

I glanced at the clock on the computer screen. It was almost eleven. The princesses were not still going to be out in the park at this time of night. And what was Chrissy going to do, anyway? Pull one of them back into Fairytale Hall and force them into doing a meet and greet with a little girl who had missed her boutique reservation? That didn’t make any sense. But let Chrissy be Chrissy.

I finished up with the guests and gave Dad back half of his lost item paperwork, telling him to check the central lost and found location in the morning. Hopefully, it would be there.

There was still a part of me who wanted to do something for this little girl, and whatever Chrissy was doing was taking forever. I told the guests to wait for a second, and I disappeared into the back room. Chrissy was nowhere to be found.

“She went over to the Emporium,” someone told me, and I shrugged, because that was Chrissy.

I found a bunch of those plastic Cinderella wands myself, and grabbed a few cardstock signed images of the princesses for this little Belle. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it was at least something.

Returning to the counter, I found Chrissy already there. She had a blue Disney bag with her, and was in the process of pulling out goodies from inside of it. The firs thing, a Belle crown. My plastic Cinderella wand meant nothing anymore. The little Belle jumped up and down when she saw it, and playfully tried to grab it out of Chrissy’s hands. Chrissy leaned down and placed it right on her head. “A crown for a princess!” she yelled.

“That’s so sweet, you didn’t have to do that!” Mom beamed with pure, Disney happiness.

“She missed her boutique reservation, it was the least I could do!”

It was the way Chrissy said “I.” The least
I
could do. Like, this little girl hadn’t just missed her boutique reservation, but Cinderella had slapped her, too. And here was Chrissy, rushing in to save the day and to save the vacation, of course. So going out of her way to get some Belle merchandise was the least Chrissy could do for this situation. Meanwhile, I had been thinking,
Go find those cheap plastic wands that were lost earlier in the day, and give them to the kid!