Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations (4 page)

Full time Cast Member.
Ah, the coveted spot of a full-time Disney employee. This is the big one. You get 16 admissions into the park to use whenever you want during the year (aside from blackout dates), you get health insurance, and you get
status
. Status is one of the most important things at Disney World, and you learn that almost immediately.

What’s status? It basically has to do with things like submitting for new work schedules and bidding for vacation time. You earn a status date the first time you are made full time. So, if I were to be made full-time today, and you made full-time two days from now, I have more status than you. If we now go to submit for time off, and we both submit for the same day, I’m going to get it over you. And that date carries with me for the rest of my time at Disney World. I can transfer from role to role, and keep the same status date.

Let’s say that you’ve been working at a certain attraction for five years, and you are the cast member with the most status. When it comes time to pick a schedule, you get first pick, since you have the most status. Now let’s say that I transfer to this new attraction, and it’s time to pick a new work schedule. You might have been at this attraction for five years, but remember, I was statused two days before you. No one cares that you’ve been at the attraction longer and have earned your choice for time off. If we both submit for the same days off, I’m going to get it.

Is it fair? I guess. Does it suck? Most definitely. I was always hearing about how someone with a higher status date would show up in a new work location and knock everyone else down a few pegs in the pecking order. Then there were the people I knew who had been with Disney World since the 1970s, and if they wanted to request Christmas off every single year, they got Christmas every single year. No one cares that you haven’t spent a Christmas with your family in YEARS. If Jimmy has been statused since January 1, 1972, and he wants Christmas off, he is going to get it. There’s nothing to debate.

A lot of times, managers would make mistakes with status dates. My friend Emily, who was statused on the same day that I was, accidentally got her status date imputted into the computer wrong. Because of this, the computer believed that Emily had been working at Disney for four years longer than she really had. So, when it came time to change work schedules and submit for vacation, she got to do it ahead of half of the department, because of a computer glitch. No one wants to admit that they’ve made a mistake like that, so Emily got to keep her posh status, making lots of people in the department very,
very
mad.

But how do you even get to actually being a cast member with status? That’s more interesting. Sometimes it’s simply dumb luck.

Getting into the college program is relatively easily (especially if you’re fine with working custodial or quickservice). It’s the easiest way to get into Disney World, and I’d estimate about 75% of all cast members start with the College Program.

If you’re already past the college stage of life, you can apply to work at Disney, just like any other job. There’s an application and you can fill it out online. Or, you can physically go to the casting building and fill out an application there. Before you do either one of these things, you need to be living in Florida. Disney gets thousands of applications each day, and they will not hire anyone who lives out of state. Also, it’s usually something like you get a call on Thursday and they ask if you can start Monday. If you say no, that’s it. That’s your one shot to get a job at Disney. They’re not going to hold a spot for you if you need two weeks to move.

Another thing. Disney just isn’t creating jobs out of thin air. They’re a business. As much as they’d probably love to hire a hundred new workers every day, they can’t. They don’t have the budget for it. At each work location, there is a set number of full-time positions available, and a set number of part-time positions. Seasonals are supplementary, but they’ve got a quota as well. Even if you really want to work at Tower of Terror, if there’s not an open spot there, you don’t get to work at Tower of Terror, no matter how much you beg and plead.

On top of that, there’s also a waiting list. If your one dream in life is to work at Tower of Terror, you have to put your name on the list indicating that you want to work there. More than likely, there are going to be people ahead of you on the list. So guess what? You’re going to wait a very long time for a spot at Tower of Terror. You could be waiting months, maybe even years, for the chance to work there.

Being seasonal at DisneyQuest was fine, but I needed a real job with steady hours. I couldn’t take the risk of being capped. On one of my days off, I drove over to Casting to put my name on a few lists for part-time and full-time positions.

The room where you put your name on one of these job lists is a tiny chamber just through the main entrance doors. There’s a desk and a waiting room and that’s about it. Often someone nice is sitting behind the desk, but sometimes it’s a mean cast member who hates their life and doesn’t want to deal with cast members trying to get their name bumped up on the list for Tower of Terror.

When I went to Casting I needed to do two things. First, I had to indicate that I wanted part-time status. Then I had to indicate
where
I wanted to be made part time. There is an option to just take “first available”. But first available could be housekeeping at Art of Animation, and for me that would have been a hard pass. There’s a catch to doing it this way, and it’s that you have to take whatever job becomes available first. So if I had said, “I want to be made part time more than I want to have a say in where I work,” and then I had been offered Art of Animation housekeeping, I would have been forced to take it.

Because — and get this — if you turn down an offered role at Disney, they will make you wait
six months
before you are put back onto a list for a new role. So it’s either take that housekeeping job, or stay in your role for at least six more months, and then have to go through the whole waiting process again.

Needless to say, I went into Casting and decided to pick actual location instead of walking in and yelling, “I’ll take whatever!”

I could have chosen to switch roles, but I wanted to stay with attractions. Disney calls choosing a new work location for a role “skill coding”, except that there is no skill involved, and there’s no coding whatsoever, so I have no idea where that term came from. But I went in and I skill coded for a new attractions role. I could pick five different locations and rank them in the order I wanted. It’s a simple process, thankfully. For me, the top pick was Studios, Icon Attractions, Great Movie Ride. And then Magic Kingdom, Adventureland, Jungle Cruise, followed by Magic Kingdom, Liberty Square, Haunted Mansion.

The guy behind the desk told me that there was a list for all my locations, but that something should open up at one of them within the next month. I also learned (after many trips to Casting) that if you managed to get someone nice behind the desk, they would tell you exactly what number you were on the list, and also what lists were the shortest. So for anyone who was just desperate for any type of work, they could go in and politely ask for the shortest list. It was still not a guarantee, but that’s how a lot of people managed to get moved around quickly at Disney.

I did this whole process in January. A few weeks passed, and I still hadn’t heard anything about a new job at Disney, so I went back to Casting to check my number on the list. The day I initially went to Casting was a Friday, and the guy behind the desk was nice. I decided to take my chances and head back there on a Friday, and thankfully I found the same guy on duty. He told me that I had moved up a few spots on all of my wait lists, but I’d still be waiting for a while.

A few more weeks passed. I went back to see my Friday friend at Casting. I was closer to the top of the list, but still no positions had opened up, either for part time or full time. He asked me if I just wanted “first available” and I asked him what location had open spots.

“The Pirates League. I could make you-part time there,” he said. As much as I really wanted to turn little boys and girls into pirates, I had to tell the guy I had no experience with makeup or hair. There’s no way I could turn kids into pirates. I passed on the spot.

More weeks passed. And then it was the end of February and I still hadn’t heard from anyone at Casting. I went back, and this time I found a mean woman behind the desk who wouldn’t tell me my number on the list, and threatened to remove me from the list for even asking. I left Casting very quickly that day.

During the second week of March, I got a call. A spot had opened up at Icon Attractions in Hollywood Studios, at Great Movie Ride, no less. Would I be interested in a part time there?

Obviously, the answer was yes.

During the opening day dedication of Disney-MGM Studios, CEO Michael Eisner called it “a Hollywood that never was, and always will be”. That’s actually a perfect way to describe the park. It’s based off of Hollywood, but it’s not a real representation of Hollywood. It’s just an idea of the place, during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. It’s similar to the Hollywood you find in
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
It’s Hollywood, yes, but at the same time it’s not.

The contract that Disney had with MGM expired in 2009, when MGM was going through a nasty round of bankruptcy, so Disney decided not to renew. Instead, it renamed the park Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

The idea was for it to be half theme park, half working studio. The park opened with few attractions for guests, but lots of studio space where things were being filmed, such as a revival of
The Mickey Mouse Club
. (That sound stage is gone. The building now houses Toy Story Mania.) Disney wanted to have studio space in both Los Angeles and Florida, and planned to turn Studios into a real, working studio. A few movies were actually filmed at the park on the backlots. In the animation building, for instance,
Mulan
and
Lilo & Stitch
came to life.

I remember as a kid taking the Backlot Tour through the actual back lots. I remember being driven through the scenery and costuming buildings, and then down the residential street, which had the exteriors of
The Golden Girls
and
Brady Bunch
houses. I remember that the tram tour used was around 45-minutes long, which is why my parents hated taking us on it. Then one year, we went to Disney and everything that made the Backlot Tour 45-minutes long was gone. Instead, it was about half as long, and many of the true “backlot” aspects had been removed. Slowly, the tram tour was cut down and down even further. Now it doesn’t even exist anymore.

That’s sort of what happened with the working studios at the park, too. Slowly, year by year, the sound stages for actual production closed down. Movies were no longer being made on the Streets of America, because Disney didn’t want to have to deal with guests in the park getting in the way of their million-dollar productions. The animation studios shut down completely, and everyone in Florida was moved to Burbank (or fired). What once made Studios an actual studio became meet-and-greet areas and places for
Frozen
sing-a-longs.

A few friends of mine used to joke that Hollywood Studios was the rumpus room of Disney World. No one really knew what to do with it, so a lot of things were put in the park that didn’t necessarily belong there. Like, a basement no one really wants to clean out. Hollywood Studios was like an all-purposes park. Sometimes things took off. Sometimes they didn’t. Studios became sort of this ever-evolving park, with so many layers it became hard to figure out what the heck was really going on. Is it about movies? Is it about television? Or is it all just about
Frozen
?

This is a shame. Studios is magnificent. There are so many tiny details hidden in the park that no one bothers to stop and look at. Disney really did create a Hollywood for our imagination. Then they didn’t know what to do with it.

My favorite “hidden” detail of the park might not even be there anymore. I hope it is. It’s nestled behind the newly minted Starbucks right at the corner of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards. Know where that old car is parked? Right behind it, there’s a billboard for the Hollywood Tower Hotel.

Except, the billboard is kind of old and run down. The plants and trees around it are slowly growing over it, so you can’t really see the billboard anymore. You might think this is an odd choice for one of the most popular attractions for the park, but it’s intentional. Hollywood Studios let this billboard fall into ruin on purpose; it was created to look this way.

Story goes that when the Hollywood Tower Hotel was brand new and thriving, the hotel wanted to attract everyone to stay there. So, they put up this giant billboard on the corner of Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards to attract new guests. However, after the hotel was struck by lightning and shut down, they didn’t want more attention. Just like the giant 13-story building at the end of the street, the billboard wants to be forgotten, too. It doesn’t want to draw attention to itself, which is why the leaves cover most of its imagery.

It is such a little, tiny detail, but for me, it’s huge. It’s amazing to think that the Imagineers who worked on the park thought to create a story around this billboard that looks like it has been forgotten. Because it
has
been forgotten.

That’s not the only detail hidden in the park, but it gets lost in the hullabaloo of
Frozen
and Toy Story Midway Mania. Which is a huge shame, because Studios could just as easily be one of the “adult” parks, like EPCOT, meant for those who are looking for an escape and to get lost in small details. I hope, one day, Hollywood Studios figures out what kind of park it wants to be when it grows up.

I was ridiculously excited to start at Great Movie Ride, even though I was sad to leave DisneyQuest behind. That big blue box had become my home over nine months, and I thought back to how I started there: alone, crying, hating everything about
everything
. But the managers at DisneyQuest saved me in more ways than one. They gave me my first Disney home, and they gave me my first sprinkling of pixie dust. I still think of those original managers who sat me down on Day #31 of my college program as the best managers I’ve ever come across, whether at Disney or elsewhere. I’d give any one of them my kidney if they asked.