If you love The Mouse , working at one of the magical Disney parks is literally a pipe dream job . But if you ’ve everACTUALLY shape there , you cognise it can be more like a nightmare . Whether you fuck it or detest it , working at a Disney park is a large oculus - opener – both to the ( not so ) wonderful world of Disney , and to the heart of human nature .
We asked one woman ( we ’ll call her Natalia , because she preferred namelessness ) who worked for six class at Walt Disney World in Orlando to tell us in her own Scripture what it was like , and everything she take from wearing those braggy costumes that , yes , are really , really hot .
Your job is to keep the illusion of Disney alive
In my six years working as a Walt Disney World " cast appendage " ( that ’s what they call us ) , I did everything from working attraction lines , to taking pictures of park guests with costumed characters , to being an actual costumed character ( more on that one in a mo ) . And there was a lot of stuff I learned there , but I think above all else it was this :
When you go to piece of work at Disney , your most important job is to keep the illusion of Disney animated . There were always seven or eight of us walk around the park at one time in Mickey Mouse costume , but when people would ask , " How many Mickey are there here ? " , the answer was always , " One . " And for whatever clock time those Edgar Guest are in the green , they really believe it . It ’s like a daylong suspension of disbelief .
And what were all the costumed graphic symbol that I played , you ask ? Well , at Disney , it is prohibited for cast member to say they " play " certain characters , because the grapheme are " veridical . " Cast penis can , however , evidence someone they " hung out with " characters . So , to answer your dubiousness , some of the more popular characters I " hung out with " include : Mickey Mouse , Minnie Mouse , Donald Duck , Lilo , and Stitch .
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Disney sucks you in really powerfully…
When you get hired , you have to go through what we called a " Disney indoctrination course , " where you ’re show endless motion picture about the history of Disney , the parks , and the impression the Son " Disney " evokes in people . Typically if you ’ve signed up to go there , you already have an worked up affixation to Disney , and the indoctrination course pulls hard at those heartstrings . Like a Disney Princess , you ’re encouraged to woolgather your way to improving your site . But you pretty much sign on your liveliness off , agreeing to work whenever and however long Disney wants – and you ’re felicitous about it . Like somehow getting to exploit 80 hours a workweek in a 120 - degree costume for $ 6.90 an hr is the superlative thing you could mayhap be doing for humanity .
But some masses get give suck into it for life . There are the ones who were tolerate and raised with the only life goal of working for the Mouse . Then there are those who come to Disney as a College Program intern , or as a seasonal employee , and then come to the fruition that they ’d rather get free park admission for the eternal rest of their lives than continue pursuing their education . Last are those who get wrapped up in the wishes , hope , dreaming , and " pass water people happy " mindset , and eventually they find themselves having invested so much metre at Disney , that at some breaker point , they no longer have the desire to leave . Why do they get " so into it " ? My guess is Pixie Dust .
… and then demands your maximum commitment
When you make $ 8 an hour , 40 hr on the clock is n’t gon na pay up your bills . So we worked 10- to 18 - hour shifts in edict to make extra time . And if you bring a break of more than 20 hours , you got double time . So people would actually COMPETE to see who could work more 20 - hour sack . The majority of people I knew there were workaholics and would sign up for all the OT they could get . They ’d work 80 - hour weeks and love it . And as a full - clock time cast phallus you were expect to work overtime , any slip , 24/7/365 .
We in reality await forrad to wreak those sempiternal shifts . for certain , we liked the excitation of make $ 16 an hour , but most of all we just want to be part of the legerdemain for tenacious – and that trade - your - life - away committedness was probably why Disney did n’t mind paying out the overtime .
The affair they did mind was give people day off for anything . And I mean ANYTHING . I knew a woman who alerted Disney to her wedding nine months before it go on , and they gave her one Clarence Day off . And it was n’t even her wedding date . They tell her you may either get married and quit , or solve around our docket .
Flickr/Edanley
You must always be portraying the illusion of Disney and carrying on Walt ’s legacy , no matter what goes on in , what ’s left of your personal life . It really take a particular breed to work there .
All the hard working means hard partying, too
When you puzzle out as hard as people do at Disney , you dally hard , too . So partying is huge and cast members have gotten kind of a repute for raging when they ’re not on the clock . For personal religious reasons , I stayed aside from most of it , but because our social circle was so small , everyone essentially end up soak up with everyone else . It was the most incestuous work I ’ve ever been a part of . A lot of citizenry live in the same flat complexes too – especially the college Thomas Kid – so when we were n’t on the clock , life for us was n’t unlike the freshmen dorms .
Because we had so little time ( sometimes as little as six to eight hours ) between shift , it was n’t uncommon for mass to party right up until work started . We had one guy who played Grumpy the Cat fromPinocchio– a character who ’s supposed to be a little clumsy and " off " – who came in one solar day after a loooong Nox . Still feel the night before , he put on his costume and make a public presentation assessment of AWESOME because he was so spot - on with the character . Everyone keep quiet , but we were all highly diverted .
Americans are entitled, foreigners are grateful and well behaved
The stereotype Americans have is that they ’re the best - behaved the great unwashed in the park , and that it ’s the ignorant outsider who make everything difficult . It ’s the EXACT opposite . Americans had this sense of entitlement , and think just because they ’d spent thousands of dollars to bring their family to Disney World , everything had to run swimmingly . If there was lightning in the area and we had to shut down an attraction , they ’d take it out on us like we ’d purposefully do the shutdown – like we enjoyed working in electrical storms . I get it , you drop your whole savings to go on Splash Mountain and now this dazed Florida weather is keeping you from fulfilling your Disney dreams . But you ca n’t blame the park for that .
On the other hand , most foreign Edgar Albert Guest just seemed grateful to be there , no matter what . For example , at Tokyo Disney you ’re not allowed to take flick with the characters , so Japanese visitor thought it was the majuscule matter in the world to get a picture with ANYONE , even if was just Chip ( or Dale . Still ca n’t tell them apart . ) . They ’d even bring giving for us , like Japanese overindulge animals . Europeans had the best - behaved children I ’d ever seen , so polite and so courteous . American kids just screamed about wanting to go back to the swimming pool .
Money, no matter how little, breeds resentment
Face lineament , as they were called , like Belle or Prince Charming or anyone who does n’t have to bear a thermal dying - suit , get give $ 3 an hour MORE than the " furries . " ( save up your fetish jokes , that ’s what they call characters whose head are cover and ca n’t speak . ) But even though the brass characters still make only $ 11 an hour , they acted like they were Britney freaking Spears . Most of them were prima donnas , and we all hated them . But we also secretly wanted to be them . It was a savage rivalry , so much so that all of us forgot we were barely constitute minimum wage either way .
But your co-workers become like your family
When you use up , sleep , and breathe in the same quarters 24/7/365 , you either become a recluse and enshroud in a corner away from the rest of the cast members in your area , or you bind with them on a personal stratum . They become your fellowship . I made a duet of really close friends at each section I work on in , and I remain to keep in sense of touch with today . I ’ve been a maid of honor at the wedding of a couple who met one another while working on the opening team of Epcot ’s Soarin ' attraction . And there was one domain manager in particular who actually treated cast members as human being , and she was an important mentor to me . She helped me through a really tough breakup , and would go run with me as I planned my post - Disney life history .
When I go back to visit Disney World I make a gunpoint to go around the car park and see all the friends I used to function with . And because of times like that – despite the retentive hours and animation - consuming schedule – I sometimes still like I was back work there . Just possibly not on the 20 - hr shifts .
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