The Things I Learned Working for the Mouse
The New Indentured Servitude
I moved down to Florida as a College Programmer, doing “an internship” that lets you experience what it’s like to work in the Disney theme parks. The program promises exposure to different parts of the company, networking, and even housing if you want it. The reality of it is that it’s a churn and burn model of harvesting new employees, paying them $1 less per hour for the same work, and denying them regular or ample time off. And it doesn’t matter how Disney treats them because the company is obligated to dump them after six months to a year and harvest the next crop. When I was a CP, I was scheduled six days every week for all but one week of my program, often working multiple 12hr days per schedule. Disney as a corporation loves it because it allows them to plausibly deny full time hours and benefits to full time workers. It is the magical equivalent of indentured servitude.
Paywall Magic
The cost of a Disney World vacation has increased astronomically in the four years I’ve lived here. When I visited in 2021 as a tourist, I could buy a bottom tier pin for $6.99. These days a bottom tier pin starts at $14.99. (In fact it jumped $2 from the time I started writing this post a few weeks ago.) It took 40 years for a day ticket to reach a $100 price tag. That price has nearly doubled in the last ten years. When I moved down, a lightning lane pass was a standard $14.99. Today that same pass, with a few modifications to what parks and how many rides you can book at once, now runs on “flexible pricing” that hovers around $35-40 a day. The idea Walt had of a place where parents and kids could have fun together has become more a pinnacle of materialism and price gouging than a place where magic is made. Parents liquidate their life savings to wait in long lines while people with more money skip the hassle, paying $100 a meal to feed their family of five chicken tenders and water. The “for everyone” aspect of the parks might as well be null and void to anyone clearing less than $100K a year.
Hell Hath No Fury…
…like a 35 year old white woman who has just received a minor inconvenience. I’ve never had a job where I’ve been screamed at and that’s just a thing you’re expected to deal with. I’ve had service jobs before, but none of them come to close to the level of degrading that working in a theme park is. Attractions, boats, even PhotoPass, there is no greater rage on earth than that which boils beneath the surface of a guest who’s choke holding their kid to make them meet the height requirement, or a suburban mother being told her 15 year old will have to hop out of the stroller so it can be folded.
Kelli and I often joke about how much she’ll miss this job, and how I can’t wait to wash my hands of it. Even at its best, being a frontline cast member is little more than being a wind-up monkey. A friend of mine once said, “we’re all just NPCs to these people”. The Cast Member does not exist as a human being in the mind of a guest, they exist either as an obstacle to be knocked down or an arcade machine that they’ve stuck their quarter in and feel obliged to play.
The unfortunate reality of working “the” tourist job is that people can be whoever they want to be here and it doesn’t matter. They can scream till they’re red in the face and it doesn’t matter because they won’t have to see us around town or at their own jobs. We cease to exist the moment they get whatever they want, because that’s the idea that’s sold to them, that this is a magical place where everything is catered specifically to you and no one else. That type of insatiable consumption requires everyone to slip comfortably into their worst selves, because the moment that vacation stops being about you the magic bubble is popped and real life creeps into a place otherwise untethered from reality. This model creates a system where Cast Members are barriers to be overcome rather than people to engage with or even acknowledge.
The 7th Layer of Hell will be Comprised Solely of Vacation Club Members
There’s a running joke in the parks that after 4pm, everything is run by 18 year olds who have worked there for two weeks. This joke isn’t far from the truth, because after 4pm is where the leftover hours given to the CPs are. Amongst the many annoyances of this is that CPs are almost always scheduled to work the late night events. The company loves to schedule them a 2:45am end time with an 11am in time the next day, the extra fifteen minutes is critical so they don’t have to pay turnaround time, but that’s another story.
The most frequent of these events are the Vacation Club nights, where only timeshare members of Disney’s many resorts are allowed entry. Do you remember the Mos Eisley cantina from A New Hope? It’s basically the same thing except twice the booze and three times the scum and villainy. These events were always a dumpster fire regardless of where I worked. The first one ever featured a family of drunk adults driving ECV’s into each other, and then screaming at us when their idiot (adult) son decided to try and pick one up. There is a special place in hell for Vacation Club members, of that I am more certain than anything.
Hack and Slash
Bob Iger was a visionless CEO, and the company hasn’t realized how many nails are firmly embedded in its coffin. Disney leadership has often been contentious within the company. There are several books titled “Disney War” and they don’t refer to the same wars or even the same Disneys. Bob Iger’s time at Disney is marked for its aggressive acquisitions. They purchased Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and even 20th Century Fox. Bob Iger no doubt left behind a larger company than he inherited, but it is a much less inventive and successful one. The fact of the matter is that Bob Iger thinks no differently than any Fortune 500 CEO. Under his leadership the company fell in line with any other company, pursuing the black above its creative output.
One of my most unhinged personal beliefs is that companies should be killed when their founding team passes. Visionaries who build are much better for consumer good than inheritors who grow. People who have to fight to create something understand the value of their creation in ways far more meaningful than dollars and cents. What’s unique about Disney as a company is that it’s mostly had a grasp of this concept. It’s utilized a dual leadership structure that typically puts a visionary, like Walt Disney over the creations and charges a bean counter like Roy Disney to keep the budgets balanced in pursuit of those ideas.
As controversial as he was, Michael Eisner had a partnership like this in Frank Wells. A visionary Chief Operating Officer formed a symbiotic relationship with the Chief Executive that anointed leadership with a goal more meaningful than more money. When Wells died, Eisner lost his way and the balance began to shift. Iger operated throughout most of his tenure without a COO and it shows. He didn’t open any new American parks, he stopped pursuing Disney’s dominance in 2D animation, and he consumed other properties rather than pushing for new ideas within his own growing number of subsidiaries. He leaves the company with park ticket prices that have doubled in nearly a decade, a Star Wars film flopping as independent movies flourish, and a distrust in the green-screen improv currently known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The writing is on the wall, hopefully Josh D’Amaro bothers to read it.
Start Over or Step Up
I spent nearly three years of my Disney career in ride operations, a glorified green button presser. I can’t ever say that I had a passion for ride ops, or theme park work in general. I spent two and a half of those years in Galaxy’s Edge and it was there that I really began to feel stuck. At the end of the day it just wasn’t a great environment. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw my Proprietor in the operation. Of the four proprietors I’ve had, SWGE had the only one I can and would say this about. That hands off, away from the little people approach bled down into the leadership and really set the tone for that environment… and keeping everyone inside a building they knew had an active gas leak didn’t help.
I was miserable in the day to day dregs, but I stayed because there were always carrots to gnaw on. I got to facilitate and tour, which I loved above all of my Disney roles. I even got to spend a year training, going so far as to pass on my first boat captain transfer to do it. I’m glad I passed on that opportunity the first time around, I wouldn’t have met my soon to be wife if I hadn’t; but if I were to experience that decision in a new role I wouldn’t make it the same.
If I’ve learned anything from my time with Disney it’s that a start somewhere that excites you is better than a step up somewhere that doesn’t. Being stuck somewhere that doesn’t advance even the people who’ve been there 5-10 years is no place to bet on. I had my own ups and downs with the boats but it was the fresh career start I needed and the laidback atmosphere of the Sassagoula was the refresh I craved to finish my Disney time happily rather than disgruntled. I can honestly say that my happiest days with the company were at the end of my time with it, and the eight months I spent in PhotoPass gave me the chance to enjoy the role I stepped into rather than languish in the ones I’d stepped up in.
I can’t do it all on my own
I’ve talked before about a conversation that has shaped me perhaps more than any other in the past four years. I had just been cheated on and dumped via text after a year and a half. I had seen Shrek 2 five times in the span of two weeks. I was crashing and burning. Then one day at work someone asked what was up, and my friend Thalia asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? You know we’re real friends, right?” And it rocked me to my core harder than the bite of ratatouille did to Anton Ego.
In every circumstance there is something we can learn about ourselves or at the very least understand deeper. It was that conversation that made me realize just how much of myself I was pouring into whomever I was dating, and how little I was truly investing in the people around me. Something similar had happened when I left my abusive girlfriend a few years before and found myself suddenly alone in a place where I felt like I’d had friends. I couldn’t control the abuse or being cheated on, but I could control how present I’d been in the world around me and how much I was truly investing in other people and letting them invest in me.
I can honestly say that my last two years in Florida have been my favorite, because of that life lesson, and because of how much it caused me to open up and invest in the people around me. As Kelli and I spent our final few days in the theme parks, it became abundantly clear to both of us just how many people we had in our lives and how difficult it was going to be to put a pin in those friendships and move elsewhere. There was an adage in my fraternity “that we enjoy life by the help and society of others” and I don’t think I fully understood the weight of that sentiment until I met the people who lived it out in Central Florida.
Stay Up Past Your Bedtime
One of the key differences between Kelli and I is that she’s a night owl and I’m an early bird. If I have to get up at 4am I’ll jump out of bed like it’s nothing, but ask me to stay out after 10pm and I’ll crash. My time in Florida has taught me to treat that flexibly. Yes, sleep and routine are important, but don’t let rigidity keep you from experiencing time with friends, family, or your girlfriend/fiancee.
There is no better example of this than Halloween Horror Nights. The event doesn’t open till 5ish every night and stays open till 2am. Some of my favorite memories from my time in Florida are staying out with friends till 2am when we all worked at 10 the next morning, or hiding from a monsoon till midnight, watching all the houses go 101 because they couldn’t switch anyone out. Bedtimes are important, but those memories that require a little sleep sacrifice are worth it.
Learn from Everyone
Working at Disney World was my first frontline job in nearly five years. In a lot of ways it was a professional step down back into unskilled labor. It is easy to write yourself and your peers off when your job is no more complicated than pressing a green button. There are a lot of internal pretensions that certain theme park roles are more advanced than others but the truth is that none of these roles that can be transferred into require any skills that can’t be learned in the training process. It’s easy to dismiss the people in these roles, even if you’re in the role with them, but some of the best life lessons I’ve gotten here have been from coworkers I’d have otherwise written off.
For me this job was never supposed to be more than a stepping stone, but to a lot of people this is what they enjoy doing. There’s a lot to be admired in people who like where they are and who seize the moment for its own sake rather than whatever moment they wish to be ahead of it. It’s a healthy gut check to see someone smiling at the same job you’re disgruntled at. The prerequisite skill of a job is no clear reflection of the person doing it. Never underestimate who you can learn from, because everyone has something they understand better or can do better or believe better than you.
An older coworker of mine told me one day about how his car broke down and he was okay with it. He said, “Everyone always says ‘On today of all days’, nobody says ‘Thank God my car broke down today’.” There’s never a perfect day for imperfect circumstances, and there is a lot to be learned from anyone who understands and models that.
Closing Thoughts
I’ll never be able to say I loved every moment of my time at Disney World. There are entire chapters I wish I could have done without, times when it felt more like a prison than the most magical place on Earth; but it is a novella within my life that I wouldn’t trade for all the magic on earth. I can think of few places that have tested me, tempered me, and transformed me quite as fully as my time with the Mouse did. That’s not all folks, but it certainly is Ta-Ta for now. WILLC552 signing out.
Collin Willis 