MEANDERING THOUGHTS FROM A WONDERING MIND, or this is a blog after only four hours of sleep.

People always tell me, "It must be so exciting to work for Walt Dianey World." If you like getting yelled at by cranky nicotine deprived guests, playing map quest for the cachillion times and slathering on hand sanitizer everytime a precious child sneezes all over the counter, it's Super kalli fragil- - -, super cali fragelis - - -, you get the idea. When I was new (and nieve,) I vowed that i'd never get bored with going to the parks. Now, when a friend wants to play in the park, I let them in with my pass and ask when they want to meet for dinner that night. It was a good ten to twelve years that I never stepped foot in the magic kingdom. I had come and gone from costuming in the tunnels regularly for work purposes, but avoided the park like the pleague.

In fact most life time cast members clock out and leave the property like bats out of hell. This adds an extra dose of fun to driving at Disney World. First you have your basic Tourist. Lost or nearly lost, they stay in the middle lane because driving in the slow lane would be admitting that they were lost. Then you have the foreigners. Any one that drives on the left side of the road, gets a crash course in driving on the right when they turn into on coming traffic with out realizing it. A couple of near death experinces usally resolves the right/left driving rather quickly. Cast members, I hate to admit, tend to tail gate, hit the speed bumps a fast as thier car will allow ( with out leaving various parts behind in the road) and swerve in and out of traffic like they're playing a game of Frogger. Throw in a few smoke belching, gas guzzling busses that seem to crawl slower that a snail in summer, and you have a driving situation that is a thrill a minute. Word to the wise, Use The Mgical Express from the airport. It's a free bus service to and from the resorts.

Parking at the studios was always fun around the holidays, cheer leader competions, major show rehabs and any other time management wanted to mess with our minds. :)In the beginning, our parking was where the Tower of Terror and Rock'n'Roller coaster is now. The old security check point and the costuming building are still there, but catering has taken over the building. Except for a wee, itty bitty corner in the old men's bathroom. Yes I said Men's bathroom. That was turned into a "puppet hospital." The entertainment techs laid claim to the space years ago. That's were the broken Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Playhouse Disney and several other puppets go to reglued, re-sewed and re-habed. When the new rides were built, our parking was moved to the guest parking lot, except during holidays, when we park inside the park in any space big enough to fit a car.

During cheerleader competion, they put up a huge tent in our parking lot and we have to park way, way, way in the back. The common joke was, "Yeah, parking was so bad, I ended up in Germany." "You mean at Epcot." "No the country." Certain Cast working at the studios would see just how fast we could go when leaving the parking lot. The furthest back guest parking was rarely used, so it turned into a massive free for all short cut. . . until the powers that be put in speed bumps, and barracks, and a few well placed county police.

South of the Magic Kingdom parking lot is a race track. Disney tried to start up their own auto race, but it fizzled after a few runs. This track it now used for a Petty driving experience and more recently an Indy driving experience. The edge of the track it right next to the main road leaving the Magic Kindgom. On many occasions I have been caught off guard as a race car on the track speeds past the line of traffic on the road and scares the $h!t out of me.

When you work for the vacation capital of world, where do you go on vacation ? For me, it's AS FAR AS WAY FROM ORLANDO AS YOU CAN GET. I have traveled around the world and have not been anywhere that I didn't run into the mouse some where. At the foot steps of the Parthenon in Athens,Greece, a road side vendor was selling plastic Mickey junk. . . I mean stuff. The group I was touring with was hiking through a small, mostly abandoned town on our way to a ancient historical sight. The only human being I saw in this entire town was a young 7 or 8 year old little girl wearing a Minnie Mouse dress, Minnie tights, Minnie hair band and Minnie shoes. I did a volunteer vacation to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana, one year. I thought i was safe from seeing the mouse there, since Disney make alot of Native Americans mad at the company's potrayal of Pocahontas. WRONG. I was there no more than thirty minutes when we walked into a school class room and there, larger than life, on the wall were two cut outs of Mickey and Minnie in Native American style buckskin.

My quest continues.

HOLIDAYS AT THE MOUSE HOUSE

I often said, "I now know what kind of job the Grinch had that made him hate Christmas." Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas, but holidays in costuming was like a chaotic fire drill. We had row after row of toy soldier costumes (most of which had to be repainted every year), a thousand and one santa-ish costumes(all of which had to be dry cleaned and altered before, during and after the holidays), several inflatable snowmen and women(who always seemed to be missing parts from one year to the next) and a plethera of scarves, hats, mittens (a large chunk of which never found their way back into storage come January.)

For a while we had a Christmas Beauty and the Beast "Holiday Enhancement" show. Belle's dress was a beautifull bugundy and gold ball gown. Heavy as a ten ton truck, but beautiful. Along with Belle and Beast, the holiday show also had several kids from the park dressed as big round Christmas ornaments. Cute idea. Cute kids. A royal pain to deal with. We'd put the large balls of foam on the pargo at night to take them back to the building and one bump in the road, they'd all tumble out like dominoes. On a few times a custodial person would find a wayward ornament and bring it back for us.

You can always tell the state of mind of an area by how they treat the holidays. Fansatmic! was not having a good year back in the early 2000's and it showed. For our Halloween pumpkin carving contest, thier's was uncarved with a cut out of Mickey's ears, hands and feet sticking out from underneath it, as if he had been squashed. On the side of the pumpkin was the words, "Some imagination, Huh?" (those familiar with the show will understand where that came from). It's pretty safe to say that when your cast symbolicly squishes the corporate icon. . . They Are Not Happy.

We used to have Christmas Pargo Parades. A cast only thing, each department dressed up thier pargo in holiday themed decorations and they would be judged by the Studio's Executives. First year was a year for venting. Coordinators had lost thier status(demoted)a few months earlier. There were cut backs, shortened work weeks to save money and we saw a ton of money being spent on a new ride (Tower of Terror) that was having a lot of problems. Since all's fair in Love and Pargo Parades, the cast let management know just how unhappy they were when the evening's entertainment included thier version of the Seven Days of Christmas.
"On the second day of Christmas our managerment gave to us. . . a new exciting thrill ride." A chunk of dry wall was dropped from the catwalks of the stage signifing one of the many problems Tower had in the testing stages. (all was fixed and it's been running flawlessly ever since.) "On the fifth day of Christmas our management gave to us. . . Five disgruntal leads." -Insert explative of choice here-. . . you get the idea.

It wasn't all bad though. One of my all time favorite pargo's was the year a department got permission to use one of the Fort's draft horses and hitched it up to the pargo. On top was a crate of chickens and other hillbilly stuff. It was titled "A Country Christmas". Costuming's pargos were . . . let's just say, we never won. After a few years, the parade turned less Christmassy and more odd. THe year the character department provided the "floor show" entertainment that looked like it was straight out of a sleazy bar was the last year we had the pargo parade.

Another holiday tradtion that's still going strong is the 70% of cast sales, or as I call them Grab and Growl Sales. They open the doors and it's like a stampede. People drag around boxes overflowing with mickey shirts and Nemos dolls for pennies on the dollar. I saw one lady almost get jumped by another when the first lady mistakenly started looking through the other's box of stuff. "THAT"S MINE!" she said. A bunch of us slowly backed away, but an eye on the rabid shopper. Most of it is surplus from the merchdise shops although one year i managed to ge a nice four piece luggage set for $100 bucks.

On the upside, Disney at Christmas is awesome. When I worked at the Boardwalk the lobby smelled like gingerbread for days after they built the train gazebo. I've heard there is a chocolate carousel at one of the resorts. I think I'll have to find it this year.