When cast members come out to play.

As I've said before, most life time cast members don't spend a lot of time in the parks. We clock out and go home. I had one guest ask if they provided a place for us to sleep and live on property. Yeah, they do. It's called College Program. Several thousand college kids and international college kids are brought in to work at Disney for predetermined amounts of time. THey are the ones that "eat, sleep and live Disney". As for the rest of 50,000 cast members, we high tail it to the real world. As for me, I'm about 30 to 45 minutes north.

THe one event that probably brings the most people back to the property on thier days of is the Epcot Wine and Food Feastival, or as we refere to it, 'drinking your way around the world'. Some people don't wait for the festival in order to do this. For them any excuse to drink around Epcot is enough. During the run of Hunckback of Notre Dame, we had a show emergency one day. Quasimodo performers had called in sick and the show was unable to go on with out the star. The stage manager decided to call some one in to work who had the day off. THe problem was, this person had been enjoying the wine and food feastival, with much emphasis on the wine. He told managers he had been drinking, after all it was his day off. Manager said for him to come into work anyway. So we, in costuming, had to baby sit a tipsy quasi all day.

The Studios has a scavanger hunt / trivia game every year that they call Goofy's Mystery Tour. I did this a long, long, long time ago. My friend and team mate managed to get bitten by something that night and her face swelled up like a ballon by the next morning. . . it was fun. Any way, there are teams of four, bungeed corded together, running through the park in search of clues to solve a master riddle. In the process you can get bonus points for answering trivia questions along the way. THe year we did it. . .we lost, badly. I'll always remember a fellow losing team that night. THey too had realized they had a snowball's chance in h#$$ of winning, so they ended up skipping (yes skipping) through the park chanting "It just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter." It wasn't until they scored the trivia test that we realized just how bad we had done.

Entertianment folks are always willing to "put on a show" in order to raise money for a fellow cast member in need. During the run of the show Doug, one of the cast was in a really bad car wreck days before his health insurance kicked in. Entertainment folks from across property gathered thier resources and put on a song and dance show (after hours) to help raise money for thier fellow actor to pay off some of his medical bills. THe character department did this again when one of thier coordinators came down with terminal cancer. Unfortuneately he was too sick to attend. He passed away a short time later.

During my time in Studio Costuming, it wsa like pulling teeth to get anyone to participate in anything. Even potlucks had sketchy turnouts. My current resort is the polar opposite. There's a baseball team, a marathon team, bowlers for Jounior Acheivement and pot lucks at a drop of a hat. In fact, one of the concierge folks was on the resort's soft ball team and decided to stop a line drive with her bare hand the other day. . . . She had a glove on the other hand, but for reasons unknown to her, she didn't use it. Have you ever tried to type with a broken finger ? Let's just say, it's not fun. At the Lodge you always know when there was a game the night before. Everybody's moving a bit slower in the morning. THe aspirin box is a little emptier. And people in their thirties and fourties are groaning like thier in their nineties.

As a concierge i really should spend more time in the parks, nahhhh, why start now. Although it is fun to seek revenge on stupid people. Case in point: when an attraction's host says, "Please move down to fill in each and every available seat," DO IT. I can not tell you how many times see people stopping in the middle of the row and totally ignore the cast member. Consider this a fair warning - If I see you and your party stop in the middle of the row and refuse to move to the end, I will step on your feet as I try to squeeze by you. It's all about courtesy folks.

I keep saying that "some day, I'm going to check out this restaurant or that show," but after a decade and a half of working for the company. . . why rush things. :)