THE PRACTICLE THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM DISNEY

In all of te years I have worked with Disney, I have learned a few practicle things that everybody can use in daily life.

A product called JINX INX is absolutely fabulous for getting ink out of everything. Unfortunately, I have never seen it for sale to the general public. Basically, it's industrial strength acetone. . . nail polish remover. We have several characters with white gloves. From the Head Cheese (Mickey) himself on down to Shitty Kitty(Sorry, I mean Gideon the cat from Pinochio). Sidenote: We sometimes have pet names for certian characters. Gideon is basically a drunk cat with just one line in the whole movie. . . a drunken hiccup, thus the nickname.

Anyway, kids want autographs. This means kids often come at the characters with sharpies, felt pens, ball point pens and everybody's favroite. . . gel pens. At the end of the night there's always a large basket of gloves that have to be specially treated for ink marks. What Jinx ink dosen't get out, Alcohol will. (no not the drinking kind. . . that comes later.) Rubbing alcohol does wonders at getting ink out of things. Mixing Alcohol and Jinx Inx creates a nice little chemical reaction in the laundry area. A quick fix for ink marks is, believe it or not, hair spray. I don't understand how or why, I've just seen it work.

One costuming trick that we were never allowed to try is Vodka (HMmmm, I wonder why?) I was told that touring shows and professional theater troops spray Vodka in their costumes. When it dries, any body odor is gone. It also works pretty well when dealing with Divas. After a few shots of Vodka, who cares, who's yelling at who.

Sometimes I feel like I've led a deprived life. As a kid I never heard of PEEP Jousting, Dry ice bottle rockets and Mentos in Soda bottles. Easter has just passed and of course packages of PEEPS, chicken shaped marshmellows were everywhere. Some cast members decided to 'blow one up' in the microwave. This was done covertly, so I never actually saw the after math. Since it was in a manager's microwave, i assume the microwaved PEEP just expanded to three times it's normal size before deflating.

The next day, I heard about PEEP Jousting, where you put toothpicks in each PEEP and Microwave them. The winner is called when the toothpick of one stabs the other and makes it deflate. . . some of my fellow cast members really need a hobby. :)

I recently heard a story about dry ice, bottle rockets and pipe bombs. Apparently this happened several years ago when the Muppets On Location show was going on. One day it was raining and the show was downed. A wardrobe person was bored and put dry ice in a soda bottle with a little water. After a few minutes, the soft plastic popped a hole and the bottle shot off like a rocket into the air.

The next day, it also rained. Still bored this person had a new audience, so he did it again. This time, however, the only thing he could find was a harder plastic Evian bottle. He puts the dry ice in it, seals the top, the spectators peek out from half open doors and watch as the thing starts to crackle. Getting nervous that the bottle didn't shoot off, he decided to throw a seat cousion over it and stomp on it. (yeah, real smart) It still didn't do anything. Wanting to hide the evidence, he tired to kick it inside. Thank God it never made it that far, because the break room was wall to wall mirrors. The Evian bottle became wedged under the dry ice bin and literally blew up. It rocked the building and would have shattered the mirrors. Shrapnel flew every where. Manager types and security were checking roof tops after that. One person said they heard it half way across the part and thought it was Epic (Indiana Jones). Needless to say these cast members never played with dry ice again.

Ever since Blue Man Group arrived at Universal, I've been dieng to try the Mentos in Soda experiment. . . when i have a few extra bucks to waste, I mean, to spew every where, I'll try it and report back to you with my findings.

Have you ever tried signing the back of your brand new credit card only to curse out the ball point pen because it won't write. Next time that happens, try the 'ancient Disney secret'. Put a piece of scotch tape over the signing strip, rub it a few times and remove it. I'm not sure if it adds a layer of stickiness to it, so the pen can grab hold or if it removes some kind of oily residue from the manfacturing process, all I know is that it works.

As a way of amusing the hundreds of kids that pass through the resorts, our managers have supplied the bell service guys with the long 'Balloon Animal' balloons. When I was at All Star and had to work luggage, i learned that I should never quit to become a Circus clown. Making balloon animals is not my forte'. Some of the luggage folks got pretty darn good at it though. They were making life size figures of children holding helium filled ballons to keep it upright. Needless to say we were all very impressed.

At Boardwalk Resort, it's helium balloons in the lobby. I have a greater repsect for the balloon sales people that walk the parks. It takes skill to be able to walk from point 'A' to point 'B' with a handfull of helium balloons and NOT have a tangled up mess. I learned how to blow up the double balloons like you see in floral bouquets.
. . .And more importantly I learned how not to do it. When a balloon pops in a double balloon, it will flat make your ears ring. One day I was tieing the weight on a helium balloon for a couple of kids. It didn't touch anything, didn't get near anything, but it exploded. Unfortuneately, down the lobby was a soldier returning from Iraq, like fresh off the plane returning. I was told that the balloon popping about scared the $%%T out of him. . . . Sorry Mr. Army Guy, where ever you are, and Welcome Home !!!!

And my final bit of Practicle Things I Have Learned From Disney is a biggie:
NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING.

If you go on vacation, never assume the hotel, plane, car rental company, etc. will have your information or have the right information. When checking into a hotel, bring your confirmation papers. When getting a rental car, bring your reservation confirmation number. When boarding a plane, bring your confimation number, reservation number and your Photo ID. Every time some one says, "I didn't know I needed my comfirmation information," is usually the time the computer has eaten all traces of thier reservation.

So save yourself a major headache and bring your paperwork when you travel.

TaTa for now.

IN MEMORY OF . . .

Most of my blogs i try to see the lighter side of Disney life. But as we approach Easter eve and my thoughts tend to drift toward life, death and the 'here after', i want to take a moment and make sure some of my friends who have passed on get remembered. In the past blogs, I have never use a person's real name for security and privacy reasons. But this one time i want to wave that.

Joel, entertainment technician, football player. I worked with Joel on the opening crew for Fantasmic!. He was a big guy with and even bigger heart. One christmas eve, he wanted to bring the tradition of reading the Christmas story to the Fantasmic! cast and asked if my Bible was in my car. That night he had a mini-church service in the green room. To see him you'd think he could crush anything. To talk with him you knew he was a big teddy bear.

He played on an arena football league for several years, but never achieved his dream of making it big. He had a part time job as a bouncer at a bar and it was assumed someone got ticked off that night. After hours Joel was sitting in his car and was shot several times in the chest. At last report, they still had no idea who did it.

Aeyrk was a dancer for Beauty and the Beast (B&B)and Pleasure Island. He was one of those people that every body knew. My fondest memory of Aeyrk was between shows when he was bored. He'd come into wardrobe, sit on the clothes dryer and keep us all amused with stories. One day particular, we got sex tips from a gay guy. . . it was very educational and kind of odd.

One afternoon, while riding his motorcycle, he was involved in a head on collision with a car. His was the first African-American funeral I had ever been to and it was the biggest emotional roller coaster I have ever been on. We laughed. We cried. We laughed some more. Disney management cancelled the morning's shows at B&B and any where else he had worked so people could go to the funeral. They also provided a bus to transport anyone who wanted to attend. For me it was very impressive that an individual was so well loved and respected by managment that they shut down several shows that day in his honor.

One last thing about Aeryk, when a friend of mine and I left the funeral, there was a car alarm going off. We were rather upset that some one would 'just allow thier alarm to keep going off'. Then we realized . . . it was her truck. She didn't even know she had a car alarm and had no idea how to turn it off. After fiddling with some wires and with some help from several of funeral attendees, we were able to turn the thing off. We decided that it had to have been Aeryk saying good bye to everyone in his own special way.

Joe, stage manager, was one of the sweetest, nicest guys you could ever meet. He worked at Epic for a long time and never once let the boy's shannigans get the better of him. Which is saying alot for that show. In fact, one day the boys had been watching too much wrestling on TV and started trying out wrestling moves on any one who walked through the door. Joe came in to announce 'Places' for the next show. One of the guys tried a few moves on him and he played along.

Joe had brain cancer. He was gone for a very long time while he had chemo, surgery and other treatments. I'll never for get when i saw him again for the first time. I said, "It is nice to see you back here again." His said, "It's nice to been seen." That really stuck with me, because that was his way of saying he was just happy to be alive. Sadly, Joe lost his battle with cancer a short time later.

Tom, Character Coordinator, was one of the most dedicated cast members I have ever seen. He lived, slept and breathed the Star Wars event at the studios every year. In fact, when he was sooo sick during his last Star Wars event that he could barely stand, we told him he should go home and take care of him self. He was almost in tears when he said, "If I do, they'll take the event away from me." Tom had terminal cancer and while in his thirties, in the middle of his beloved special event, he passed away. One of my most profound memories of his passing, was the fact that his fellow cast members rallied around him morning, noon and night. They practically moved into the hospital waiting room. They also put on a benefit show to help raise money for his mounting medical bills.

Donnie was one of the few managers who everyone respected. Things weren't good between hourlies and managers in costuming for years (but that is a whole other blog). Most managers, if they asked us to extent to cover a shift, we'd say, "nope, gotta go." If Donnie asked, we usually stayed because we could never tell Donnie no. Why ? He worked side beside with us. He backed us up and he respected his cast. One friday he left for the day with huge plans for his weekend. I was called Sunday and told that he had died from a heart attack. That week, we were all wrecks.

I want to end this blog on a high note and tell you one of Donnie's stories. He was in Bogota, Columbia with a bunch of costumes for a Latin America promotional tour. He realized too late that his driver's license had expired and the rental car company refused to rent him a car. After catching a cab to the his hotel, he decided it was not a good place to walk on the streets. He had no idea when he was supposed to meet his contact person, he was getting hungry and spoke no spanish. He tried to ask a housekeeper if the hotel had room service. She looked horrfied at him and ran away. Not knowing what he had said, the next day he told his contact person about the incident. He was told that instead of asking for room service. . . as in food, what he had asked for was to be serviced in the room . . . as in sex. Poor Donnie.

God Bless and Happy Easter