W T H Part II

Working with the public from around the world, you see the good, you see the bad, then you see things that you can only classify as "What The Hell. . ."

The number one pissed off guests comment is "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTIBLE." I wish I could just once say. "I am sorry that you were too igorant to read the information that was sent to you, but the world does not revolve around you." But that would be un-Disney-like. You can make a room request, but I can not gaurantee requests. Why? Because they are requests. The more requests you ask for the less likely you'll get them, especially when a specific request doesn't exist. Three connecting rooms, poolside, on the 12th floor of the Wilderness lodge and everything is to be ready by 7:00 in the morning when I arrive on Easter Weekend. (here's your assignment, go to Disney.com and find out why that won't happen. . . ever) Yelling at a cast member or manager and pitching a crying fit in the lobby won't change the fact that a specific room is already occupied.

If you come to Disney from June to August, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Martin Luther King Day, March to end of April due your self a favor and Make Dinning Reservations as before you get here. Although we can usually find something, somewhere, it's usually not in a park or it's at 9:00 at night or 7:30 in the morning. Dining is the second biggest reason for a melt down. "Oh My God, My life is ruined if I can not eat dinner at 6:00 every night in my favorite restaurant." My answer to that, "You lead a sad, sad life if that's all it takes to ruin it."

I can not tell you how many times I have suggested a restaurant and have had a guest ask me," Do they have good food?" Do you really think I'm going to say, "No that place Sucks."

We had a guest come to the front desk at the Lodge in a fit of rage and screamed at the cast member, "I SHIT IN MY BED LAST NIGHT AND IT'S STILL THERE." . . . I have a hard time figuring out which is more disturbing. The fact that a grown woman would 'S!!T' in her bed AND admitted it. Or the fact that a houskeeper could make the bed with out seeing the stuff and change the sheets. Ewww. We're moving on.

On the Concierge floors at the premium resorts we provide breakfast, snacxs, wine, cheese, bottled beer and cordials through out the day. Recently we had some guests who were waiting for the elevator with a stroller covered in jackets. However, when they hit a bump in the floor, a bottle of beer fell out. These people had tried to wipe out the lounge's beer supply and stuffed it in their stroller.

In another case of the classic, give them and inch they'll take a mile, my managers will usually refuse to give a written guarantee to anything. Apparently people have taken the good will deeds of a manager or two in the past and photocopied it to give to thier friends or worse yet sell it on ebay. I'm not sure if it ever cost anyone thier job, but who wants to take that chance.

Disney offers discounts to Florida Residence for tickets. People try to con us by saying that thier Florida ID is in the room or it's in thier car and they get upset when we refuse to sell them tickets at the Resident rate. At this point, I wish I could say A)Unless you plan to support me the rest of my life, when I lose my job, I'm not selling you tickets at a resident rate, B) As a resident of this state and having to deal with all of you tourists, if getting into the park a little cheaper is a perk Disney is willing to put out there, I AM NOT giving that perk away to anyone who does not live here, C)If you can afford to stay in a premium resort, you can afford to pay for tickets to the park.

Not every W T H guest encounter is an angery one. We had a young guy hanging out in the merchandise shop one day and kept asking people if they spoke french. He didn't speak french, he just wandered how many people he could find who spoke the language. I believe he was asked to leave.

I was looking up a guest's record and asked for a first name. The lady's answer "His first name is Doctor." "Mam, that would be a title."

A Sheriff Deputy walked through the lobby and we started talking. He said most of the traffic stops on property are cast members who are late for work. However, they stopped a guest one day who got a $105 speeding ticket. When asked why he was speeding, the guest said, "I have to go pee." I had another guest so excited about being at Disney, even a little souvenier from the Florida Highway Patrol didn't dampen the mood. She admitted that when asked why she was speeding, she said, "We were trying to figure out the words to the song 'The wheels on the bus go round and round' and I wasn't paying attention." She said the Trooper was not amused when she asked him if he knew the words to the song.

While at Coronado Springs, one of my manaagers needed to walk guests to the Yacht and Beach club. (Simply, when we get over booked, we make arrangements at a different resort for them.) These guests refused to go. Coronado is a Moderate price resort. Yatch and Beach is a premium resort. Still, they pitched a fit. Next to them were some cast members checking in (using a discounted cast member rate). They said they'd take the room if the guest's didn't want it. Long story short, cast members didn't just get a room at a high end resort for just over $100, they got a water view suite. My best guess is that it was a $400 or up room. After the 'fit pitching' guests heard this, they said, "well, maybe we will take that room." My manamger said, "Sorry to late, thier names are already on the room." I know what he wanted to say was "You are such a LOSER."

Not all of the W T H momnents belong to the guests. I was in the elevator with a couple construction workers and over heard thier conversation. Apparently they just caught a painter dumping a five gallong bucket of paint in the a planter. We reached our floor, they went one way, I went the other, so I never found out what happened after that.


And on that note i must now go to work and gather more material for next time

THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS, OH MY

Living in a town with three major theme park companies, you start to see where each develop their special niche. Universal Studios it's Halloween. With all of the classic monster movies to pull from, they have became the masters of the things that go bump in the night. During Holloween Horror Nights they scare the snot out of normaly sane individuals with deranged clowns, Bloody Mary, demented nursery ryhme characters and thier own creation: The Chain Saw Drill Team.(zombies chasing people around the park with real chain saws. . .with the blades removed of course.) I have heard of many occasions where half drunk guests try to challenge the cast for thier chain saws. Word to the wise, unlike at Disney and SeaWorld, scare characters at Universal can and do fight back.

Sea World always seems to have a 'We are the World' feel. For a while anyway, Fourth of July was thier niche. They had special patriotic Shamu shows and firworks. At the time I'm writing this, they had just been bought out by a foreign company, so time will tell if that will still be thier niche. A side note, they have a Shamu show called 'Believe'. My friend saw it the other day and said it was really cool. . . until the whales stopped believing. Apparently something happened and they started aggressively circling the tank. Needless to say, the trainers bailed out of the water until they get them calmed down.

Disney's niche in the holidays is Christmas. Nobody can even come close to all of the details that Disney puts in thier displays. There's a Forty Five foot Christmas Tree in the lobby of Wilderness Lodge. Although the uneven placement of the Teepee ornaments has bugged me all Season. Yacht and Beach club had a chocolate carousel. Boardwalk had a gingerbread gazebo with a moving train set running around it. Why a Gazebo? I'd like to know. If anyone has an answer, emial me. THe Grand Florida has a huge ginger bread house in their lobby. Our guests in the campgrounds who set up for the whole season have taken it upon thier self to decorate thier motor homes with lights and christmas displays to such a degree that is has drawn the attention of a travel channel television show.

The Millions of lights in the Osbourne Family lights display at the Studios lost alot of it's charm once residential street was plowed over for the new stunt show. The Spectical of Lights, or as we call it, S O L . . .(Yeah we have a few other choice discriptions as well), anyway, it all started in Little Rock Arkansaw. Mr Osbourne managed to tick off some neighbors with his massive Christmas light display every year. Law enforcement was called in to manage the crowds and government officals fined him for disrupting the peace and creating traffic jams. Story has it that a particular neighbor got mad, so he bought their house and threw lights on it as well. As this battle was spinning out of control, in steps Disney. They offered to pay off his fines and in return Disney would have the rights to the displays. And thus a Disney legend is born. A little side note, I was told that in 2008, as the metal globe that sits above the display was being installed, it was accidently dropped from the crane and it rolled several hundred yards into the park before stopping. It survived. Dented, but survived. One of my favorite memories of SOL, was back when they used to hand out 3D glasses. With them on, you'd see angels every where. One day, I came across a five or six years old child, standing inches away from a tall lit up candy cane. She'd put the glasses look at the lights. She'd take them off and look at the lights. Put them on, take them off. She must have done this five or six timed in a row. It was like she was trying to figure out where the angels came from.

Epcot always has the warm fuzzy 'all is well with the world' shows. Besides Illuminations, during chriatmas, they have a retelling of the Christmas story by guest celebrity narrators. It's always standing room only, which is why i haven't seen it yet. When you work for the mouse, you tend to not wait around when the lines are long.

Magic Kingdom, being the grand daddy of them all has a Christmas parade, an electric light parade, fireworks and characters out the ying yang. One year back in the nineties, it was a rainy, nasty mess here in Orlando on Christmas day. But the Disney Christmas parade that was televised showed bright sunny skys. So we had guests from Tampa decide to take a drive over to Orlando and get into the sunny side of the state. . . I mean after all, it was sunny on TV. Ooops, Faux Pas. Most, if not all of the Parade is filled in advance. This year Millie Cyrus was supposed to host it. I didn't have the heart to tell Millie's fans that her parts were aleady taped.

New Years has it's usual fireworks and confetti. On the eve of the new millenium, however, Disney had planned for everything from a mild hiccup in the computer systems to an all out Armaggeddon. They had high powered construction lights at every intersection in case the Y2K struck down our power grid. THey had lengthy plans in case of senario A, B and X. THEN. . .nothing happened. Universal Studios, in contrast, gave us one sheet of paper with some meager instructions in case of power outages and/ or Y2K mayhem. Again, nothing happened.

Poor Thanksgiving tends to get over looked alot. Management always gets a turkey and/ or ham for us and we potluck the rest. One year, Epic had several turkeys delievered to the stage on a tall, metal catering cart. The cart was pushed outside to give us room in the trailer. And there it sat . . . and sat . . . and sat. It had to have been nearly a month that it was forgotten outside of the Epic trailer. When one day, some one decided to send it back to catering. It was then that we realized we still had aleast two roast turkey's in there. Needless to say they were a bit fuzzy.
Martin Luther King day, I never really thought much about him, UNTIL his day turned into a paid holiday.

November is Native American Month and at the Wilderness Lodge, we have a tribal leader bless the lodge. Maybe that's why we're staying busy in the slow periods. In our lobby we have two totem poles. Since it is considered to be bad luck to have them face each other, ours are off set just a bit, but I was told that the totems almost facing each other is another reason we get it blessed every year, in order to keep all of the bad spirits, karma, ect away.

Another November memory was the year Disney decided to float the Macy's Thanksgiving day ballons over New York street. I was told that there had to technicians on the building roofs 24/7 to keep the helium ballond from tearing up or getting tangled up since they would sink in the cool night air and could possibly over inflate in the heated up day time air. We still managed to kill the a few ballons. I can'r remember if we did that one or two years, but when the Osbourne lights moved in the Macy's ballons moved up the road to Universal.

THanks for readiing. Keep coming back each month for more inside the insider's view of Disney