Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  Brady looked at his watch. “I’m afraid that’s the end of the line,” he quipped with the twang of a Wild West prospector. “Until next time, keep your hands in your pants and reach for the stars!”

  Confined as I was to the Animal Kingdom photo lab, I didn’t have many more opportunities to interact with the character performers. Still, I had plenty of time to meet my teammates on the Disney photo squad, and I could see Orville hadn’t been exaggerating about their skills. Of the fifteen men and women in the department, only two had any photo experience whatsoever, and I was one of them. Most of the shots that passed through my hands were underexposed, blurry, or off center, a condition that never escaped Orville’s watchful eye.

  Eventually, I was promoted to film runner. My duties consisted of muling rolls of film from the photographers in Camp Minnie-Mickey to the lab and 5” × 7” prints from the lab to the sales desk. It was a minimum-wage duty that was usually reserved for the mentally challenged Cast Members, but I was working my way up, “earning my ears” as Orville would remind me. I didn’t mind running the film though. It got me out of the lab and backstage where I could finally interact with my fellow Mouseketeers.

  The Cast Members who worked in Food & Beverage were the most talkative. They would ask to bum a smoke and then chat about anything. The souvenir salespeople were equally friendly, as were the maintenance staff and anybody who carried a broom and dustpan around the outskirts of the park. The performers in the character department, however, were impossible to crack. They would survey my wardrobe and inquire politely about my job. Then, they would drift away. It was like pulling up to a Hollywood party in a Kia.

  For all outward appearances, there was no single feature that united Disney Cast Members. They didn’t have perfect skin or straight teeth. They didn’t have to be beautiful or striking in appearance with Cinderella blue eyes or Charming high cheekbones. Some came straight out of high school, their hearts filled with innocent altruism, whereas others were working through their retirement years. Men and women joined up in even numbers being myopic, bald, buxom, disabled, or wearing braces. There was no one representative race, religion, or hairstyle. In fact, if it weren’t for the stringent appearance guidelines outlined in the The Disney Look book, there would be no way to pick a Disney character performer out of a crowd.

  I wanted to believe that being a Cast Member was like being part of a kibbutz, everybody collectively working toward the same goal. But I couldn’t fool myself for long. Eventually, I had to face the fact that I was part of a theme park class structure, and I wasn’t at the top.

  The bottom of the pyramid was composed of Cast Members who never got to interact with guests: gardeners and maintenance workers, janitors and ride operators—personnel who spent their time in the dark or behind the scenes, keeping the wheels of Disney’s mechanism in motion.

  The middle class was made up of workers in the service sector. This included souvenir salespeople, food and beverage handlers, and anybody who stood behind a counter in a silly costume. These Cast Members performed basic Disney functions like smiling and directing people to the bathroom.

  But the ruling class at Disney was the character department. Characters were the reason people came to the park in the first place, and they were the reason people returned year after year. The people who were hired to be a part of the character program were considered the most elite group on property. Character performers weren’t just Cast Members doing a job; they were pillars holding up the House of Mouse.

  Even within the character department, there was a subtle hierarchy based on popularity. More obscure characters like Gideon (the cat from Pinocchio) or Meeko (the raccoon from Pocahontas) ranked lower than Disney’s superstars like Goofy or Captain Jack Sparrow. And fur characters ranked lower than face. But the absolute pinnacle of the Disney Cast Member caste was the most romantic group of all: the princesses.

  For three generations, little girls dreamed of being Snow White, Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty. These princesses embodied a kind of Old World femininity, which dictated that a woman’s worth was to be measured by the elegance of her gown and the grace of her curtsey. Then, in the 1980s, Disney introduced a new princess, a heroine who was resilient and strong and utterly lovable—the Little Mermaid, Ariel. She was, hands down, the sexiest character ever produced by Disney, and the character quickly became the most coveted role on property. Only the most beautiful girls could play Ariel, the ones with slender figures, natural C cup breasts, and perfect, white smiles. The antics of the animated character made her a favorite among little girls. The seashell bikini top made her a hit with chaperoning daddies.

  It was widely understood that princesses didn’t date below their status, which, in Ariel’s case, meant Prince Charming or, at the very least, a mid-level manager—men who could afford to keep a princess in the lush trappings that her elevated status demanded. Somebody like me would never be able to score a princess. As a photographer, I was firmly embedded in the bottom of the class pyramid, somewhere between landscaper and hot dog vendor, not that I had taken a single photo yet.

  My big career break came after a couple of weeks in the lab. One of the photographers called in sick, and Orville shoved a camera into my hand. “I don’t have time to explain. Just go out to Camp Minnie-Mickey and shoot guests with the mice, then come straight back here. Do you think you can do that?” Within five minutes of developing my first roll of film, Orville called a meeting.

  “Look at the way he sets up the shot with a balanced background.” He used a Winnie the Pooh coffee stick to indicate different parts of my photos for a group of Cast Members in the lab. “The parents aren’t trying to throttle their little brats. Nobody’s blinking. This is how I want to see all your shots come in.”

  It made me uncomfortable. It made somebody else uncomfortable too.

  “This photo is underexposed.” The guy speaking was Pluto height, with dark, crispy hair and eyelids that looked like they were tattooed with permanent makeup. His voice had the serrated edge of a feisty Latin woman, thick with a lisping Puerto Rican accent. “Their faces are dark. He should have pushed it a third of a stop.”

  Orville squinted at the print. “Good eye, Marco. These Anniversary Celebrators are wearing white, so the camera’s automatic meter function overcompensated for the brightness. We can all learn something from this. When there is a lot of white in the photo subject, remember to open the aperture a little more. One or two thirds of a stop should do the trick. Can everyone remember that?”

  Everybody in the room nodded, their eyes like buttons on stuffed animal faces. Slowly, they grabbed their cameras and wandered back out into the park. Marco approached me, beaming.

  “Hola, chico. I hope you don’t mind if I point out the flaws in your photography.” His words were draped in false sincerity.

  “I don’t mind,” I shrugged. “I really didn’t think the photo was that great.”

  “An artist has to be open for constructive criticism,” he said, fluttering his Maybelline lashes. “It makes his work better.”

  “I don’t know if this qualifies as art,” I said.

  He put his hand on my arm and smiled. “What you do is not art.” Then, with an effeminate head flick, he did a little pirouette and walked out.

  I recognized the type immediately. In polite beach society, we called him a kook, but there were plenty of other names for guys like Marco: ass-kisser, backstabber, liar. Kooks talked a big game. They tried to work their way into the tribe with fast talk and stories about twenty-stair handrails that nobody ever witnessed, but they were always undone by their actions. I hated kooks.

  “Your alpha dog just pissed on my leg,” I said when Orville appeared at my shoulder.

  Orville had the plastic smile of a game show host who didn’t care which contestant won, just as long as the camera stayed focused on him. “He’ll get over it. Now, get back to Camp.”

  One of the perks of being a Disney photographer was getting to spen
d time in the air-conditioned character break rooms where performers changed out of their costumes, rested, and prepared for the next set. The Camp Minnie-Mickey break room was located right behind the kiosks, hidden from sight by hibiscus bushes through Cast Members Only gates. Unlike the underground tunnels of Magic Kingdom, the backstage at Animal Kingdom was outdoors at ground level. It was a world without landscaping budgets or background music; the barely contained swamp of Central Florida where crabgrass and creeping vines struggled for space between mobile trailers, aluminum-sided office warehouses, and cracked concrete patios; and a place where Cast Members could sit down, eat, and point with one finger and frown. Of all the frowning people backstage, the most morose were the ones in the character costumes. Sprawled out in lounge chairs, wearing fractions of sweaty animal costumes, they swore and smoked and looked genuinely miserable.

  At first, it was disturbing—these big, furry animals with sweaty human heads, but eventually, I grew comfortable with the foulmouthed hybrids. At that point, it didn’t seem so strange when, one morning, checking under the stall walls for a free toilet, I found a lineup of big colorful feet: Rafiki, Goofy, Brer Rabbit, just doing what comes natur’lly.

  After a week or so in the kiosks of Camp Minnie-Mickey, I got to know some of the character performers. There was a Pluto named Alan, a Goofy named Rusty, and some guy doing Tigger who changed his nickname every few days and would only respond to the proper moniker. It didn’t take me long to cross the line.

  Some kid had just punched Mickey in the nuts and run off, trailed by profusely apologizing parents. The woman in Mickey was a sweet-natured, bespectacled woman in her fifties named Sunny, who always brought her own vegan lunch in a brown paper bag. She was doubled over when I reached her side, white, four-fingered gloves clutching at her mouse belly and the Mickey head grinning amiably.

  “Holy shit, Sunny,” I whispered, low enough that no guest could hear. “Are you okay?”

  The Mickey head jerked up and the white glove slashed across its throat in the universal symbol of “Cut!” then wagged back and forth in my face. Without a sound, Sunny straightened up and finished her set. Later, she pulled me aside by the bathrooms.

  “You can’t talk to Mickey like that.”

  “I was afraid you were hurt,” I said. “Nobody heard me.”

  “I’m fine. Thank you,” she added. “But don’t ever talk like that to a character again.”

  I didn’t do much better with the others. As the days passed, I spent hours in the kiosks, punctuated by ten-minute intervals backstage, where I recharged on Powerade and tried to stay out of everyone’s way. In the break rooms, some Cast Members read books. Some listened to music. For the most part, however, break room activities included those things you might do if you were, say, sitting around a campfire or attending a slumber party: telling stories, singing songs, 7 Minutes in Heaven—pretty much anything that killed time.

  Disney performers had their own language, a combination of institutional jargon and backstage shorthand. Some of these were basic acronyms. Disney’s Animal Kingdom was referred to simply as DAK. The Festival of the Lion King show was FOLK. Cast Member was CM. Property-wide, the soundtrack that played over the loudspeakers was called Background Music, or BGM. If a Cast Member was part of the college program, she or he was a CP.

  Characters had nicknames. Cinderella was known as Cindy. Gideon was called Shitty Kitty. When the original animated crew, composed of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto, appeared together, they were referred to as The Fab Five.

  Some expressions, outlined in Employee Manual, were used by Cast Members to conceal those less Magical aspects of a family vacation. Janitors referred to a pile of puke as a “protein spill.” Should a guest encounter serious physical problems that required outside medical attention, security would call for an “alpha unit” rather than that decidedly unmagical vehicle known as an ambulance.

  Then, there was the lexicon of the entertainer, the terms that allowed character performers to speak in codes that even the administration wouldn’t understand. The one-minute visit, composed of a hug and kiss, an autograph, and a photo, was affectionately referred to as a “love and shove.” Children who came to the park because of the efforts of the Make-A-Wish Foundation were simply “Wish kids.”

  If a performer got in trouble, she or he got a reprimand. If the performer got injured, she or he might get an early release, or an ER, to go home or to the doctor. If the injury persisted, the performer might get restrictions, basically a low-impact job that allowed the Cast Member time to heal. Restrictions could be anything from greeter duty to trash detail, depending on the nature of the affliction and the disposition of the coordinator.

  Everybody wore a set of basics beneath their costume, a pair of gray shorts and a white T-shirt, issued every morning in quantities of three by the Zoo. Basics served the dual purpose of absorbing sweat on a sticky day while allowing male and female Cast Members to share a single break room. Each performer got her or his own fur and, at least theoretically, every costume was washed daily.

  A typical break room conversation went like this:

  “I just did two back-to-back Shitty Kitty sets. My back is killing me.”

  “Why don’t you get ER’d and take restrictions?”

  “No way! They’ll stick me in the Zoo, or I’ll get stuck cleaning up protein spills all day.”

  “It’s better than another day in Cindy doing love and shoves for Brazilian Tour Groups. I tell you, that BGM is driving me crazy!”

  Like any language, it felt a little unnatural at first, but within a few days time, I was speaking like a natural-born friend of fur.

  Within the walls of the break room, performers could relax and be themselves. There were sofas and easy chairs, bathrooms, towels, TV, and, of course, plenty of Powerade. At their most fundamental level, break rooms were a rest area for the performers, a place to re-hydrate and recharge between sets. But they were also the social hub of the character program.

  “Hey, you guys! Question time!” Alan stood on a chair to address the room. “Suppose you were stranded on a desert island. What three items would you want to have with you?”

  “That’s easy,” the Tigger said who, this week, was calling himself Shayde. “A flare gun, a tent, and one of those satellite phones with a GPS system that lets you call from anywhere on the planet. That way, I could get the fuck off the island before some cannibal finds me.”

  “Girl,” Rusty called everyone girl, but he pronounced it “gr,” like a growl without the rumble. “Girl, that’s too sensible. This is a fantasy desert island.”

  Alan held up his hand. “That’s okay. What’s his name is entitled to his choices.”

  “Wanna know my three things?” Rusty asked “First, I’d have a beautiful catamaran to sail around my island. Second, I’d want one of those see-through airplanes like Wonder Woman has so I could look at everything from above. And third, a computer so I could e-mail all my friends to tell them what a great time they’re missing.”

  “I’d want three of my friends with me,” Sunny piped.

  Alan nodded his head at me. “What about you, camera guy? What would you take to your desert island?”

  “My longboard,” I said. “Assuming there’s a good break there. Or maybe a skimboard. I suppose it’s no good to ask for a boat and a wakeboard, since I’d have to drive it myself, and then what fun is that, right?” Crickets. “A speargun would be useful too.”

  There was a moment of silence while everyone in the room tried to translate whatever I just said. “Well, I know exactly what I’d take.” Alan dropped down into the chair, crossed his legs, and looked intently around the room to make sure everybody was listening before he continued. “I’d lay my Fendi towel across my Chanel lounge chair and wait for Johnny Depp to serve me mimosas!”

  As a rule, serious conversations were avoided in the break room. Philosophical discussion topics ran the gamut from sexy celebrities to desert islan
d fantasies, abjectly avoiding all serious news. The 2000 presidential election, for example, while hotly contested in the courthouses of Central Florida and obsessed over by record numbers of concerned citizens around the nation, went largely unnoticed in the break rooms under the Magic Kingdom. At the time the final count was made official, ushering in George W. Bush as the forty-third president of the United States, the break room behind Camp Minnie-Mickey had divided into two passionate factions: one that proclaimed The Sound of Music to be Julie Andrews’ greatest role, and the other, which steadfastly argued for Mary Poppins.

  Since I had no opinion whatsoever of grand issues like this one, I was quickly marginalized from the rest of the character performers. I didn’t get hazed or excommunicated or anything. I just wasn’t let into the inner circle. If characters were talking about something scandalous when I walked into the break room, they would suddenly drop their voices to a conspiratorial whisper or change the subject. As someone who was accustomed to being part of the cool clique, I found it a little disconcerting to be on the outside.

  To preserve my self-respect, I decided I needed a place of my own. The dubious charms of the World Famous Budget Lodge were wearing thin, and I wanted with increasing urgency to integrate myself into the Disney community. And so, when I saw a note on the DAK character bulletin board advertising a room for rent, I called.

  Johnny was a soft-spoken good ’ol boy who used a lot of exclamation marks in his text messages. His avatar was a smiling image of a NASCAR driver, waving from the top of a champion’s podium. His ringtone was Justin Timberlake. He claimed to be a nonsmoker with no pets, looking for a nice guy to share his two-bed, two-bath apartment, located in the Disney Ghetto. He wanted $400 a month.