Dark Disney
Dark Disney
The job was a lot of fun, but there were issues...
I’ve been meaning to write this column for a while, but I have had mixed feelings about it, so I’ve been putting it off.
I will start by saying that, from a personal fulfilment point of view being a Disneyland Cast Member is probably the best job I ever had.
Not that I didn’t enjoy my other jobs, it’s just that as a cast member I was allowed to express myself in ways not available to a Senior Technical Support Engineer, Unix Administrator, Member of the Technical Staff for an Aerospace firm, etc.
I got to play dress-up and got paid for it. Not much, but enough to supplement our retirement income for six years until we were in good enough shape to permanently1 retire.
I will also preface this column by saying that Disneyland attractions are, from my experience working in them, probably the safest in the world.
But there’s always room for improvement, especially in the way “safety infractions” are handled. From my experience there’s a lot more effort put into assigning blame and punishment than there is put into looking for possible changes in procedure and equipment to make mistakes less probable.
I first ran afoul of this system four or five days after being hired into Resort Transportation and Parking.
The first two days were general “how to be a cast member” stuff. Disneyland and California Adventure history, touring both parks to see how small details add to the “show”, guest interaction, instruction on the four “Keys”, Safety, Courtesy, Show and Efficiency. During the Covid break a fifth key, Inclusion2, was added between Courtesy and Show.
The weird thing is that all five keys are supposed to be equally important, but some are more equal than others.
I.e. if a guest is about to do something that is likely endanger himself (almost always a “him”) or others, you don’t need to be especially courteous in stopping him.
Safety trumps everything else.
I first got trained in Trams. There are several positions in Trams, and except for two of them you’ll rotate between positions at about 20 minute intervals. The two exceptions were Driver3 and RT, which stands for Rear Tram. If you’re a driver or an RT you kept that position for your entire shift.
If you’ve every ridden a Disneyland parking tram you may have noticed a cast member who stands on a platform on the rear of the last car. That’s the RT.
As RT your job is to make sure that all guests enter and leave the tram on the correct side, that everyone is seated and all doors are closed before the tram moves, And that all guests remain seated with “hands and arms inside the vehicle” at all times when the tram is moving.
On my very first RT shift I was very nervous and didn’t want to do anything wrong. Long story short several things happened that hadn’t occurred during training, I got confused and told the driver over the PA, “Driver you are clear” while the “Front Car” cast member had a door open on the front car while strapping down a wheelchair.
It was dark and the lighting at the park-side loading zones is dim, and I had several cast members giving me the “clear” sign, plus. one yelling at me that there was a full tram waiting and we needed to clear the loading zone. I found out later that almost everyone working that night was in their first week or so, including the one insisting we move.
Half the folks signaling we were clear were facing the wrong direction. Only the Front Car is allowed to give the Clear sign. Everyone else is supposed to watch Front Car. They then repeat the sign so RT knows to double check for open doors and clear the driver to move.
In the dim light I missed the open door. As soon as I cleared the driver an RT on a tram staged nearby yelled, “Gary you have an open door!” and I immediately yelled “Driver Stop!” into my mic.
Standing on my little platform I honestly could not tell if the tram had moved or not, and that’s what I wrote in my incident report and said when debriefed by a manager. At that time I didn’t know the useful CYA lolphrase, “To the best of my knowledge the tram didn’t move.”
So I was written up for a safety in my first week at Disneyland. Since it wasn’t clear if the tram had moved or not, and since it was my very first RT shift, I thought I might get a mulligan, but there are certain managers who appear to relish writing up front-line cast, and I later learned the one that investigated this case was one of them.
After I got more experience I sat down with some managers and leads and made some suggestions on process and infrastructure (better lighting park-side) changes that might make this type of mistake less likely. I got the impression they thought I was just trying to weasel out of the Safety infraction.
So much for listening to the people who do the actual work to find out how to improve processes.
Eventually I was trained in “Field”, directing traffic in the structures and the flat lots, then Esplanade, loading an unloading parking buses on the park side and Tolls.
My favorite was Field in the Toy Story flat lot. The structures drove me crazy. I guess I’m not good at thinking three dimensionally. As much as possible I avoided Trams.
It takes 18 months for a Safety to fall off your record. I made it through the next couple of years without getting written up for anything, then Covid hit and the parks shut down for 13 months.
By this time I was full-time, so instead of being laid off I was furloughed, which meant I got unemployment benefits without having to actively look for a job. Between the California and Federal benefits I made slightly more money on unemployment, but if you get a job offer and refuse it you lose benefits.
So when I was called back to work in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge I was thrilled. You have to be quick on your feet working in the lots, I swear people aim their cars at you sometimes. In SWGE I got to cosplay Star Wars and got paid for it, when I used to do it for free. And there were no cars.
I worked for Attractions and was trained on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run.
Spoiler alert: I’m about to break show for that attraction. There is only one Millennium Falcon and it only has one cockpit. Everything below will spoil that part of the show.
You have been warned.
Start Spoilers:
A few weeks later I was working the Delta turntable load position and was loading a crew of six guests into the Delta 1 cabin. Delta 1 was notorious for being very dark. I was told there was an issue with that cabin’s egress lighting that was not considered to be worth fixing.
My right pilot was having a hard time securing their safety belt. They would not let me assist.
If a crew takes too long to get secured it’s possible some of the other cabins on the turntable will Flight Stop (all cabin movement stops) until they finally make it to Unload. There is some “B Show” material that is played when this happens, but it detracts from the Show and definitely impacts Efficiency.
We are strongly encouraged to avoid having that happen. There is an audio cue 30 seconds after the door opens for the cast member to wrap up, get out and dispatch the cabin. 90 seconds after that other cabins will Flight Stop and switch to the B show.
It felt to me as if this person had been messing with their belt for at least two minutes, so I grabbed it from them, buckled it, tugged on all the yellow tabs on the way out, and quickly dispatched the cabin.
It turns out that one of my gunners or engineers (not sure which one) had a toddler buckled in with them. That’s a major no-no. Everyone has to have their own seat and belt.
I was written up for another safety. I felt that I deserved it so I didn’t even ask for a union rep, I just signed the form.
About 3 1/2 weeks later I had just taken over Unload from another cast member, who had grabbed the trash can to go dump it on his way out. This was unusual so I was a little distracted when the next cabin came in.
I turned from looking after him and saw that the green “dispatch” button was already blinking and that the door to the cabin was closed. There is a condition, “Cabin Unavailable” where this will happen. So, without thinking I pressed the dispatch button, sending the cabin from Unload to Load.
It turned out that there was a crew in the cabin and there had been a door fault. I’d never seen a door fault where the door didn’t move at all, and since there was another possible explanation for what I saw I didn’t consider that possibility.
About this time the person working tower woke up, panicked and hit the Turntable Stop button, trapping the crew between unload and load. For some reason we couldn’t get the turntable to move, requiring that we do an evac. Luckily it was during pyro (fireworks) and only three of the seven cabins had crew in them.
This type of evac exposes guests to more danger than we like, we pull some portable stairs up to the cabin door, they walk down them, across the turntable and down some very steep stairs to ground level, then walk backstage back to the entrance of the attraction.
Everyone has their phones out taking pictures of the innards of the attraction. We try to discourage them, there are a lot of tripping hazards and they need to be watching their step, but I suspect there are lots of photos of the insides of various Disney attractions online if you look for them.
This time I requested a union rep to sit in while I was being interviewed and writing my report.
It turns out Falcon was notorious for being kind or a “safety writeup trap” at load and unload because the load and unload cast can’t see guests in the cabin. Every other attraction I can think of has open cars that load and unload can easily see into.
That, plus the fact that there is no door fault alarm at load or unload makes it almost inevitable that a cast member may dispatch a cabin with crew still in it from unload if there’s a door fault.
There is a "Cabin Ready” button inside the cabin that is easily accessible to the crew. The Dispatch button does not become active and start to blink unless Cabin Ready has been pushed. In this case the crew noticed the door didn’t open, saw a big blinking green button next to the door and pressed it, all while I was distracted by the previous cast member taking out the trash.
As far as I know there is no other attraction that puts controls that should only be available to cast within easy reach of guests.
Since there’s zero tolerance for safety infractions, and I had two within 30 days of each other, I was forced to take a 3 day unpaid suspension.
I have written elsewhere about my dislike of zero tolerance policies. They can lead to really ridiculous results. I may need to revisit that subject, but not today.
I filed a grievance.
IMHO if there is a door fault there should be an audible and visual alarm on the Unload and Load console. Currently the only alarm is in Tower, and the tower cast member needs to check an entry in a log on a computer screen to find out what the alarm tone means. There are several spare lights and an existing buzzer on the load and unload consoles that could be used as a door fault alarm.
Also, if there is a door fault at unload, the crews seat belts should stay locked until the fault is cleared. That way they won’t be wandering around the cabin pressing unauthorized buttons, and will be restrained if for some reason the cabin is dispatched to Load.
Even if the belts stay locked the left engineer could potentially press Cabin Ready, so there should be a cover over that button during ride operation. Unload can lift the cover to ready to cabin, and load will lower the cover after loading the crew and readying the cabin.
End Spoilers
I had a Falcon cast member tell me he heard they were planning on making at least some of those changes shortly before I left the company. I said, “I think that was me!” He replied, “I think so too.”
Maybe I’ll send them an invoice for a consulting fee. :)
This was in November 2021.
Almost a year[!] later in October 2022 I finally got to sit down with a union rep and the manager in charge of SWGE/Toontown Operations and he agreed to take the safety off my record and get me paid back for the three day suspension.
I now have no way to look at my record, but as of when I left at the end of October 2023 the Safety was still on my record card, and I had not been paid for the three day suspension.
Over the course of over a year I attempted to get an explanation as to why the safety was still on my record, and why I hadn’t been paid for the suspension. I made more than one appointment with the manager I’d talked to, but he was never available at the same time as a union rep, and I didn’t (don’t) trust him.
Once he came down from his office and found me in the middle of a shift. He trying to talk to me while I was operating a console in Rise of the Resistance. You can’t be distracted while at a console, so I asked if we could talk some other time.
BTW, you can be written up on a Safety for distracting a cast member at a console.
He said we could talk the next day, but wasn’t in his office at the appointed time.
As far as I’m concerned Disney owes me three days pay. I don’t expect to see it.
My record card is moot since I’m not planning to return. But it galls me that there’s still a safety infraction on there that I didn’t deserve.
I think Disney Management is way to big with way to many levels. I suspect that if they reduced their management headcount by about 50% and also required everyone working in management to work as a front-line cast member for 2 weeks, then one week a year, the company would do a lot better, and have a much happier cast.
If you’re claiming to be “The Happiest Place on Earth” it would be a good idea pay the folks interacting with your guests a living wage and treat them with respect.
Hopefully the current contract negotiations will help with the living wage part.
In my experience the vast majority of leads and managers are respectful of cast and competent in their jobs, with a few exceptions. But those exceptions need to be dealt with.
This got really long. I could probably cut some of the specifics of the door fault incident, but I don’t feel like it.
And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Disney owes me and every cast member who worked at an Anaheim Disney location between January 1, 2019 and October 25, 2023 Measure L back pay.
Or the fact that, in spite of record profits from their theme parks, Disney is trying to cheap out on wages in the current contract negotiations with Disneyland Master Services.
More on those issues in the future. Maybe.
With all that said, I look back on my Disney days with fondness. I told you I used to cosplay Star Wars for free:
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I hope!
It seems to me that Inclusion is implied by Courtesy, but I suspect some top manager with too much time on their hands came up with a Good Idea. Yea bureaucracy!
Requires special training and pays slightly more.