Cast Member Articles
As Disney Cast Members we all have stories to tell. This is a collection of stories written by and for Disney Cast Members about being Disney Cast Members. They are listed below in no particular order, please enjoy them and feel free to leave your comments.
If you wish to submit your stories please drop a line to members @ afterthemouse.com and we’ll talk.
Enjoy…
- A life After the Mouse.
- A wish I never made, come true.
- Best Job In Disneyland - Hit It Skip!
- Cast Member on tour.
- Disney - Guest Safety In The Post 9/11 World
- Eight Disney Customer Service rules.
- Guests - you have got to love them.
- Leaving Disney - The College Program Story
- My Ears Were Removed - The 2009 Layoffs.
- Opening Crew ’92
- Paris to Orlando
- People Hate Disney?
- The Best Job in Disneyland Barr None
- The Disney Name Tag-The Swiss Army Knife Of Customer Service
Almost five years to the day since I cut my ID in half and handed in my second best name tag I put pen to paper about my life After the Mouse. Working for Disney is undoubtedly special, there is a feeling you only get from being a part of the Disney Cast Member family. What comes After the Mouse is the real challenge. In this article I intend to look back at my own journey since working in the Parks and Resorts and what legacy has Disney left me.
It had never been a lifelong dream of mine to work at Disney World. Honestly, from the time I fist remember visiting the park in 1982, it simply never occurred to me that just anyone could work there... They weren’t just employees at a job, they were Cast Members - part of the magic. I never thought that would one day be me.
Out of all the jobs sought after at the Disneyland Parks, the role of being a Jungle Cruise Skipper is one of the most desired. A few years ago the OC Register did an opinion poll with the local readers to see what their dream Disney jobs were. The results of poll showed being an Imagineer was the most desired. Immediately below that was the roll of a Jungle Cruise Skipper. Now who wouldn't want to get paid to go around in circles and say some of the puniest jokes around?
Possibly one of the most demanding and high profile of jobs in the theme parks is that of the VIP Hosts. If your the Cast Member taking a sporting hero or a film star around the Magic Kingdom then in the eyes of the world you must be a step apart.
Theme parks make a big part of their business out of scaring people with abandoned hotel elevator drops, high speed roller coasters, haunted houses and all manner of thrills and spills. But people feeling genuinely scared of going to a public place like a Theme Park is a major worry for people like Disney. One that they have worked hard to counter.
Undoubtedly Disney is one of the foremost names in the world of customer service. Hear are a few I learned a lot from in my years with the Mouse!
Guests - you have got to love them, really you have. They love the Mouse, they happily spend money and Disney then pays our wages from that money. As I said you have to love them. 99% of those Guests come and go merrily and we as Cast Members look after them without really having to think too hard about it - it comes naturally. It is the other one percent I really love though.
I am proud to introduce a new contributor to After the Mouse.com. Amanda Kelley. Having read Amanda’s forum post how to cope with the separation from Disney I encouraged her to give us her story of what having been a College Program Cast Member meant to her. Please read on...
To leave Disney is one thing, to have Disney leave you is quite another. In March 2009, the Orlando Sentinel’s Jason Garcia announced the news Cast Members at Walt Disney World had dreaded.
The opening of any Attraction, Resort, or Them Park – even an envelope – with the Disney name on it is an event. In 1992 I was a part of the biggest event going, the opening of EuroDisney. For the sake of posterity I am trying to record the events as I remember them. Bear in mind that this is written with a scary 17 year delay so please excuse any errors or omissions.
After the Mouse member Kay Mitchell has submitted this, our first true contribution to the site. Like Myself Kay had worked in the early days of EuroDisney but Kay then went on to work at Walt Disney World. This is her account of here experiences in Florida.
Hate is a strong word with a powerful meaning, so why do so many people hate Disney? I loved my time with the Mouse. Okay, like some parents of young children I do have issues with Disney’s commercialism, my son loves a trip around the Disney Store, my wallet is perhaps not as keen - but on the whole I don’t think of Disney as the Evil empire. Which is possibly the reason I find so much of the research I did for this post so fascinating.
There are a couple of generations of English boys who grew up wanting to be Engine drivers. I think it had a lot to do with Dr Beaching’s decimation of British Rail in the 1960’s. My father for one remembers the last days of main line steam engines, and always had a hankering to drive one. I on the other hand never saw a live steam train on the rails until I went to work for Disney.
When Walt Disney made each of his Cast Members identifiable with a badge he revolutionized customer service at a stroke. The early badges were heavy, made of brass and didn’t even have the Cast Members name on them - just their ID numbers - as name tags went they were pretty useless, not even technically living up to the name but when five years later names were added they were the start of something big.
