Binderama60for60

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I could write more than 60 blog posts about just one topic: Walt Disney. And just as many about Walt Disney World.

As I am planning out this post just now (in July), I am feeling JAZZED! The memories overwhelm. Originally I intended to do this as single post but the thing was getting to be a long, fun read and a real scroll roller. Part Two drops November 18. IYKYK.

I was a fan of Walt Disney from my earliest days. The movies and TV shows amazed me. Disneyland astounded me. Walt Disney World changed me. Changed my life. These memories still bring joy to my core. Odd though: I rarely visit the parks anymore and I don’t think I’ve seen an actual Disney movie in a theater since the re-release of “Fantasia” many moons ago. I fell asleep, again, as I’d done every time I tried to watch it.

While WDW offers its customers and guests amazing experiences, what it gives to engaged employees is so much more. The impact of Walt and WDW has played a massive role in my personal and professional life, informing and inspiring my creative pursuits for my entire career. And I only worked there for three years.

I recall my experiences on the daily. All manner of customer service, experiential design and storytelling, , management, people movement, curiosity, corporate organization, seizing opportunities, networking and lifelong friendships. Some of the peeps I worked with went far with the company, like legendarily. A few are doing well in publishing and on the speaking circuit talking leadership and service, others are still bringing the Disney magic to the millions on the front lines. And many, like me, cherish the gift of Disney early in our career.

We’ll get to all that. For now, let’s go back to the beginning.

The First Epiphany

Walt Disney World opened on October 1, 1971, 54 years ago today. My Family visited in the spring of 1972, just a few months later. I was six or seven. By this time, I was well aware of the Disney brand, having enjoyed movies like “Mary Poppins,” “Pinocchio,” “Bedknobs….” “Herbie…’” and all the rest. I likely screened them in a theater back then, or they might air on Disney’s weekly Sunday night series, appointment viewing in our home. Plus, I’d been to Disneyland a few years before so I thought I had a pretty good line on what WDW was all about. I had no idea.

Months before, Mom had requested, received, filled out and returned our reservation paperwork, along with a check. She booked us and our trailer into Fort Wilderness and lined us up with tickets (books of tickets) to the Magic Kingdom. Dad drove us 900 miles south on 1-95, pulling the trailer and arriving at the most beautiful campground and campsite we’d ever seen, like something out of the movies.

It might have been the first morning that we walked through the misty stillness towards the boat launch to the Magic Kingdom. I looked around and thought, I want to live here one day. There was something in the air. Not sure if it was landscape of the place or the sight of other families revving up for excitement or the vibes I was getting from my Parents. Most certainly it was just in my imagination, but my mind set a course.

Fast-forward 14 years and I was sitting in an office building a few miles away along the I-4 planning for the 15th birthday of the place. In a matter of a few years I learned multiples of lessons and forged memories and stories, far more densely than in any other period in my life. It was a good time and wonderful place to turn 20.

Again, I am getting ahead of myself; a lot happened in the interim.

Mom Does Disney

The Family visited WDW in the 70s and 80s nearly every other year around Christmastime, the absolute peak high season. We always stayed at Fort Wilderness. The place was special, and “Mickey” left a big candy cane and card on our trailer steps Christmas morning.

Back then, WDW had one park and a few resorts. A simpler, more focused time. While Dad was tactical, given his stint in the Navy and his career as editor-in-chief of Army Magazine, Mom was the strategic savant. DDE would have been proud.

• Up before dawn
• Hearty breakfast at the trailer
• Walk to the boat launch to travel to the Magic Kingdom
• Be there for the rope drop and then run like heck
• Hit a few of the majors: Space Mountain, Small World, Hall of Presidents, Jungle Cruise. Experts will note we navigated the park using the counter-clockwise route. Shrewd
• Leave the park for lunch and then go swimming (after an hour of digestion) at the Contemporary or Polynesian, and a few years later, River Country
• Back to the trailer to regroup and change before returning to the park for some of the lesser rides, nighttime parades and fireworks
• Or we might stay at Fort Wilderness, shop for treats at one of the Trading Posts (I can still smell the sweet, smoky goodness of those places) and stay out for the evening bonfire, movie and character visits
• The best nights ended at the Trail’s End with make-your-own-pizzas for me and Mike and pitchers of beer for the Folks. Raucous piano player, even a little risqué. Hubba hubba.
• Walk back to the trailer which was visible from afar for all the lights we festooned, like a pinball machine, and drift off to fantasy land
• Repeat

Mom and Dad would skip the park on Christmas Day when the place was teeming. Years later I worked the morning shift on Main Street for the televised Christmas Day parade. Sheer madness; an old guy raised a fist at me at 7AM. tried to spit on me. The Folks were right.

Doug Does Disney

It’s my junior year in college. I see a sign for WDW internships outside the student union. A no brainer. I interview with Duncan Dixon, who would reappear in my life a few times in the coming years. And I get the gig. Better yet, I get a full 16 hours of college credit for the semester. Say what you will about a communications major but…well, it worked.

In January 1986, I roadtripped 900 miles to Florida in my late-model Toyota Celica with some clothes, a lot of Coke and cigarettes, and a tennis racket. I checked into Snow White Village. It’s a trailer park in Kissimmee, operated by Disney, for the sole purpose of housing participants in MKCP, the Magic Kingdom College Program. It wasn’t quite like living at Fort Wilderness as I had imagined years earlier, but there were no adults either. Just a few hundred teenagers spending an entire spring in Florida. It was like college but with more booze and less clothing, and only one class each week. Each trailer housed eight of us, with four bedrooms, a kitchen and two bathrooms. Trailer 33, near the laundromat and pay phones. Rent came out of our paychecks.

A little primer on my Disney journey before we continue: I interned in Main Street operations, then landed a nice five-month gig planning for the WDW 15th anniversary. I ran out another semester away from college working in Guest Relations in City Hall. Then I helped to establish a new event office for Mickey’s 60th birthday. Finally, I landed a coveted hourly job as a coordinator in Public Relations. All in three years, while also going back to Virginia for a semester or two of school. Oh, and those two events I mentioned just now–the 15th and 60th– they’re still two of my career highlights, and I hadn’t evened turned 23 yet.

Mickey’s Mafia

Main Street USA operations was my post for the MKCP stint.

A couple of very cool things about this role:

• It’s at the center of everything in the park, where everyone has to pass at least twice a day. It’s got a perfectly framed view of Cinderella Castle, the main draw for the eyes and a prime photo opportunity. It’s where the parades start or finish, where the fireworks are best viewed, where media and celebrity moments and big events happen. It’s also where you can get your hair cut (with the Dapper Dans hanging out between shows) and do your banking before or after your shift.
• The wardrobe most days was a dark blue three-piece suit, skinny black tie and a conductor’s hat. Polyester yes, but not the weird space-age, skipper or sailor cosplay togs. (No offense.) On hot, sweaty days we could lose the blazer and roll up the sleeves, like something out of a beefcake calendar. And when you drove the fire engine, you got to wear a cool red blouse with brass buttons. So boss. A little tight on me now.

Okay, there’s more.

• Back then it was an all-male crew, save for a lead named Barb. It was a Disney HR loophole wherein they claimed employees are actually cast members, playing roles. The roles we played as a bus driver and train conductor in Walt’s version of an early 20th century town was men’s work. (That has since changed.) Funny, though: we weren’t allowed to have facial hair or to smoke or swear or spit on the job, like in the old days.
• I’m not dissing all the other roles in the park, but well, I guess I’m just saying that ours was the best. Don’t hate the playa.

My First Day: Revelations

After a day of orientation, called Traditions, at Disney University, I had a 7 AM shift in the park. The office was under the train station in Town Square, shared with the boys who made the trains run on time. Congenial but masculine. Cool men wearing cool suits and hats and train engineer overalls. (Looking at you, John Rogers.) It was dubbed the bomb shelter for all the noise–of trains rolling overhead and of guests all around, starting and finishing their day.

My first assignment that morning was to man the rope line just south of the hub, the one Mom had us primed for years earlier. It was cold and barely light yet; guests were not yet in the park. As I learned was not unusual, a swan from the Castle moat approached our group aggressively. It focused its wrath on one of my colleagues–Dave Contaxis. I was told that Dave and the swan had a long-running feud. As it charged at him, honking madly, Dave took off his conductor’s hat and swatted at it, landing a few blows. I was beginning to see Disney behind the curtain, and it was awesome. Btw, detente was established before guests reached our post. I opened the Magic Kingdom for my first time.

Five hours later, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded within view of the park. I was on my lunch break in the tunnel when I saw people rushing toward the televisions. The American flag on Main Street was lowered to half mast (as is Disney’s policy). All afternoon, guests approached and inquired; I’d been given no training for how to respond.

On my first day, the curtain had been pulled back and the real world had exploded into my Disney bubble. I didn’t know how to react in proper Disney fashion. No one did.

S.O.P.

I wish I still had a copy of the thick looseleaf notebook–Standard Operating Procedures–that contained almost every detail of my role in Main Street operations. I can tell you this: there was nothing in there about combatting angry swans or rockets exploding. I was learning on the fly.

Here’s how things went down on Main Street USA back in the mid-80s, including some editorializing.

Buses, jitneys and cars

If you were on the early shift, you’d spend a lot of it driving up and down Main Street, from Town Square to the Castle and back. We had a spiel that we could embellish, but not as drastically as those guys in the safari togs over on the Jungle Cruise. I’d never driven a manual transmission but I learned fast. Gotta say, trying to pilot the double decker bus through the oblivious crowds wandering hither and yon, while spieling and clutching and shifting, was scary-making. Give me the fire engine any day.

Then, natch, one day I ran out of gas. In the middle of Main Street USA, with a car full of guests. Word got to my supe Barb; she rescued me and steered while I pushed. She insisted we go all the way (uphill) to the Castle and then back down, rather than a simple U-turn. Extended humiliation and sweat, but I sure learned where the gas station was after that. Btw, Joe Schott is now a Disney muckety muck, having been GM and President of parks all over the world.

Then there was The Disney Story and Arcade

The former was simple: walk the museum and answer questions about Walt, and twice an hour give a spiel before and after the film. Great attraction that’s been replaced. The Arcade was hellish: you sat in a cage and changed bills for coins for a bunch of amped-up little brats whose parents abandoned them there to just make noise. There was an older guy, Bill, who loved that gig. He’d trade anytime, as long as you relieved him for a smoke every hour or so.

Speaking of smoking. Obviously you were not permitted to light up on the job. Until you got backstage. Amazing how fast you could get a cigarette from your pocket to your mouth, light it and take a good long drag. Alice in Wonderland was expert.

Guest relations

As I noted, Main Street is the first and last area that guests traverse inside the park. So we spent a lot of time helping them understand how to navigate the place (clockwise or counterclockwise) and how to exit and find their way home. We actually have a little competition when walking the length of Main Street, akin to Name That Tune: “I Can Walk That Street in XX Questions.” Can you make it back to the bomb shelter and answer only eight questions, or five, or three. The usual queries were:

• Can I sit here? Answer: Probably a no.
• What time is the 3:00 parade? Answer: Really? 3:00.
• Where is the Magic Kingdom? Answer: Here, you’re in it. This whole place is the Magic Kingdom. People often confused the Castle with the Kingdom. I had a friend who wore one of the weird outfits–Haunted Mansion host–who claimed that, when a guest would not accept that Cinderella Castle was not actually the Magic Kingdom, he directed them to head to the Castle, turn down Main Street and then exit the park, catch the monorail back to the parking lot, disembark, go down the ramp and then follow signs for the Magic Kingdom. Which, of course, would put them back on the monorail and to the place they had departed like two hours ago. I want to believe that.

Crowd control

This was central to the Main Street Ops S.O.P. most afternoons and into the night. There were shows at the Castle a few times a day. The 3:00 parade started in Frontierland then headed to the Castle and down to Town Square. At 3:00. And in peak season, the nighttime Electrical Light Parade (ELP) went north at 9:00 and south at 11:00. There were other special events and staged happenings to protect as well.

Here’s what you learn, in short order.

• Rope. Rope is key to crowd control. As my colleague Gary McKechnie used to proclaim to guests as we tried to make way: “We’ve got rope here and we’re not afraid to use it!” Here’s the thing: you’ve got to splice rope to ensure it’s taut. No limp, saggy ropes on our watch. The ropes at Disney are made of plastic. So to splice together two pieces of rope, you use a lighter to cauterize one end and then shove it into the other end, which is slightly unspooled. Then you melt them together. Strange how satisfying that is to me as I write this. Wish I had some. Off to Lowe’s.
• Stanchions. These are the heavy, ornate pillars to which we’d connect our taut ropes to cordon off areas and throughways. Too heavy to carry, so we rolled them. To do so, you palm the top of it–it’s an orb–then tilt it about 45 degrees and spin it forward. It seemed impossible at first but within a few weeks, I could roll one with ease, and then a bit later, two at a time.
• Cheese. In order for the parade floats to navigate Main Street, the horse trolley tracks must be filled in at Center Street on the north side of Town Square. An hour before each parade, we’d haul into the street about a dozen long strands of rubber called cheese, so-called for their yellow color. They weren’t that yellow, though, because they were caked in years of horse manure and urine. Pretty gross, but then we’d all get a quick break and go to the cafeteria.
• Once secured, Main Street USA is a picture worth framing: thousands of people lining it and not a soul loitering between the curbs from the Castle and Town Square. Except for Mickey’s Mafia, keeping the peace.
• Crosswalks. No one is showing up at 3:01 and thinking they’re parking that stroller in an area roped off, tautly, for emergencies. Stand back, and cross the street when I say you can cross the street. No lingering, no lollygagging. Get moving or get out.
• Backstage. To get the parade floats and performers from the entertainment warehouse to the gates entailed some traffic control. One of us would stand guard at the train tracks behind the Jungle Cruise, signaling for floats to pause when a train was coming through. On the other end, at the conclusion of the parade, we’d signal for backstage car traffic to yield to the floats heading back to the warehouse for the night.
• Back on Main Street, when the last float passes, the ropes come down, meticulously. No one gets in front of the rope. Keep it taut as you spool it on your shoulder, walking at the pace of the float until you reach the next stanchion where a comrade begins their own rope spooling. Precision!
• Trust me, that ELP soundtrack is addicting. You will never, ever, EVER get it out of your head. Do NOT click on that link above. I warned you. Crap, I’m hooked.

Most important

Much of the crew would be released at 12:15 AM during the summer, after the fireworks and last ELP. But a few would get off around 11. Their assignment: Grab a $7 case of Busch beer at 7-11 and meet us back at the place. Some things are just sacrosanct.

Fun side story: I think it was the only New Years Eve I worked on Main Street. As the fireworks were ending and 50,000+ guests were exiting the park after midnight, we got the call. I don’t remember how we got that call; it might have been like the bat signal in the sky. Anyway, we all were told to race out of the park and report to a stretch of road where trams were ferrying guests back to the parking lot. The sprinklers along the road had come on, spraying ice cold water on guests as they passed through on a chilly night. I, and my brothers, were told to remove our hats and place them atop one of the many sprinklers. And then to stand on those hats and those sprinklers. Water gushed up to our knees, our waists and higher. But we stood there and waved at guests exiting the park after a helluva day. You wanna talk about customer service and Disney magic? Right there!

And the end of the day

When the night shift ended, most folks would head backstage to the tunnel and walk underground back to wardrobe and the bus back to the employee parking lot. As often as I could, I would walk up Main Street USA all by myself. The lights still twinkling, the Castle still radiant, the street silent. All of the magic of the Magic Kingdom just for me.

And a coupla’ cold beers waiting at the crib.

Name dropping for this post:

Duncan Dixon, Janis Petrie, Matt Palmer, Steve Watson, Dave Contaxis, John Rogers, Jim McPhee, Eric Hartness, Jeff Bond, Bill Brett, Allison Swanson, Jake Poore, Tom Eberts, Brad Moore, Paul Buss, Ken Kreafle, Joe Schott, Gary McKechnie, Jennifer Campbell, Mike Donnelly, Chuck Simikian, Robert Teinowitz, Dennis Snow. There are likely dozens of omissions here, but if they’re not my friends on Facebook, they’ll never know.

Next time

We’re just getting started! The next 60|60 Disney drops on November 18, including:

• The 15th Anniversary office
• Guest Relations
• GM, ahem
• Mickey’s 60th Birthday office
• Public Relations
• Roommates, roommates and more roommates, and some play dates
• Onward

More names to drop…

Jody and John Dryer. Kristine and Kyle. Plus more Janis, Eric, Ken, Paul and Brad, Gary, Matt, Steve, Fletch, Brett, Jennifer, Chuck, Donnelly, and lots more.

There’s an expanded cast being introduced in the next post. With names like Bob and Booger and Kitty.