As far as the point system, you almost got it. As I remember you could not bring a doctor’s note to avoid the point. The doctor’s note came into play if you missed 5 or more days of work in a row. If you called out for two days in a row, you would only get one point, all the way up to five. After that, you needed a note. It was good in the sense that if you had a bad cold you wouldn’t be penalized for staying home and resting up, but I did know of cast members who would call out a day or two more than they needed to “not waste the point.” Generally, enough spares were scheduled to make this a non issue. I do recall a time I was sick when I called out one day, decided I was good enough to go in the next, and on the third day really wishing I would have called out on the second because my cold came back with a vengeance. As an aside, the first 6 months I was there I was sick all the time, and had to call out several days. I spoke to a coworker and he said that happens to everybody because of all the different germs, but then you would have a killer immune system. And since then I think I have only been sick once aside from some allergy stuff.
We were at Disney World in 2000 and our group was three women and three men waiting in line to get a photo with Ariel. For some reason, all the women left the line and that left us three men standing in line to have our photo taken with her.
Attendant: <to us> “Now remember, Ariel has really sensitive skin because she lives under the sea and isn’t accustomed to the sun.”
Me. “Oh, okay.” <after we have our photo taken and walked away> "What the hell? Did they think we were going to molest the Little Mermaid or something?
I guess there have been problems before but as the attendant didn’t warn anyone else I was a bit offended.
You have to look at from their point of view. Three guys to meet a scantily-clad girl? Better just to say ‘hands-off, please’ before there’s trouble.
I can understand the offense, but attendants probably have to do what they can to assure the comfort of both guests and performers. Profiling does serve a purpose sometimes.
I honestly don’t think this remark had anything to do with the fact that your group was all guys. Attendants (at least the ones I worked with) liked coming up with little phrases to try to enhance/personalize/randomize the experience for the guests, stuff like “Tigger’s feeling extra bouncy today, 'cause he just ate an entire cake!”. That’s part of the Disney way of doing things: try to make each and every guest have a unique experience, or at least feel like they’re having unique experiences. I guess one consequence of this is that some cast members just aren’t too quick on their feet or are simply not good with words, leading to utterances that make you go “Wait, what?”. This may have been an example of exactly that.
Thanks for a fascinating thread! I’ve learned a lot.
Wait… what? I don’t understand this.
I think it’s so when they are searching for a kid that’s missing, they don’t have the parents saying “He’s wearing the goofy shoes you can buy at that big store on Main Street” while everyone else is thinking “Yeah, him and 10,000 other kids here.”
More likely it’s so the snatcher can’t change the shoes. The parents will say, “he’s wearing red shoes with yellow stripes” but the kid is now wearing the goofy Main Street shoes.
I don’t know how this whole “they don’t sell shoes” rumor got started, but I knew my bullshit detector was calibrated correctly. Special K just confirmed that WDW merchandise stores do, in fact, sell shoes.
In fact, now that I think about it, I distinctly remember seeing Disney-themed crocs on sale at one of the little kiosks at EPCOT.
Also, if I were a parent at Disney World and my kid went missing, I could probably think of a few identifying characteristics that would be much more noticeable than what type of shoes s/he/it was wearing.
In another thread someone describes the following WDW scene:
My question is: what kind of injection did they give that dad!?
Maybe they offered to buy him some shoes.
I mean no disrespect to whoever originally posted that story, but I suspect that it was either fabricated or misremembered. I know that if I had ever seen a parent spanking a child or anything like that, it is highly unlikely that I would have done anything to stop it. It’s not my business or my problem, and any effort to make it my problem would have only caused trouble for me without solving anything. “Tigger gets into fist fight with abusive parent” is not a headline I would have ever intended to be associated with.
It figures that the only thing my company imitates about Disney is the attendance policy.
I went to the “soft opening” of the amusement park in the middle of the Mall of America, then called Knott’s Camp Snoopy. It was held before the mall was even open, back in 1992. We got to go because my dad, a bricklayer, had put in a few days’ work there when they were building the park. Not sure it was the experience of a lifetime, but it was pretty cool, and we got to ride all the rides for free and see the mall before anyone else we knew.
SO glad I found this thread. I start in Entertainment in January. A couple questions:
Did you get tossed around all four parks as well as character breakfasts, or were there certain parks you generally worked at more often than not?
If you do a character breakfast in the morning, is that generally all they schedule you for, or do they sometimes have you do more?
Let’s say you start work at 9 AM. What time would you head out (assuming you took the bus?)
Thanks so much!
Congrats! You’re in for an awesome adventure.
Did you get tossed around all four parks as well as character breakfasts, or were there certain parks you generally worked at more often than not?
Tigger appears at all four parks, so I had a fairly even distribution as to which parks I worked in. EPCOT was the least common for me, though I don’t really know why that was. Magic Kingdom was probably the most common since there are so many Tigger shifts that need to be filled, especially during the hot season: 3 per day at Pooh’s Playground, 4 per day at Crystal Palace, plus 1 spare.
As for character breakfasts, I never worked one. To be honest, I don’t even know which characters do character breakfasts. I’m not nearly as big a Disney freak as the guests are 
But the short answer: yes, you will probably get tossed around quite a bit.
Let’s say you start work at 9 AM. What time would you head out (assuming you took the bus?)
Let’s see here, if the in time is at 9 AM, then the earliest you can clock in is 8:45. I would usually try to get the bus that arrives at or just before that time just to be on the safe side. I seem to remember the bus taking about half an hour to get to the parks, depending on which one you were going to and which apartment complex you live in. So yeah, for a 9 AM shift, I probably would have left at around 8:15 or so. All CPs get free copies of the bus schedule, so it’s really easy to plan your routine.
Thanks so much for your openness and answers! You easily the best resource I’ve found on my extensive search for answers regarding all this.
One other question, though: when you got to casting on that first day, what did they tell you was your job assignment? I know some positions will assign you to a specific section of a park, but that’s obviously not applicable for Entertainment.
Thanks again!
Happy to help, mate! I have fuzzy recollections of going to casting and seeing everyone get booklets with stickers on the front, where the stickers listed the cast member’s role, location, and probably some other bits of data I ignored. If I remember correctly, mine listed “Character Performer - Tigger” for the role and “Global” for the location.
Also, I’m curious: why did you audition? Was it a life-long dream to become a Disney prince(ss), or is this just a pleasant diversion?
I’ve always wanted to work at WDW, specifically in a performance capacity. I’ll be finishing college while there (one more online class and I should be done!) and have no SOLID post-grad plans, so I figure I can just work on climbing my way up the ladder after the CP. Since they’re big on promoting from inside I like to think I’ll eventually be able to nab a real job at Disney that I can make a comfortable living off of. Granted, if that route involved a detour singing with the Voices of Liberty or performing in the Nemo musical I wouldn’t complain… Unfortunately, I think I’m too tall for any face characters, I’m 6’3" or 6’4" or so.
Another question, if you could: Is the friend of Sweetums in Muppet-Vision an Entertainment role or an Attractions role?
I don’t know for sure, but I can guess with 95% confidence that it’s an Entertainment role. An Entertainment cast member of the appropriate height would only require training in the mouth control system and the two or three lines that Sweetums “speaks”. An Attractions cast member would have to be trained from the ground up in character performing, which just wouldn’t be logical or cost-effective.
The other thing to consider is the extent to which WDW multi-purposes its Entertainment cast members. Character performers, parade performers, float drivers, van drivers, trainers (as in training you how to perform, not physical therapists), and warm-up exercise leaders are all the same people.