Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations by Annie Salisbury Read Free Book Online Page B

wandered off, and 20 minutes later we found him asleep in a hallway because the class had completely wiped him out.
    That was the perfect way to describe this week-long training: it tired us out. And it was still only just the beginning.

9
    For every role at Disney, there are all sorts of little facets built into it. There are a hundred different things anyone needs to know before they can start in their actual role, and sometimes there are mini-roles built into bigger roles. Guest Relations had one of these mini-roles, but I didn’t realize it at the time. When I showed up for my first day of true Guest Relations training, I learned that I first needed to be trained as a “Celebrate Greeter”.
    What the hell is a Celebrate Greeter? It’s OK if you haven’t heard of this position. I hadn’t either. You will probably never hear of it again, seeing as how I was one of the last cast members to learn the position, and I was one of the cast members working it on the day it officially shut down. If this role ever makes its way back to Magic Kingdom, something will have gone horribly wrong.
    Though you might not have heard of Celebrate Greeters before, you’ve of course heard of its predecessor: the Year of a Million Dreams. It was the promotional theme for the 2007–2008, and it’s the year that the Dream Suite, aka Cinderella’s Suite, in the Castle first opened. You probably went to Disney World that year and left upset that you never encountered one of these “dream” gifts, like 42 years in the Disney Vacation Club or a 14-night Mediterranean cruise. I never got one of them, either.
    The Year of A Million Dreams was made up of a “dream squad”. They were cast members who wore blue shirts and white vests and walked around the park and made dreams come true. Really; that was their job. They handed out these dreams, and when they weren’t handing out dreams, they did little magical moments for guests, like free ice cream and FastPasses and balloons. Little things like that.
    The Year of A Million Dreams ended in 2008, and so did the Dream Squad. But, the VP of Magic Kingdom thought it was such a great idea, he wanted to keep it going in his park. He turned to Guest Relations, and the Dream Squad soon became Celebrate Greeters.
    I honestly didn’t even realize this was a thing. When I showed up on day one of Guest Relations training, I was given the usual red plaid vest, but I was also instructed to pick out a pair of dark blue pants and a white Oxford shirt with a big golden G on it — G for Guest Relations, obviously. I didn’t understand why I was picking out this costume, but I was so excited and scared at the same time, I didn’t think about it. I just changed into this foreign white GR ensemble, no questions asked.
    From there, I met a woman named Kate. She was going to be my Guest Relations trainer. Oddly enough, I knew Kate. While I had never worked with her before, five years prior I had taken a Keys to the Kingdom tour, and she had been the tour guide. I was so excited and nervous about starting in Guest Relations that I blurted this out the moment I met her.
    “Kate! I took a tour with you awhile ago, the Keys to the Kingdom tour! It was amazing, I loved it!” I was so excited; I’m surprised I didn’t try to hug her.
    “Oh, you did? Cool,” Kate said, without any sense of emotion in her voice. This is not how she came across in the tour five years ago. Five years ago she was a lively animated woman who talked in all sorts of different voices and spoke at length about her time as a character in Magic Kingdom. This woman, while the same, was completely different. The real version of Kate was mean. The real version of Kate was an old woman who had been scorned by the Disney Company time and time again, and felt entitled to the place, and walked around like she owned everything. She was rude, snide, and would throw you under the proverbial parade float if she needed to. I didn’t know these things