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Looking the part

That’s not the only inconvenience during the mundane part of the early morning hours. Disney’s specific theming throughout their parks requires exact costumes for virtually every attraction, store, and restaurant. Cast members don’t always work the same job, either. Disney believes in cross-training their employees. So, workers can’t very well stock up on the outfits they’ll wear for at their job. It’s not like pants suits and jackets are acceptable outerwear for Disney employees. Instead, they need costumes.

Getting a costume at a Disney theme park is kind of an ordeal. At Walt Disney World, cast members head to an innocuous building that I’ve previously described as “a unique combination of library, clothing store, and laundry service.” Here, Disney houses thousands of costumes for the various themed areas of their four gates. Once employees find out where they’ll work that day, they check out the appropriate outfit so that they can look the part while performing their job.

This process isn’t always smooth. Sometimes, a person can’t make it to work, causing reshuffling of the schedules of other workers. When that happens, a cast member might have to change to a different outfit. That means another trip over to the costume building, which comes with a round-trip bus ride. It’s this sort of aggravation that can set back morning preparations dramatically. Cast members only have a fixed amount of time before the gates open. Every second counts in readying the park for theme park tourists.

Starting the work day

Amazingly, none of the travel aggravation or costume acquisition is really a part of the work day, at least not when cast members describe it. They list those events as the preludes to the break of dawn routine performed while they’re hidden away from the world. To a Disney cast member, the morning doesn’t really begin until they start to work on their checklist.

As you might imagine, Disney’s rules and standards are restrictive but savvy. There’s not a lot of flexibility in how to perform the tasks on the checklist, although the corporation heartily encourages its cast members to suggest modifications and improvements whenever possible. A single good idea can save the company a lot of money. Streamlining the process of opening the park means fewer man-hours of salary. For a company with a dozen different parks in operation (two at Disneyland, four at Walt Disney World, two at Disneyland Paris, two at Tokyo Disneyland, and one each at Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland), a time savings as simple as 20 minutes daily adds up to 1,460 hours across the parks over the course of a year. Finding several ways to shorten the opening literally pays for several people’s salaries each year. As you can see, Disney does have a vested interest in improving their procedures.

Still, until a change gets authorized by a higher power at Disney, cast members have to follow all the steps listed on their checklist. Stridently.

The rules vary from section to section, and that circles back to the costuming discussion above. Since Disney cross-trains cast members, their job is feasibly different each morning. An assignment for a ride attraction is different than opening a store or restaurant. Each checklist is specific to the duties of the position rather than for the cast member performing the designated assignments. Disney has handled their core business this way for several generations now, and they’ve perfected the system.

When a cast member arrives for work, they clock in like any other hourly employee. Then, they learn what their position is for the day. Their pre-opening job requirements aren’t the same as what they’ll do once the gates fly open and thousands of theme park tourists rush in. So, the start of the day isn’t quite the same. It’s no different than your early morning routine of showing up for work, checking your emails, voicemails, texts, and interoffice communications before beginning your job duties in earnest.

As far as assignments go, a great deal of variation exists depending on where the cast member’s job site is. For example, a cast member at Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters or Space Ranger Spin will handle a defined part of the attraction. It could be the FastPass section, the Merge Point (where regular riders and FastPass holders form into a single line, the boarding area, the unloading region, or greeter among others.

While what the worker does during the rest of the day isn’t the same, that role is the basis for early morning duties. The cast member has to make certain that their station is clean and free of anything that could cause injury such as wet spots from spills.

Safety first

Each moving part of a Disney attraction is under constant scrutiny. The company famously employs monitoring software to critique the functionality of its many complex machines. They deem anything operating at less than 99 percent efficiency as in need of maintenance, and some Audio-Animatronics (AAs) have hundreds of individual checks in place. A human can’t be that critical of their systems, but they still have basic tasks on the checklist. In fact, some of the checklists are 20 pages or more.

For starters, any debris in the path of an attraction is a huge no-no. A cast member must walk the portion of their attraction to ensure that nothing is visible that could block a part of the machinery, leading to a potentially cataclysmic breakdown. They also have to ride in the vehicle the same way that a guest would. That way, they can verify that all phases of the attraction are clear and ready for a full day of park operations. In the Astroblasters scenario, that means firing the lasers the way that a park guest would, verifying that the ride doesn’t have any unusual hiccups like unexpected bumps or sluggish movement, and that the loading/unloading process is flawless.

Yes, cast members are sometimes paid to ride Disney attractions. That may sound like many people’s dream job. The experience is quite different when the safety of others is at stake, though. Missing a single flaw with the system can lead to an embarrassing shutdown during operating hours…or worse. Injuries at Disney theme parks are few and far between. They do happen, though. A single miscalculation during the pre-opening safety check could lead to a news story. That’s exactly why Disney has such an explicit list of items for their workers to verify before they open a ride for the morning. If you ever rush to an attraction at rope drop only to discover that it’s not ready yet, it likely failed a major safety update. Disney correctly believes that it’s better to be safe than sorry.

What happens when a cast member notices something untoward with one of the systems in place? Disney rules require that they report their concern to their immediate superior. By “coordinating with the leads to fix the issue,” most minor problems get cleaned up almost immediately. When something more serious is in play, the leads then pass along the information to their boss, and a determination is made about how to proceed.

All of this sounds serious; don’t stress about it. Most of the “issues” are minor in nature. A loading mechanism may not work right. A boat might get stuck. A laser might not fire correctly. For most attractions at Walt Disney World, anything that doesn’t involve machinery isn’t a big deal. If the ride system on Buzz Lightyear isn’t running right, that’s a much larger concern. Vehicles in motion that are misbehaving place riders in jeopardy. The same is true of basically anything large in size or attached to anything large in size.

When Disney cast members relayed their stories about issues that shut down attractions, very few of them would scare the bejeezus out of you. Most are along the lines of when the coffee machine at work is broken. Everyone feels inconvenienced, but it’s a momentary setback. As an example, if the laser isn’t working on Buzz Lightyear, someone’s score is wrong. Sure, that lessens the enjoyment of the attraction. Nobody gets hurt, though. When the seat belts don’t work or the attraction suddenly stops or both, the rider’s safety is at risk. I cannot stress enough how much the Disney early morning checklist is predicated upon the welfare of park guests.

 
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