Now that I am officially unemployed (I’ve been out of work since February 1st, but I had to wait for paperwork and stuff), I thought it would be nice to talk about some of my favorite memories from this job. The photo above is from one of my favorite work events I ever went to.
I spent the better part of the last five years working for a company I still won’t name. I’ve worked in virtually every major hotel brand in Orlando in forty-two different locations. (Yes, I went back through my schedules and counted.) Sometimes I would work five days a week in the same place, and sometimes I would work five different hotels in five days. As I frequently told guests, “I know everything there is to know about theme parks, I know nothing about this hotel.” In 2019, I was named person of the year for my team.
Whether I was at Disney, Universal, or this job, my favorite part of work has always been good guest interactions. I love talking to a nice family and feeling like I made a difference in their day. That’s the secret most guests don’t realize. If you’re nice to us, if you treat us like people, we remember you. (If you’re a jerk you just get made fun of in the breakroom.)
I don’t know how many of them remember me, but I like to think some of them do.
I spent the last five years in sales. If you know enough about the infrastructure of the theme park industry in Orlando, you can probably put two and two together about where I worked, but I’m not going to get any more specific than that. Some of my favorite stories are about interactions with guests I sold things to, but a lot of them are about interactions with people I just gave advice to. Whether you needed to buy anything or not, I’d rather you get good advice from me and enjoy your vacation than listen to someone else who was going to give you bad advice.
These stories aren’t in any particular order, except the one I saved for last.
A family of four was checking in to my favorite hotel. They had all their tickets, they just had questions. The daughter was carrying a Brightheart Raccoon. For those who are unfamiliar, Brightheart Raccoon is a Care Bear Cousin. He is a purple raccoon with a heart-shaped lightbulb on his stomach.
“I like your Brightheart Raccoon.” I said, and the little girl blushed, but no one continued the conversation or seemed to care that I knew what it was. I told them anyway.
“When I was little, my grandfather would buy me tons of stuffed animals, including a Brightheart Raccoon. My mom thought it was kind of a weird stuffed animal, so she stuck it in the attic. One day she sat down to see what I was watching, and I had just discovered the Care Bears cartoon. She recognized Brightheart and got him out of the attic. The first time I ever saw the show, I already had one of the stuffed animals. Now I have a cat named Brightheart.”
The little girl was still too shy to really react, but the mom was so excited.
“What are the odds? How many people work here that we found the one person that would recognize it?”
She went on to tell me since they don’t make Care Bears Valentines anymore, she’d had to order some off Etsy because that was all her daughter wanted to take to school. I don’t remember anything else we talked about, but watching that little girl head off for her vacation hugging her Brightheart made me so happy. I never saw them the rest of their stay.
Over Christmas week 2019, it so happened that I was closing on 12/23, had a fifteen-hour shift on 12/24, and opened Christmas Day at my favorite hotel. This was probably the most memorable holiday I ever had at work, because it was the only time I saw the same guests over multiple days, instead of jumping from one location to another.
On 12/23, I already had my backpack on and was two minutes from clocking out when a guest came up to ask what they should do at Magic Kingdom the next day.
“I wish you’d caught me ten minutes ago!” I laughed, and then did my best to give him a rundown of what to do and what to skip with a six-year-old before I had to head home. He came back to thank me the next day and asked me the same question, but this time for SeaWorld. Thankfully he was earlier the second time, and I stressed if nothing else to make sure to see Pets Ahoy at SeaWorld. I know it’s weird to say go to SeaWorld to see dogs and cats, but it’s something I always made a point of telling people. Not only is it my favorite show, when we took Nana to Disney for three days and SeaWorld for a couple hours in summer 2019, she said Pets Ahoy was her favorite part of the whole trip.
Well, the next night, the same guest came back, this time with his wife and daughter in tow.
“Who do we tell how awesome you are?” The wife asked. They told me how they’d just had the best two days and Pets Ahoy had been their favorite part. The little girl was clutching a GIANT stuffed dolphin. They went on and on thanking me, and I was grinning ear to ear when they left.
I had a couple who were staying there for a month while they were waiting for construction on their house to finish. I befriended their husky and they would bring her by every day to see me.
There was another family that week who had to keep coming back to get something that was a benefit of their hotel stay, but I could only process it one day at a time. Well, they happened to get in line as I was dealing with a mess of a situation and I said, “Mrs. ______, this is gonna be a while. If you wanna come back, I’ll have it ready for you.” So, she did, and I had it ready and waiting.
They wound up buying something else from me and called me when they lost it. “Oh, that’s an easy fix. What’s your email?”
I had it to them in less than five minutes.
On Christmas day, they came back with a card with $10 in it.
“Oh, I’m gonna cry!”
“No, you can’t cry, because then I’m going to cry!”
I still have the card.
It was my first or second day back to work after Nana’s funeral. A guest asked me a question and I said, “I’m honestly not sure, I haven’t been here the last couple of days because I had to go out of town for a family emergency, but I can find out.”
“Oh, I hope everyone’s okay!”
Without thinking I said, “Sadly, no.” This poor woman’s face fell and she was genuinely so sorry for me. Small, but it stuck with me.
I had an older gentleman in town for a conference. His wife wanted to go to Animal Kingdom, but they had to be back by 6:00 pm for an event. They were both going to have to rent scooters.
That’s roughly $300 for the tickets, and another $150 for the scooters. He called his wife to double check because it was a lot of money, but as soon as she said yes there was no question he would spend it. My heart broke for them and all I wanted was to go with them to play tour guide and make sure they had a good time. But my job doesn’t work that way, and all I could do was hope for the best.
He tipped me $4 in cash, with two $2 bills. I still have them, and I am never spending them.
If you pay with a credit card, the machine gives you the option to tip $1, $5, $10, or other. A lot of people go to other to bypass the tip or still end up typing in $5. Not a big deal. I’m grateful for anything.
I had a gentleman who was struggling with it and mentioned he’d forgotten his glasses. When the transaction finished, my screen lit up with a $50 tip. I froze, assuming he’d typed it in wrong.
“Sir, I hate to ask, but what did you mean to tip?”
“$50.”
“Oh. Oh, I don’t know how to react now. I was so scared you meant to say $5.”
“You work hard.”
Sir, if you had any idea how many people yell at me for the fact that the tip screen exists.
He’s tied for my highest tip. The other one was a guest who I got an amazing deal on her tickets, I saved her probably $100 and she tipped me $50.
People are strange. I’ve set people up with a whole week’s worth of stuff where they spent more money than I spent on my car and they’ve left nothing, and other people that I set up for a single day leave more than I ever imagine. I had another lady over Christmas 2020 give me an additional $20 on top of what she’d already given me for giving her a discount card. I had another guy in 2017 give me a $20 for sending him to a chain sports bar with the disclaimer that, “The food is great, the service is terrible, and it’s my Dad’s favorite place in Florida.” I don’t remember which game he was going to watch, but I hope they won.
In May 2019, I had a family of four here for the daughter’s cheerleading competition. I was setting them up and the mom mentioned their grandmother had given them the money for the tickets.
“Oh, grandmothers are great! My car just rolled over and died on me, and my grandmother helped me get a new one so I wouldn’t have to put our wedding plans on hold.”
“I like your grandmother!”
“I do too!”
I called Nana on the way home to tell her about our conversation and she was just tickled pink.
In October 2020, I spent three hours with this couple over two days. I wound up setting them up for one thing in October and something else for another trip back to Orlando in December. I told them I would be there on their next trip, and I wasn’t. Over the holidays my schedule was all over the place, and I thought I missed them completely. The wife happened to find me on the day they were checking out.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”
“I’m sorry they moved me!”
She told me how much fun they had and asked how things were going. I told her I found out we’d be closing soon, but that I had a good plan B I was working on and that made her happy.
The husband came by later.
“You were exactly right. We were much better off going in the order you suggested, and we wouldn’t have had any fun if we’d gone to the first place this week. You were right about everything. So, it’s not much, but that’s a feather in your cap.”
Even typing that I got the warm and fuzzies.
Right before the wedding, I had several closing shifts in a row so I saw the same people every night. On the last night before my time off started, I told two or three families that I wouldn’t be there the rest of the week and to enjoy the rest of their vacation. There was a German mother and her adult son. When I told them, the son said, “So, you are going on vacation?” He sounded concerned like maybe I was quitting.
“Actually, I’m getting married.”
They were so excited and congratulated me several times before heading back to their room.
I remember another family I helped over a few days and told them all about Jay and our upcoming wedding, how he worked for Disney and I did this, and between us we had access to just about everything in Orlando.
“You must live a really fun life!”
“We really do. We’re very lucky.”
One of the reasons I’ve worked forty-two different locations is I was the person they call when someone called out and they just need a body. I’ve always been pretty flexible and I have always liked overtime.
This is my absolute favorite guest memory.
In September 2018, I got called in on my day off to cover a place near Disney Springs I had never been. Had absolutely no clue where anything was and just did my best. This was a pretty typical situation for me, hence my “I know everything there is to know about theme parks, I know nothing about this hotel.” spiel.
This couple came up with questions. They had already purchased everything they needed, but they had questions. They had gone to Disneyland for years when their kids were younger, but now they were doing a huge Walt Disney World trip for just the two of them. They had to be at Epcot early in the morning for a tour and they were worried about picking up their tickets before the tour started. They had a car so I sent them to Disney Springs.
“It’s free parking, you can pick up your tickets tonight, and there’s a bunch of great restaurants. Oh, and STK has Magical Dining going on so you can get a really nice three-course meal for $33.”
“Chelsea, what are your days off? We need to come back only when you’re here!”
I laughed.
“So, funny story. I don’t actually work here. I’m just covering someone who’s sick. Sadly, this will be the only time you see me.”
They were genuinely disappointed. It was the nicest question I had ever been asked. Even more than people who figured out I worked on commission and would only buy from me.
The husband came back after dinner to thank me, to tell me dinner was great, and gave me cash. My heart was already about to burst.
“Thanks hon,” he said and walked away. He came back a second later. “I’m sorry, that was sexist. Thank you so much.”
I’m from the South. There a lot of things in this world I consider sexist, and that’s not one that offends me, but there are people it would. I was shocked, touched, and somehow proud of this man I had just met and would never see again. I hope their vacation was amazing.
As many good stories as I have, I have just as many bad ones. I’m not going to share how awful people can be. The world knows that. I have good stories like this from Disney and Universal too, but I have more for this job since I worked here longer than those places combined.
So, if you’re reading this and you’re someone who visits Orlando, or anywhere really, I challenge you to be the good guests. Yes, a lot of these stories had money attached to them, but that’s not the point. (Trust me, I’ve had plenty of jerks tip because they couldn’t figure out how to work the machine correctly.) It’s not the money I remember the most, and it’s not the money that meant something to me. It was the gesture.
Remember, you can make our days as much as we make yours.
