Two weeks ago, I said that hospitality workers are drowning trying to make life work in the pandemic. Well, after this weekend the water has turned to ice and we’re sinking.
Walt Disney World Cast Members are overworked and underpaid. They work in brutal sun and torrential downpours.
They spend fourteen-hour days on their feet doing everything from directing guest traffic in the parks to selling stuffed animals to serving food to running attractions.
Some nights you’re off at 1 am and back in at 9 am the next day. Some days you think you’re going home at 4 pm and turns out you’re there until 11 pm.
Someone has to fill those misting fans. Someone has to fold the rose napkins for Be Our Guest.
Some days you make a family laugh so hard they cry, and some days you get screamed at for decisions that are well above your pay grade, and they do it with a smile on their face.
No one works at Disney unless they want to. They do it because they love it.
There are much easier jobs that pay better to be found. (When there’s not a pandemic and an unemployment crisis, at least.)
Unless you live under a rock, you know Disney laid off thousands of park employees over the last several days from both Walt Disney World and Disneyland. If you don’t know, honestly, I envy you right now. Some of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with lost their jobs, and I have many more friends who are anxiously waiting to see if their phone rings. These are all people who started before I did or while I worked at Disney, meaning they’ve all been there five or more years.
Every Facebook status revealing another one of my friends had been laid off felt like a kick in the chest. These are all good people, and they don’t deserve this.
All I want to do is scream.
But screaming won’t help, so here I am. The wedding series will resume week after next. This is more important. In the meantime, I’m going to let you all in on a little secret:
When I left the Walt Disney Company it wasn’t voluntary.
It’s my most closely guarded secret and something I have been ashamed of for a very long time. Plenty of people who I’m close with in real life know this of course, and everyone I worked with, but until a few months ago I still had “Jungle Cruise Skipper” listed as my current place of employment on Facebook. (Now it says Twenty Something in Orlando, not that this pays.)
I’m not going to get into the details of how or why, because that’s not what this article is about. A manager that hated me and wanted me gone made it happen. I had never had a reprimand or any other form of documented discipline, but I wasn’t in the Union so there was nothing I could do about it.
No, what I’m going to talk about is what happened after I was no longer a Cast Member.
It’s the worst feeling in the world.
Like so many other people, I moved to Orlando to work for Disney. I left my home, my parents, my dog, and all my friends so I could move to Florida and be a Walt Disney World Cast Member. I came down on the Disney College Program, and I knew I was never going back, which is why I timed my program with graduation, so I’d have my degree in hand.
And yet everything I had worked for was gone. Two and a half years of hard work gone. Done. Over. No more driving Jungle Cruise boats, no more challenging kids to sword fights at Pirates of the Caribbean, no more making magic. I was never going to have a child smile at me and clutch their stuffed animal tighter when I told them they were supposed to leave the animals in the jungle again. I wasn’t going to make a family’s day by letting their kid drive the boat ever again. I wasn’t going to make a difference in someone’s vacation.
I was broken. My dreams were shattered. I had never planned on having another job again.
I’m proud I made it off the bus and away from the manager before I started crying. I called my mom in tears. I went home and fell apart.
August 12th, 2015. The worst day of my entire life.
It felt like I had let everyone down. I let myself down because I had ruined my dreams and all my plans for the future. I let my parents down because they put so much into helping me set up my life in Florida. I let my dog down because I left him for nothing. I let my old job down because they had had to replace me for nothing. I let my room mates down because now I didn’t know if I’d be able to pay my rent. I let Walt down because I had failed.
If any of this sounds like an exaggeration, it’s been five years and I’m tearing up as I write this. There’s a reason I’ve never told this story to anyone who didn’t have to live through it with me.
My mom was set to visit in a little over a week and now I didn’t know if we’d have to cancel all our plans. (Thankfully my friends stepped in and took care of this.)
The next several weeks, I had no appetite. I remember being bribed into eating. I stopped caring about absolutely EVERYTHING. There was a hollowness in my chest that took months to go away. Dishes and laundry piled up. The litter box went ignored. This is when I started painting because I was just so desperate to fill my days with something. I pushed most everyone away during this time
I lost my job on a Wednesday. I went to file for unemployment Sunday morning because it took me that long to get my head around it. I was denied for not filing in the same week that the job was lost. I tried to file for the next week and it was rejected because I hadn’t applied for five jobs yet.
At that point, I stopped trying to file for unemployment. $180 a week wasn’t worth the effort, and I didn’t want to –have- to accept the first job I was offered if I didn’t feel like it was the right fit, which tells you Florida’s unemployment system hasn’t improved much in five years. Currently the max benefits are $275 a week, for a maximum of twelve weeks. Most of the people Disney just laid off have been furloughed much longer than that.
I wound up being hired by Universal Orlando Resort a little over a month later. I applied for attractions and got stuck in admissions, scanning tickets at the Hogwarts Express, which to this day is possibly my least favorite job I’ve ever had. To make matters worse, in the initial orientation for Universal they asked for anyone who worked in another theme park to raise their hands, and proceeded to make fun of everyone who had worked at Disney.
Thankfully, I was smart enough not to raise my hand in the first place.
You’d think I’d have gotten better after getting a new job. I didn’t. It was worse.
I was absolutely miserable every day I was at Universal. Part of that was because I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and part of that was because so much of their work force and thinking is “Anti-Disney”. The amount of conversations that I had to listen to on why people left Disney and why Universal treats them better was ridiculous, and salt in an open wound. I never fit in there.
I’d also make the argument that neither company treats its people better. Universal gives their employees free turkeys at Thanksgiving. Disney provides a cheap Thanksgiving meal in their cafeterias. Universal sells gloves when it’s cold out. Disney provides them. I could go on, but I’m getting off topic.
My anxiety had been kicked into overdrive about making sure I never got in trouble at work and did everything right. I was frantic, and it made me like being at work even less. I was still not caring about staying on top of household chores or anything else I needed to be taking care of. Nothing felt like it mattered.
And now, my favorite thing to do when I wasn’t working, which was going to the parks, was no longer available. Yes, I could go to Universal, but going to hug Mickey or Duffy wasn’t available unless my friends offered. Thankfully numerous friends offered frequently, because I never would have asked, but it still wasn’t the same as “Hmm, I’m bored, I think I’ll go to Magic Kingdom today.”
Even then, so many things had lost their pixie dust. Nothing felt the same when I went to the parks.
I remember going to Fantastmic, and I was so afraid the magic would be gone like everything else. My favorite show at Disney has always been Fantastic, and my heart would leap whenever Sorcerer Mickey appears at the top of the mountain to shoot off the fireworks. I was terrified it wouldn’t be the same.
Mickey appeared, and my heart leapt like it always had, and I began to sob. I was so grateful that wasn’t gone too.
I’m tearing up again.
So, Chelsea, why are you telling us this story now?
Because so many of my friends are reliving my worst nightmare right now, but I know how the story ends.
At least my story.
You can reapply for Disney after six months, and I had every intention of doing that, but I was waiting for an opening in attractions. I had already gotten stuck in one line of work at Universal that I hated and I wasn’t going to do it again. I did try applying for a couple other things that sounded like fun once the six months were up in February, but I got told I didn’t have enough experience.
In March 2016, I wound up applying for a second part time job elsewhere. I was hired and started in April, and was offered full time in September. I left Universal two weeks later.
I never applied for Disney again. I’m still at that same job because I found something I’m pretty good at and (usually) pays really well. (Not this year, but normally!)
If I hadn’t been forced to leave Disney, I would have never met Lacey because I met her working at Universal, nor countless other friends I’ve made in the last five years. I would have never had enough disposable income for two trips to Disneyland, nor the ability to save up for the house and the wedding. Twenty Something in Orlando wouldn’t exist for many reasons. I also don’t think I ever felt like myself until the end of 2016. It took me that long to purchase an annual pass.
That’s not to say I’ll never work for Disney again. I fully plan on getting a job as a park greeter or a Photopass photographer when I’m old enough to retire and to work one or two days a week for fun. That’s a long way off, but I’ll make magic again. I know that now.
I didn’t know that in August 2015.
The point of this article isn’t that I picked myself up and found something better after I was forced out of Disney. This isn’t a “I did it and you can too!” pep talk. There are days when I would trade anything and everything to drive a Jungle Cruise boat one more time. To be standing on that dock in my khaki waiting to unload a boat. I miss working at Pirates during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party more than I can put into words because there is something wonderful about singing “Come Sail Away” with your friends in an almost empty Adventureland.
No, the point of this article is I know what you’re going through sucks more than can be put into words. I have been where you are. You’re not okay and you’re going to not be okay for a long time. You didn’t just lose a job, you’re grieving the loss of a dream, and not many people are going to understand that. That will be frustrating, because well-meaning people will tell you to get over it and move on. That it was just a job. But I know it wasn’t just a job, and you know that too, even if they don’t. I know there are long, hard, and painful days ahead. There’s the weight of all you’ve lost and the weight of the uncertainty of the future ahead. There will be times when you hate your happy memories because they make you sad. You will start to wonder if you’ll ever feel the magic again.
And then one day, Sorcerer Mickey’s going to set off the fireworks and you’re going to feel your heart leap. And it won’t suddenly make everything okay, but you will have finally found the path to okay.
I’ve been trying to get past this paragraph for twenty minutes because I can’t stop crying.
To quote Robin Hood, “Someday there will be happiness again.”
Your path may lead you back to Disney and if that’s what you want, I hope it does. Whether it’s in six months or six years. But if your path leads you in a new direction or back to your home state, that’s okay too. It feels like there’s shame in it, but there’s not. I don’t love my job, but I do love my life.
Now if you’re reading this and you’re not a Cast Member, but you’re wondering how you can help: I have an answer. Donate to Magic for Magic Makers. I’ve seen a lot of Disney blogs pushing Second Harvest and the Cast Member Pantry. Those are both great too, but there are people who aren’t concerned about food. They’re concerned about being homeless or losing their cars. They need help and Magic for Magic Makers is the one trying to help in other areas.
When I first posted about Magic for Magic Makers, I said it was founded by my friend Dana. That’s not quite true. She is so much more than a friend. She is the kindest person I’ve ever met. She was one of my coordinators at the Jungle Cruise and never has someone who knew me so little believed in me so much. And I believe in her. So, donate to Magic for Magic Makers if you can. A little goes a long way.
If you can’t donate, share the Magic for Magic Makers page, or share this article. Help us point people in the right direction.
Skipper Chelsea, signing off.
