Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  Of course, the guests were unaware of the political struggles that happened behind the scenes. They were overwhelmed with their own agendas. Orville had a classification system that covered every ticket buyer who came to the Kingdom: the “Family Reunion” the “Mouseketeer” the “Parkhopper,” who only had four days to cover six theme parks, seventeen restaurants, and a waterslide; and the “Pintrader,” who couldn’t pass a Cast Member without stopping to finger the little enamel buttons on the lanyard around her neck.

  The most interesting guest to me was the “Disniac.” Easily identifiable by their clothing (not just signature apparel, which everybody wore, but limited edition, collectable clothing from theme parks and stores around the world), the Disniacs were the only people over the age of twelve who were comfortable wearing autographed baseball caps. They had annual passes and planned long weekends to Orlando. They came to hunt for hidden Mickeys or break personal records for number of times on the Dumbo ride. The Disniac didn’t ask for much. He already had Ariel’s autograph. He got it in 1998, the year they opened Animal Kingdom, the year Hurricane Andrew forced the Magic Kingdom to close for the afternoon. The Disniac just wanted to talk, to let you know that he knew that Tigger’s voice was originally done by a man named Paul Winchell, a ventriloquist, inventor, and genius who created, among other things, the disposable razor. Interacting with a Disniac was like being trapped with a Trekkie in the S aisle at Blockbuster when all you wanted was Space-balls.

  “The Disniacs are crazy, but they aren’t the dangerous ones,” Orville warned in his most ominous voice. “You gotta watch out for the Collectors.”

  “Collectors?” I struggled to keep a straight face. “They sound terrifying.”

  “Don’t underestimate the Collectors! They come to the park with oversized handbags, which they fill with Tomorrowland napkins and mustard-stained hot dog wrappers, and whatever else they can pick out of your pockets for their coffee parlor scrapbooks. They wear Dalmatian fishing hats and Tinker Bell charm bracelets. You may not recognize them at first because they look like the Disniacs, but look a little closer and you’ll see the materialism shining through. They’re snobby. They know the birthdays of the characters and quote lines from the movies. If you don’t know how many gallons of Powerade it would take to fill the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lagoon, they’ll openly mock you. Then, they’ll turn their backs and shake their heads like the whole world is going to hell.”

  I laughed at Orville’s description, but once I knew they were out there, I saw Collectors everywhere, and they creeped me out. The Collectors were souvenir hounds. They wanted photos from every angle. They wanted the pen out of my pocket and a lock of Minnie’s fur. One Collector would hand Tigger three books and request signatures. “One for me, one for my niece, and one for my poor mother, who couldn’t make the trip from Albuquerque, bless her heart.” A week later, two of those books would turn up on some online auction site with a minimum bid of $200.

  One morning, the skies were a little more overcast than usual, so I wore my Animal Kingdom bush hat. Soon, however, the clouds had burned off, and I found myself sweating profusely. I still had another hour in the Hundred Acre Wood kiosk, so I took the hat off and set it on the railing behind me, where it wouldn’t be in my shot.

  It wasn’t long before I was approached by an older woman, who asked if I knew the legend of the Animals That Never Were. She had a fire in her eyes, which I identified as the Disniac glow, so I indulged her, patiently sitting through her lecture. She explained that Animal Kingdom was originally supposed to have a themed section with imaginary creatures: unicorns, dragons—in fact, the popular Dueling Dragons ride at Universal’s Islands of Adventure was originally supposed to find a home at Disney, but budgets had been overextended already and the project went on hold.

  I thanked her for the information, waved good-bye, and returned to my photography. When I turned around again, a photograph later, the woman was gone. And so was my bush hat.

  The Tigger in the kiosk clutched his belly and shook in silent laughter. He pointed his orange finger in my face and bounced up and down, the enormous grin frozen on his stupid, fuzzy face. He cornered me backstage. “Dude, you got snaked!” He was calling himself Crooze that week, wearing earphones around his neck and BluBlockers on top of his head. “You put your hat down and home-girl just snagged it, like that!”

  “Yeah.” I slung my camera over my shoulder and pushed it behind me, away from his enthusiastic bouncing.

  He put the BluBlockers over his eyes, then pushed them down his nose. “Yo, I’m the mack in the driver’s seat. Got tiger head and tiger feet,” he rapped. “Make the ladies’ hearts skip a beat when they see me bouncing down the street!” He pushed the glasses back up on top of his head. “Hey, I hear you’re tappin’ Jessie. That is ill!” He put his fist up for a bump.

  “We went out a few times,” I said. “Nothing serious.”

  He pulled off the BluBlockers and headphones and picked up the orange head. “Very cool, my man.” He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “I wasn’t sure which team you played for, you know?”

  “Okay.”

  “A’ight!” He gave me another fist bump and put on the Tigger head. “Tig to the izzo!” he shouted and bounded out the door.

  He was annoying, but he was a damn good Tigger, naturally animated and spry. Onstage, he was such a ham that people wanted to pose for pictures with only him, while Pooh shambled off to the side to get out of the way. Through the lens, it occurred to me that this hip-hop Cast Member was the personification of Tigger. Even without the fuzzy costume and tail, the personality was dead on.

  When the pictures came through the processor, I showed Orville the Disniac who stole my hat. The hip-hop Tigger was motion blurred.

  “I know him,” Orville said, one sausage finger tapping the print. “I call him ‘Wigger.’…You know, like ‘White Tigger’? Get it?”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “As a matter of fact, it’s probably not an accident,” he said. “A lot of people see Disney as a kind of finishing school. They feel as if they need a little polish, something to give them another dimension, so they pick a Disney character and take on his personality traits, like Tigger. What’s not to love about a bouncy, good-natured tiger?”

  “Allergies,” I quipped.

  “Other people,” he continued, “come to Disney to find themselves. Teenagers and divorcees, widows, and folks who just woke up one day and realized their lives don’t mean jack diddly. They look to Disney the way some people look to God. They want meaning, and they find it in a Wish Kid’s smile or a Honeymooner’s love story or the description of their favorite animated hero.”

  “Isn’t that a little—I don’t know—psycho? There’s a whole world of icons out there to idolize. Why use a cartoon?”

  “Don’t be such a little black rain cloud.” Orville narrowed his wet eyes and looked me over. “Let’s see. Who did you dress up as for Halloween? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had a bit of a Peter Pan complex going on.” He raised his hand to silence my retort. “When I first came here, I had a thing for Mary Poppins. It was something about her no-nonsense attitude. I imagined her wearing a whalebone corset and garter hose beneath that wool overcoat.” He gave an ecstatic little shiver that shook the entire trailer. “I wanted her to spank the bejeezus out of me!”

  The door opened and Marco walked into the lab. “Ay dios mio, it is so hot out there!” He slithered over to where Orville was sitting and leaned on the edge of his desk. “Can’t you assign me to the water park instead. I could wear a little lifeguard swimsuit and a whistle around my neck. I would do my baila fantastica just for you…. Oh, Chico, I did not see you here.”

  I didn’t have to turn around to sense his single arched eyebrow or his scowling lip. I changed the batteries out of my flash and tested the charge.

  “I don’t think so, Marco.” Orville’s tone was professional again. “I need you here where I can k
eep an eye on you.”

  Marco’s voice twisted into a high-pitched simper. “But you have him here. He can shoot adequate photos for you. And I can work on my tan.”

  I dropped the spent batteries into a recycle bag and tested the weight. A well-placed blow to the temple with a sack of dead batteries could knock a guy out.

  “Marco,” I heard Orville say, “I need someone out front shooting. Why don’t you show me what a good job you can do at this park, and then we’ll talk about transferring you to the Lagoon—Don’t give me that look. Go.”

  Marco heaved an enormous sigh. “If I die of heatstroke, it’s your fault.”

  When the door closed, Orville said, “If he dies, I’ll get a lot more work done around here.”

  After a few weeks working together, Orville had become more comfortable with me. Some days, when he was especially talkative, I felt like a sidekick or a confidante rather than just an employee. Maybe he saw me as a kind of kindred artistic spirit. Maybe he just sensed that I wasn’t the type to pass judgment. Through the little window by Orville’s desk, a couple of Goofys traded high fives as one went off and the other came onstage.

  Orville watched them, smiling, then turned back to his computer screen and began typing. “When I die,” he said, “I want my ashes spread over Cinderella’s Castle.”

  “If only Tim Burton had created Pixie Dust…” I had meant the reference to the death-obsessed director as a frivolity, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. It had been weeks since I had spoken to my mom, and in that time, I had actively fought to suppress any thoughts of her condition. I pretended to make little adjustments to the film processor. “Is it true that nobody’s ever died at Disney World?”

  He stopped typing. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” I said. “It was something I overheard.”

  “Well, it’s true,” he said. “Nobody has ever died on Disney property.”

  I was enormously comforted by his answer, and it occurred to me that I had been dreading asking for direct confirmation ever since I moved to Florida. I picked up a set of prints just coming off the machine. “You know what I like most about photography?” I announced. “I like how, when you’re taking somebody’s picture, you can get right on the edge of their consciousness. You pick the exact moment you want and shoot, and just for a second, you can see inside someone else’s life.”

  Orville nodded his head, smiling. “It’s honest,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Like they’re opening their soul to you.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked over the top of his spectacles. “And it’s safe because you never have to give them anything in return.”

  “Well,” I hedged. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Here,” he said. “Let me show you some of my personal photography. The stuff I shoot outside of Animal Kingdom.”

  I rolled a chair over to his desk as he brought up his home page. Before my eyes, the screen filled with images of nude men. One after another, in black and white and color. Some were arranged in provocative poses while others were downright pornographic.

  “What I like best about photography,” he said, “is the camaraderie that develops between a photographer and his subject. When two people do a photo shoot, they form a bond that holds them together forever. It can be very intimate.” Orville’s fingers danced over the keyboard, clicking on thumbnail images to enlarge them to full screen size. Glancing over at me, he paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m just surprised at your, um, technique.”

  “I’m particularly proud of the composition in this one.” He clicked on a picture of a dark-skinned guy with a shaved head, fanning his hard-on with a cowboy hat. “He was actually a lot smaller than he looks, but I used a 28 lens to make his cock look bigger without distorting the rest of his body.”

  “Does Disney know about your other job?” I asked.

  “Let me tell you something. If I had a nickel for every lewd, perverted, illegal, immoral thing that happened right under its nose, I’d be able to buy Disney World. And besides, I’m not sure that it technically counts as another job if I’m using Cast Members as models.” Orville magnified the picture so that the entire screen filled with penis. “Do you recognize him?”

  “Not from this angle.”

  “It’s Jazz.” He played with the light balance in the photo, adding shading around the pubic hair. “You know, he used to be a Tarzan.”

  I had seen the Tarzan show dozens of times. The main character wore a wig of dreadlocks and swung from vines thirty feet above the audience. I remembered that day the summer before, when Tarzan jumped off the float to save the drowning boy.

  “Jazz used to think like you,” he said. “When he first came to Disney, he was straight, straitlaced, boring. He kept a safe distance without ever immersing himself in the experience. But now, well, let’s just say he has a new perspective.” The computer screen hummed, happily displaying the full-screen image of Tarzan’s phallus while Orville adjusted the saturation levels of the photo.

  “Are you suggesting I try men?” He wasn’t flirting with me. He was making a recommendation. “To get more out of my Disney experience?”

  “Of course not,” Orville clucked. “Everybody opens up to Disney in his own way, and you clearly have the genetic disposition of a breeder. But there are many ways to achieve a happy ending. You told me once you were looking for Magic.” He looked over the rim of his glasses. One two three. “Disney can help you find it, but you have to let it in.”

  Just then, the door flew open and another photographer walked into the lab. Quick as summer lightning, Orville closed the Web page and gave a convincingly casual stretch.

  “Well,” he announced, “as long as you have everything under control here, I’m going to the powder room.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but Orville was right. I used photography to keep my distance, like a voyeur watching other people’s lives unfold through a long, long lens. Part of it was my journalism training, which urged me to keep a pen or a camera between my subject and my own opinions, but most of it was inside me; I didn’t trust the charm and dazzle of Disney World. After being betrayed by everybody who was close to me, I simply wasn’t ready to immerse myself in everything Orlando had to offer.

  By the time June rolled around, it had been almost six months since my girlfriend had left me, and I was finally starting to shake off the awkwardness of reentering the dating scene. My new popularity had afforded me plenty of trysts with random Cast Members. For a while, I had gone out with Jessie. Then there was a delicate Tinker Bell, a stilt walker who walked around the park camouflaged as a growth of ivy, and a Scottish linguist working as a reptile handler. It had been fun and the company had kept me warm through many a night, but in all that time, I had not felt a single romantic spark. At first, I figured I just needed a little time to get comfortable with my new environment—it can be difficult finding the rhythm of a new town—but after half a year in Florida with all those beautiful college program girls, I was beginning to wonder if I had finally become too cynical to fall in love. Then I met the Little Mermaid.

  In the action sports industry, nobody would have mistaken me for anything better than an average photographer, but by Disney World standards, I was Richard Avedon. The fact that I could frame an entire family of four without cutting out an appendage made me some kind of savant.

  “I need you for an assignment,” Orville’s voice was low as I clocked in one morning. “The Disneyana Convention is coming to town, and I need a good photographer. Are you up for it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “What do I have to do?”

  “Just show up and take some pictures,” he said. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “Will there be any characters there?” I asked.

  “Of course.” He twisted his face into a Cheshire cat’s grin. “I’m the biggest character in the Kingdom.”

  And he was too. H
e danced around the lab, singing the songs of Celine Dion and Lionel Richie. He spoke with an affected drawl as if he were the leader of a big-game hunting party rather than the manager of a photographic organization, and he fussed obsessively over his appearance. His vanity was entertaining. He maintained an air of supremacy, a blend of arrogance and feigned humility that passed for confidence with people of a certain weight.

  As it turned out, Orville lived for Disneyana. Once a year, the Disneyana Convention came to Orlando and brought with it a barbarian horde of devoted Disniacs. They came like pilgrims from Amsterdam, Osaka, Cairns and Kuala Lumpur, wearing sequined Minnie Mouse sweatshirts, Goofy boxers, and outback hats so heavy with limited edition pins, they could barely keep their heads up. These people weren’t just fans of Disney. They cherished it the way a magician guards his secrets. They gathered in groups at the bars to chant “Mice rule. Ducks drool!” or “Ducks forever. Mice never!” until the bartender kicked them out at closing time. They woke up at five in the morning to be the first in line to bid on a Lenox china Pinocchio or a Waterford crystal Sorcerer Mickey, and groaned when they found that somebody had already posted their treasure on eBay at 50 percent of their bid.

  They traded pins, earnestly. They boasted about Kabuki Donald from Tokyo Disney or a full set of Tinker Bells with aurora borealis wings. A Pintrader would drape a lanyard of pins around his neck like papal vestments and stroll through the banquet halls staring at conventioneers’ chests until he found another member of the clergy. Then, the two of them would stop and stoop over each other’s lanyards, coo little admiring sounds to each other, and pick at pins like lowland gorillas in a grooming ritual. These people behaved like junkies, whispering and twitching, their hands shaking every time they reached out to finger an especially rare item. If they liked what they saw, they sat down right there on the lobby floor and began negotiations, surrounded by wary security guards.