Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  The music dipped and rose. The pyro was fiercer now, louder and more violent. Feather-tailed comets and double helix spirals arced over our heads. Firelight reflected off her bare shoulders, bouncing off her smooth golden hair. Yellow skyrockets climbed like pussy willows, culminating in starfish explosions overhead. White-hot sparklers screamed skyward and shattered against the night, raining down like a pixie dust cloudburst. The symphony built. The fires expanded until the skyrocket finale exploded above us. As the music faded away, I held Calico close to my body and felt her heart beat through my chest.

  Around the world, people rushed to their feet. They applauded with inspired enthusiasm, screaming for the miracle of creation itself. Pulling the long blond hair away from her face, I kissed Calico’s cheeks, her ears, her eyelashes. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel her smiling. I didn’t want the lights to come up. I never wanted to leave our secret hideaway high above the world.

  For the next couple of weeks, I floated through my photo sets, only vaguely aware of things happening beyond the scope of my little mermaid. Rusty and Alan broke up. Wigger slept with the FOLK gazelle and then with the manager from the cafeteria. Sunny taught me how to needlepoint. Rusty and Alan got back together. At home, Johnny was drinking more than ever. When he wasn’t on the phone with Jazz, the two were meeting at a café somewhere, scheming. He wouldn’t tell me his plan, only that it was going to “revolutionize the music industry.”

  I developed a special walk that I used when I was onstage but out of costume, wandering through the park. I called it the Disney Waltz. The walk itself was casual, relaxed, yet directed, as if I knew exactly where I was going, but I was in no hurry to get there. I stepped with purposeful, evenly spaced strides, hips forward, chin in the air, and a little bounce on the balls of my feet to show that I had a spring in my step. Even when it was so hot that I would sweat just taking a deep breath, I would keep up this energy because (Guest Service Guideline 5) it projected the appropriate body language.

  I turned my lips into a pleasant smile—not a grin so much as a good-natured joy that radiated from my entire face. Of course (Guideline 1), I made eye contact with all the guests and smiled at each one as they passed. When I did this, I put a little twinkle in my eye and sometimes even wiggled my eyebrows a little. I didn’t want to come across as overly intimate or insane, just happy, like my face was saying, “I’m having a good time, and I know that you are too.” I was confident that the guests all felt my excitement because they usually smiled back.

  One time, I was walking from Tomorrowland out to Main Street when I noticed a little boy, maybe six years old, standing on the bridge, looking up at the sky. His mother was standing behind him at the water fountain trying to clean a streak of melted ice cream off her blouse. He was concentrating so hard that I just had to stop.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

  “What is that?” the boy asked, pointing to the sky.

  He was looking at a safety wire, which ran from an upper spire of Cinderella’s castle down into the backstage area behind the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin. At night, to kick off the fireworks show, a Tinker Bell was hooked onto that wire and zip-lined from the castle down to Tomorrowland. It was one of the most dangerous jobs at the Kingdom, and the girls who did it were paid a handsome sum to take the risk.

  “Well,” I said, my mind working quickly to preserve the Magical Experience (Guideline 6). “Every night, Tinker Bell has to fly from the castle up there down to the ground over there, and that signals Peter Pan to start the fireworks show. But you know how Tinker Bell gets a little distracted? Sometimes she forgets where she’s going and flies off every which way and nobody knows when to start the show. So Peter Pan drew a line in the sky for her to follow, and now, she never gets lost!”

  The boy’s mouth dropped open and he looked at the wire again with a whole new understanding.

  “What a load of bullshit!” his mom interjected, dragging her toddler away from me. “Honey, don’t believe all the crap you hear about flying fairies!”

  Not even a month before, that might have been my reaction too, but not anymore. Now, I understood Walt’s vision. Cynicism and gloomy attitudes were things that people had to deal with in the real world; they had no place in Fantasyland.

  If somebody looked lost (Guideline 3), I would stop and offer assistance. Mostly, people were just confused by the layout of one of the parks or wanted to find one of the critters to sign autographs. I learned just enough Spanish, German, French, and Japanese to address simple issues like “Where is the bathroom?” or “I need to vomit.” If I saw that a guest wasn’t having a good time (Guideline 4), I did my best to rectify the problem.

  I changed my ringtone from Sublime’s “What I Got” to “Hakuna Matata.” Depending on which part of the park I was walking through, I’d hum or whistle a little tune. For instance, in Frontierland, I’d whistle the Country Bear Jamboree. In Fantasyland, I sang “It’s a Small World,” just softly under my breath as if it was stuck in my head but I didn’t want to get it out just yet. If I was in an area without a specific theme song like, say, anywhere at the Studios, I would just hum along with the BGM. I didn’t belt it out or dance or do anything that obvious. I just made myself a part of the Experience. After all, that was why I was here.

  It had taken the better part of a year, but at last, I had given myself over to the culture. I had internalized Walt’s system of Rules, a mantra that applied to even the most private aspects of my life. I had a never-ending supply of entertainments and distractions to fill my downtime. And best of all, I was surrounded by a group of vibrant, happy people who never slowed down or took life too seriously. At last, I had found Disney Magic.

  “Everybody, gather ’round,” Rusty commanded from the armchair. He had just wrapped a successful drag revue at The Parliament House, and he was eager to share his new gossip. “It’s Storytime!”

  A Queen’s Fury

  At six feet five, Gary was a rising star in the drag scene. As Misty Meaner and Holly Golustly at the P House, he was sassy and fabulous and always received a standing ovation. But for a real performance, girl, you hadn’t seen Gary until you’d seen him as Maleficent in Disney’s Fantasmic show.

  For those of you who need a character refresher, Maleficent is the Queen bitch of Sleeping Beauty, who challenges Sorcerer Mickey in the second act of the Studios’ Fantasmic show by turning herself into a fifty-foot-tall dragon.

  This was no easy feat of Magic. To create the illusion of transformation, Maleficent had to be strapped into a hydraulic lift and hoisted fifty feet in the air. At the musical crescendo, approximately five thousand dollars’ worth of pyro was detonated and Maleficent’s lift descended in the dark to be replaced with a giant dragon puppet.

  Fifty feet on a scissor lift was scary under normal circumstances. But when you considered how much cocaine Gary had in his system the night the lift failed…

  When he went onstage that night, Gary was feeling, if not exactly relaxed, then at least in control. The music, the smells, the action—everything was familiar. He conjured his bitchiest persona—a vitriolic combination of Meaner’s haughty attitude and Golustly’s self-involvement—and swept through the hallways backstage.

  The tech who ushered him onto the platform made his usual joke about seeing up his skirt. He fastened the safety line to the railing and snapped Maleficent’s dress around Gary’s waist, then gave him the thumbs-up.

  When the lights found him on stage, Gary launched into his performance. He shook his fists at Mickey and openly mocked the bravery of the little mouse. As the hydraulics clicked in and the lift began to rise, Gary ground his teeth together and sniffed back the postnasal drip. Fifty feet in the air, the lights went out and he prepared for the descent. That was when the machine quit.

  Explosions rocked the set and gusts of fire billowed around him. Gary was certain something bad was happening, but as coked up as he was, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. From somewhere in
the back of his mind, he recalled a fire safety tip. In an emergency, Maleficent’s fire-retardant dress could be used to shield the body from burns. A blast of flame shot directly at him, and he was just able to cover his face with the thick beaded sleeves.

  As the pyro subsided, he breathed a short-lived sigh of relief. On the edge of his vision, a massive dragon puppet was making its way onto the stage and his heart jumped. The transformation trick required the dragon to appear right where Maleficent disappeared, which wasn’t a problem when the machine was functioning normally. Now, however, he was six stories high, precariously balanced on a platform that measured no wider than his shoulders. Even as he watched, Gary could see the puppet closing in on his position, obviously unaware of the change in plan. In seconds, the contraption would collide with his narrow lift, and he knew his chances of coming out on top weren’t good.

  Locked onto his little platform, fifty feet in the air, he summoned all his wits about him, and girl, don’t you know, he screamed like a princess!

  Somehow, over the music and the explosions and the strobe lights and applause, the techs wielding the dragon heard his scream and swerved out of the way. Word spread quickly through the backstage that Maleficent was stuck in the lift, but nothing could be done about it. There were ten thousand guests in the audience, and each one demanded Magic. Gary was stuck in position for the remainder of the performance.

  As the show dragged on, and the coke high shifted from paranoia to absolute fucking terror, Mickey defeated the forces of evil, and the princes and princesses surrounded the lagoon singing. Gary had no choice but to animate the lyrics that he’d never experienced onstage before that night. He moved his arms and tilted his head, too far away for the crowd to notice the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Don’t look down, he reminded himself repeatedly. Keep your eyes on the audience.

  It took an eternity for the lights to come up and the guests to leave the amphitheater. Three managers, six techs, and half a fire brigade turned up before somebody figured out how to release the hydraulic lift manually.

  “We’re going to cut the hydraulics,” a voice shouted up to Gary. “We’re not sure how fast this thing is going to come down, so hold on to something.”

  His whole body was shaking from fear and exhaustion. If it weren’t for the massive amounts of cocaine in his bloodstream, he probably would have been in shock. He slipped his fingers around the guardrail and braced himself for the worst.

  The hydraulic system released with a hiss and descended to the ground. Onlookers would later recall that it dropped at a normal rate, but to Gary it was a freefall. When he was finally unclipped and released, he staggered out of the cage, into the arms of his manager, who smiled at him as if the whole thing had been a grand adventure.

  “Jesus,” Gary’s manager appraised him with a pained expression. “You look like shit.”

  Gary could only nod.

  “Well, you better get back to the break room. The next show is in fifteen minutes, and you have got to do something about that makeup.”

  One evening, Calico invited me to dinner at her parents’ house. They lived in a large house in a new development named after the orange groves that the developers had razed to create a neighborhood there. The front yard was lined with an immaculate rose garden whose colors perfectly complemented the pair of BMWs in the driveway.

  Calico’s father was a scowling man who attempted to break my fingers when we shook hands in the doorway. He looked me over from top to bottom, then sniffed before stepping aside with military precision. Calico’s mother, on the other hand, was a charmer.

  “What a handsome young man!” she exclaimed, her eyes twinkling in the reflection of the halogen lights. “Of course, after everything Calico’s told us, I knew you would be.”

  “Thank you Mrs.—”

  “Please, call me Sandra.” Her teeth were perfect, like a row of Chiclets. “Calico, why don’t you get us something to drink? Two Cosmopolitans I think.”

  The living room was camera ready, decorated with modern furniture in understated fabrics and lit in a way that looked art directed. There was a row of framed photos on the wall. Sandra was already adjusting the lights to give me a better view.

  “Whatever you do,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “don’t let her know you saw these. She gets so embarrassed.”

  It took me awhile to realize that I was looking at photos of Calico growing up. The girl in the pictures was the kind of girl you never noticed in high school, the one who stood alone at the class reunion because she didn’t have any memories to share with the rest of the group. She had unkempt brown hair and glasses and a half-hearted smile that conveyed a weak desire to be anywhere but there. Somehow, she even managed to fade into the background of her senior class portrait.

  “She was such a shy girl,” Sandra lamented.

  “I was a late bloomer too,” I offered.

  Sandra was just about to say something when we were interrupted by her daughter entering the room with two drinks on a tray. “You two had better not be doing what I think you’re doing.”

  Sandra was all innocence. “Your boyfriend was just admiring what a beautiful young woman you’ve become.”

  “Boyfriend?” I ventured.

  Calico blushed, even as she dimmed the lights above the photo frames. “Mother,” she said, “you are in so much trouble.”

  At dinner, Calico’s father was predictably taciturn, scowling through salad, soup, and most of the main course. Sandra, however, knew every technique to fill the silence and employed her skills with relish. She talked about the weather and current events, then turned the conversation to California and my family.

  “I can’t believe,” she said, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a napkin, “that you didn’t want to follow in your brother’s footsteps. Medicine is such a noble field.”

  “He’s a photographer, mother,” Calico interrupted. “Before he worked at Disney, he did sports photography.”

  “How wonderful!” Sandra exclaimed. “I just love Ansel Adams. All those beautiful black-and-white landscapes. And tell me, what do your parents do?”

  “Well,” I said, “my father was an engineer, but he retired, and my mom is—” It felt as if a door was opening somewhere nearby and I was being drawn into it. I hadn’t spoken about my family with anyone in Orlando—not because of my promise to Michael—but because I wasn’t ready. Now, however, with Sandra’s question and my half-finished response hanging in the air, a hundred words rushed into my head: wonderful, loving, dying…“also retired,” I finished.

  “A job that takes a lifetime to master.” Sandra beamed at her scowling husband. “Now, who’s ready for dessert?”

  It was just a small part of the evening’s conversation, but it got me thinking. It had been a couple of weeks since I had phoned my parents, longer since I had e-mailed, and in all that time, I hadn’t heard from them. If I was being stubborn, then what were they doing? What could be happening that they wouldn’t even try to reach out to me? I shuddered to think what complications might have developed in that time.

  On my way home, I dialed LA. “Hey, Dad. Is Mom there?”

  “Mom?” He sounded terrible, like he hadn’t slept for a few nights. “She’s, uh, out right now. Running some errands.”

  I looked at my watch and did a few calculations. “What kind of errands?”

  He cleared his throat. “Pardon?”

  “It’s almost eight. What kind of errands is she doing?”

  “She went to the grocery store. The fabric store. Places like that.”

  I could tell that, even after fifty-some-odd years of marriage, my dad had no idea what my mom meant when she said she was “running errands.” I could also tell that he was lying.

  “How is everybody back home? Are you all, you know, healthy?” I was challenging the boundaries of my promise to Michael, but I wanted to give my dad a chance to talk about Mom. If I could just get him to open up a little, just give m
e some small, significant acknowledgment that he knew that I knew what was really happening, I would be happy with that.

  “Healthy?” he asked. “Actually”—and for a moment, I thought it was going to happen, but then, his tone changed—“everyone’s doing great! Never better! How about you?”

  “I’m fine.” I was rubbing my temples now. “Would you ask Mom to call me when she gets back? I want to ask her something.”

  “Oh, um, she might be back kind of late. Maybe she should call you in the morning.”

  My insides were twisting in knots. I wanted to say something more, but at that point, there was nothing to say.

  “Sure,” I said. “Have her call me when she can.”

  I didn’t hear from her the next day. When she finally called, the day after that, her words were so jumbled that I could barely understand her.

  I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to persevere and not care about her silent assassin and the brutal chemo treatments. Living in Orlando, it was easy to distract myself with entertainment every minute of the day. If I started to feel sad, there was always a parade somewhere that would cheer me up or a fireworks show or a musical revue. Who could be upset when there was so much to do?

  But it was getting more and more difficult to keep myself distracted. Every time I thought of my family, I would remember why I came to Orlando in the first place, and the pixie dust would blow away. In the face of a dying parent, no Magical experience seemed so dreamlike anymore. They felt like an escape.

  I needed to go deeper, to bury myself so completely in the Disney experience that even I wouldn’t be able to see where my identity ended and my onstage Disney persona began. As far as I could tell, there was only one way to do it. I had to become a character.

  Part of Your World

  Being a character bore a heavy responsibility. As I mentioned before, characters were the reason people came to the park in the first place, and they were the reason they returned year after year. The average family would tolerate a forty-five-minute wait at most to get on a ride, but they’d stand in the rain for up to an hour and a half to meet Mickey Mouse. Parents would do anything for their kids. If the little darlings wanted a photo with Mulan, then by God, load the camera because they were going to be in that line for half a lifetime. That was exactly the point. Disney was created for children and children wanted characters.