Chris Mitchell

by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir

  On one especially hot October day, we were short a couple of photographers, so Orville had me running all over Animal Kingdom, covering a character breakfast in Dinoland, Tree of Life shots on the bridge, and all the character kiosks in Camp Minnie-Mickey. It was almost noon before I was finally able to take my break, and I was so dehydrated, my legs were shaking. As I left the kiosk, Mickey gave me a thumbs-up and a sympathetic pat on the back. I rode one of the blue Schwinn bikes to the lab where I deposited my last few rolls of film and collapsed in a chair.

  “Hola, chico.”

  I pressed my thumbs to my temples and began vigorously rubbing. “Hello, Marco.”

  “Boy, it sure is crowded today,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be outside shooting with these crowds.”

  “It’s not so bad,” I said. I stood up too fast and my head spun. I had to hold on to the processing machine for balance.

  “At first,” Marco continued, “I was upset that Orville put me in the lab, developing photos, but when I saw how many people were here, I realized he was doing me a favor.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m going to lunch. If Orville is looking for me, I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Oh, one thing. Some of your photos came out really dark.”

  I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. “Which photos?”

  Marco flipped through a stack of character shots. “This roll,” he said, “and this one. Actually, pretty much all of them.”

  “Let me see,” I said, reaching out for the folders. “I could’ve sworn—” Sure enough, they were all underexposed, and not just a little bit.

  “I know. I was really surprised.” Behind Marco’s concern, I could hear something that sounded like satisfaction.

  When a photographer picks up a camera, he goes through a basic checklist before ever taking a picture, starting with adjustments to the exposure settings. There was no way I could have been shooting the wrong exposure all day. There was another possibility, however. Sure enough, from where I was standing, I could see that the digital numbers were all screwy on the processing machine.

  Marco moved to stand next to me. “Oh no!” he said, his hand over his mouth. “You mean the machine has been broken all day?”

  “It’s not broken,” I said. “But we have to reset this thing before it ruins any more film.” As I punched in the proper processing information, I realized that something wasn’t right with the numbers. While the machine had underexposed my film, making my photos come out dark, the numbers I was changing were for overexposure. Sure enough, the stack of photos in the tray was way too bright as if somebody was shooting wide open on high-speed film.

  Marco dropped into Orville’s chair and stretched his arms behind his head. “So”—he arched his eyebrows—“is the machine all fixed?”

  His smug smile was a half-eaten worm in the poison apple of his face. “What is this? A tantrum? Revenge? Are you having a bad hair day?”

  He shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

  “Nobody will buy these,” I said. “What do you think Orville’s going to say?”

  “Orville is never going to find out.”

  “Yes, he will,” I said. But I knew he wouldn’t. Marco probably planned to set the numbers right before anyone knew any better. Nobody else in that lab would know what Marco was doing, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell. Never rat on a rat. At Disney as it was in the skate park.

  He pouted. “Pobrecito, now you’re beginning to understand. All these Rules. They only enforce the obvious. I’m not eating onstage or pointing with one finger. I smile—” His wicked grin turned into a dazzling happy face. “And if that isn’t enough, I have insurance.” From his chest pocket, he produced one of my out-of-character photos, “Suicide King,” in which King Louie was holding a prop pirate gun in his mouth. “You see, chico, Disney World is exactly like the rest of the world where you’re innocent until proven guilty. But with one little exception: once you’re proven guilty at Disney, you’re finished. You get kicked out of paradise and you’re never allowed back in.” He saw me eyeing the picture, and slid it across the counter to me. “You can have this one,” he said. “I have plenty more.”

  The conversation with Marco upset me on levels I barely understood. It wasn’t so much his bitchy attitude (which I had come to expect) or the thinly veiled blackmail attempt (which could indict pretty much the entire DAK character department if it came to light) but the looming threat that lay just beneath the words. When I had first arrived at the Magic Kingdom, I came in as a casualty of the outside world, my wounds still fresh, seeking a sort of sanctuary within the hallowed walls of Disney. As cynical and solipsistic as I had been, Disney World had accepted and comforted me while I healed. I was living proof that Disney Magic could mend a broken heart. I was a convert.

  But Marco was insinuating that this Magic was an illusion, that the world beyond Disney’s border was no different from the world within. His disenchantment was what offended me the most. His attitude was blasphemy, worse than my brother’s stoic practicality, worse than my own early cynicism had been because Marco was a Cast Member. He was a disciple of Disney, and his false witness was a shit stain on the shiny surface of my born-again devotion.

  I left the photo lab intending to go to the cafeteria, but I wasn’t hungry, so I spent my lunch break riding the blue Schwinn bike around backstage, stopping at the monkey habitat and the canoes behind the Tarzan stage, every place that had ever given me good memories. Leaning the bike against a wall behind Asia, I went back onstage through a Cast Members Only door, and headed for the lab. In Dinoland, I came face to face with Nick Elliot, now sporting long hair and a brow ring.

  “Duuuude!” He was with three other guys, a wakeboarder, a pro BMXer, and some other guy I didn’t recognize who had a tattooed nose. “You’re still at Disney? What the fuck!”

  I glanced around to make sure nobody had heard his swearing. “I’m still here,” I said. “Living the dream.”

  “The dream?” Nick shouted. “The dream is being in Daytona for Rick motherfucking Thorne’s bachelor party, bro! We just finished a demo in Tampa, where we all made cash so we’re road-tripping! I wanted to do a pit stop at Disney so I could show these guys the Rat Factory before we hit the bars.” His friends laughed, fist bumps all around. “What do you say? You in?”

  I could feel the Magic unraveling around me. People were noticing Nick and his friends, their tattoos and saggy jeans, the “Chronic Masturbator” T-shirt, the stench of kneepads. Parents pulled their children a little closer, rushing them down the path. “I dunno.” I tried to look casual. I leaned against the Dino-Rama railing, then remembered I was onstage, in wardrobe, and stood upright. My shadow had fled. “I have to get up pretty early tomorrow,” I said.

  “That’s bullshit!” Nick shouted. “Dude, you gotta come. We’re gonna ride the concrete bowls, and then Thorne says he’s buying everybody a hooker!” There were more fist bumps and some inappropriate hand gestures.

  I tried to memorize the guests’ scowling faces as they hurried past us, so I could track them down later and provide some semblance of recovery: free pictures maybe, a Tree of Life photo frame, a stuffed Piglet. “I’ll call you later,” I said, backing toward a Cast Members Only door. I could hear a dozen kids crying, and I was certain it was my fault.

  “I know you, bro!” Nick’s voice rose above the din of Dinoland. “You can’t hide here forever!”

  I was off my game for the rest of the day, and then, to make matters worse, I couldn’t get the air conditioner in my Jeep to work. By the time I got back to the Ghetto, I was dripping sweat. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my roommate. The demands of his regular job and his secret project had kept him away from the house so much I’d begun to imagine that I lived alone, so I was surprised to see his Firebird parked in front of the apartment.

  “Hey stranger,” he said when I walked through the door. “You look like you got thrown in the pool.” The Scotch bottle was with
in reach, but as far as I could tell, he wasn’t drunk yet.

  “My AC died today,” I said.

  Johnny picked up a sweaty highball glass from the counter. “Let me take a look,” he said. “Ah might be able to work some magic.”

  He followed me to the parking lot where I popped my hood. He rested his glass on my bumper, then leaned over the engine and began twisting caps. The sun had begun its descent over the Disney golf course, with a gentle breeze blowing from the direction of the Clermont Muscat vineyards.

  “You’re home early,” I said.

  Johnny opened up his car, and rummaged through a box in the back. “Ah took the day off,” he said. “Ah’m writing up a press release for Project Jericho and ah wanted to get it right.”

  “Project Jericho?”

  “It’s just a working title.” He opened a plastic bottle and poured a bright blue fluid into my engine. “We have so much work to do, ah may have to take tomorrow off too.”

  “Two days of hooky.” In all the time I’d known him, he’d never even been fifteen minutes late. “Can you tell me about it yet?”

  “Not yet—nondisclosure and all that mumbo jumbo—but ah promise you’ll be the first to know as soon as we go public. Oh, that reminds me, we want to have the launch party here this weekend. You don’t mind, do you? It won’t be anything crazy. Just a few close friends.” He lowered my hood and adjusted his Jeff Gordon cap. “Now fire it up and switch on the AC.”

  I started the Jeep, and right away, the cold air began to blow. “Perfect!” I shouted over the engine.

  Johnny smiled. “Ah’m a one-man pit crew.”

  I showered and put on a decent shirt. I had promised to take Calico out to dinner, and I was looking forward to getting beyond this stressful day. Her apartment was only about fifteen minutes away, but the traffic on 1–4 held me up for almost an hour. As usual, Calico’s door was unlocked. I found her in the bathroom, putting on makeup.

  “Humph. I was just about to give up on yew.” I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like she was talking in an English accent. She looked over my shoulder, into the parking lot of her apartment complex. “Which cah did you bring this evening?”

  “My Bentley’s in the shop,” I teased, “so I brought the Jeep.” I moved to hug her, but she turned her back and fiddled with a selection of lip gloss. “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe the traffic. Everywhere you look, overheated Geo Metros on the side of the road. It’s like tourist stew out there.”

  “Is that sew?” she called out from the bathroom. Then, she mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear.

  “Beg your pardon.”

  She stuck her head around the corner. “I said, I’ll be right out. Make yourself at home.”

  I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, then flipped through a fashion magazine that was holding down a pile of bills on her kitchen table. Calico’s kitchen was the most lived-in room in her apartment. It served as an office, a waiting room, a library, and a den. Her kitchen table was stacked with mail, magazines, phone messages, and any other odds and ends that didn’t fall into the category of cosmetics or clothing. About the only thing she didn’t use her kitchen for was cooking.

  The way she decorated her apartment had always intrigued me. She had an eclectic collection of souvenirs, haphazardly displayed beside mundane objects. In the cupboard where she kept her Diet Coke was a bottle of Andoran wine in her birth year. Under a stack of old Vogue magazines, an autographed poster and front-row ticket stubs from Cirque du Soleil. And scattered like Easter eggs on every flat surface, hundreds of photos of herself in provocative poses around Orlando. “Here I am partying at PI—I was so drunk! Oh! And this is me cuddling a tiger cub. Isn’t he gorgeous?” Finding objects d’art among the piles of junk was like making an archaeological discovery.

  “I had the most annoying confrontation with Marco today,” I said, stretching out on her couch. “And then, out of nowhere, an old skater friend of mine showed up at the park, and he was acting completely inappropriate. I spent the rest of the afternoon chasing kids around, giving out stickers and coupons.”

  “A scandal?” Calico appeared in the doorway, wearing bright red lipstick and long, fake eyelashes. “How delicious!”

  “Well, ‘scandal’ might be a little dramatic, but, you know.” My words derailed. “Are you going onstage?”

  She smiled, and I could see a smear of bloodred lipstick across her teeth. “Of course not, dahling. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve never seen you in this much makeup outside the Grotto,”

  “I felt like dressing up tonight,” she said, her voice taut with impatience. “Yew are taking me out to dinner, aren’t yew? I’m famished.”

  She went to get her purse. As I waited on the stair landing, I noticed Venus twinkling through the tree branches, and it reminded me of when we went skating in Celebration, the magical night when we first kissed. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.” I smiled at her, but she gave no indication that she had even heard me. She shut her door and walked toward the stairs, swinging her hips like a catwalk model. I offered my arm, but she brushed past me, knocking me to the side. “Hey!” I cried out, clutching at the handrail. “What’s with you tonight? And what’s with the accent?”

  For the briefest moment, her eyes lit up with anger, then her expression melted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot to tell you. I got approved in Cruella de Vil.”

  “Oh.” I pulled a splinter out of my hand. “That’s terrific. Congratulations! I didn’t even know you were auditioning.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure I had the part.” She had dropped the accent and was normal again.

  “Okay. I get it. You’re Method acting.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “This is my technique.”

  “That’s so Meryl Streep.” Finally, she let me kiss her. “This calls for a celebration. I’m taking you anywhere you want for dinner. Sky’s the limit.”

  “Anywhere, huh?” Calico chewed her lip. “Actually, there’s a new place on I-Drive I’d love to try. It’s called Morton’s.”

  “The steakhouse?”

  “It’s supposed to be good.”

  “But you’re vegetarian.”

  “Yeah, but—I just think it might help me to get into the role.” She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all. I love steak.”

  “Good,” she sniffed in her Cruella voice. “Then let’s go.”

  At that point, almost ten months into my Orlando experience, I was so far gone down the rabbit hole, so loyal to the Disney Dream with its pixie dust and its wishing wells, I was no longer able to distinguish between Wonderland and terra firma. The truth was, I had become everything I despised: a generic clone in a team jersey, censoring the lyrics of my life’s anthem so as not to offend the convention geeks or the honeymooners or anyone else who crossed the border into Never Land. At that time, if Calico had asked me to renounce my citizenship and defect to Disney World, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I was no longer a mere believer; I had pledged allegiance, signed the declaration, and tattooed my soul with Disney’s colorful flag.

  For the rest of the night, Calico practiced her English accent, and I tried to keep a straight face. Over the next few days, she honed the dialect to a perfect North London inflection, and even learned a few words of Cockney rhyme. And from that day forward, she ate red meat with every meal.

  A Whole New World

  The call came late at night, after Calico had fallen asleep. I picked it up without checking the caller ID. “Hey rock star.” Brady’s voice was strained as if he were trying to talk without being overheard. “Can you be packed and ready to go by Friday?”

  A week’s notice was plenty of time to set up my schedule. “Cuba?”

  “Don’t forget your board shorts and your Disney smile.”

  “What happens in Havana stays in Havana.”
>
  “I’ll pick you up at 8 A.M.”

  I didn’t hear from Brady for the rest of the week, but on Friday at 8 A.M. sharp, he pulled up in a VW minibus (“It just showed up on my doorstep.”), and we drove to the airport. I had packed a small duffel bag for the occasion, but it was mostly filled with sun block and aspirin for my forthcoming hangover. Brady had a backpack and an enormous stuffed Mickey, which he tossed gracelessly into the overhead compartment.

  For the short flight to Jamaica, we sat on opposite sides of the plane. In Montego Bay, we breezed through customs and into the terminal where Brady pulled me into a souvenir kiosk and bought a few schlocky Jamaican souvenirs.

  “In case anyone asks,” he said, stuffing a Hey Mon shot glass into my duffel, “you went barhopping, got sloppy, and passed out on Cornwall Beach. You can fill in the details.”

  The next flight was even less eventful. Nobody cared that we were Americans going to an off-limits destination. We were simply a group of pilgrims on an Epicurean quest, looking for revelry and relaxation in a tropical paradise, disconnected from the rest of the world. As the plane banked around the coastline of Cuba, I felt a familiar tingle on the bottoms of my feet, the playful stretch of an old friend, my shadow, who handed me a rum drink with a silent wink.

  Once again, I was off on a bona fide international escapade with real adrenaline and real consequences. I was fulfilling a lifelong dream, but I found that after months of soldering a Disney mien onto my own persona, shaping my entire being into a demeanor of placid Look book certitude, I was unable to define my expectations outside of a Disney framework. I imagined Havana as a real live Magic Kingdom where the characters wore white linen shirts and danced to salsa BGM on crystal blue beaches or an uncharted pavilion in Epcot where the entertainment was cigar rolling and the Drinking-Around-the-World selection was a bottomless mojito.

  Our flight landed without a problem at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, and we navigated through the terminal until we were standing curbside beneath the clear Cuban sky. Within moments, a bright blue 1957 Chevy sedan pulled up. Sure enough, the driver was smoking a cigar, tapping his fingers to the salsa music blaring out of the speakers.