Behind the Scenes with a Walt Disney World Entertainer

For most families that visit "The Happiest Place on Earth" what they see and experience usually tends to amaze and excite. I have a different point of view. Don't get me wrong, I met tons of friends that I still keep in contact with and lots of fun and exciting memories.

My first day of training for the Walt Disney World character department was one that was unlike any other day I ever had. Instead my day started with a physical warm up that begin with stretches and jazz squares. For the non-movers/dancers a jazz square is a four step that involves making a square pattern with your feet. Anyway, this was a first for me, seeing that I had only taken one modern dance class in college at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (known at the time of my attendance as Northeast Louisiana University). I attended Forest High School in Forest, LA where the only type of arts class was piano lessons at the student's parents expense. Just so you know I graduated with around 40 students in my class. There were around 450 students in the school-K through 12th. Okay, enough about my small school. You get the point.

Now back to my story. After the little dances and stretches we begin to "animate". Before working at Disney I thought animating was something I couldn't do. I thought this involved drawing, however, this actually involved communicating without words. It was basically miming. Since we couldn't talking (all though I knew many people who did) in costume. The trainers went through many different situations where guest would be around us and various circumstances would arise. For example, if someone was having a heart attack or some other medical emergency we were instructed to say goodbye to everyone in the line behind the person having the attack and get the attention of our greeter (a glorified body guard) and leave the situation. Or if someone is wanting to have their picture taken and they had their shirt off (guys and sometimes girls with just bras) we had to refuse it due to Disney reputation.

After a few more interesting hypothetical situations we moved on to our first day "in costume". This was was quite different than anything I'd ever encountered. One of our trainers gave us a quote. "Being in a Disney costume is like being in a warm and cozy sleep blanket on a camping trip. But instead of being in the mountains in the winter you are covered head to toe on the beach in the middle of August." This couldn't have been more true. Just imagine if you will-You have a hang over from the night before and there is a bead of sweat that is moving down your noise, tickling all the way down, while you have an inch on your side that you can't get to on your back because you can't reach it. All the while, it's seven o'clock in the morning and a five year old girl is telling you how Buzz LightYear is her favorite Disney character. There's some Disney magic for you folks.

My first day in a disney park was a day when I was playing Rafaki from the Lion King. It was the summer and of course it was crowded. I couldn't see anything because this character's head had terrible vision. I was praying to hear my trainer tell us when it was time to go in. When I finally did hear him tell me this, I didn't know where to go. So I started in the direction I thought I had come from. This was the wrong way. I found out by falling over on the ground. What I still to this day think was a small person or a kid was the one was made this happen.

One of my favorite memories is a time when I was playing Pluto and my greeter stepped in the line and whispered close to me, "Pluto we have a very special guest that has come to see you today". It was a little boy that was around 8 or 9 years old that was blind. The boy's mother took his hands and placed it on my "fur" and told him where he was touching. I have to admit it, my eyes got a little watery. These are just a few of the memories.