Secrets of working at Disneyland from those who play princesses and mice (10 photos)

How magic is created in the most famous amusement park.





Disneyland workers around the world are guided by this principle - if everyone believes that Disney characters are real, they will be real. That is, there is only one Snow White, one Goofy, one Mickey Mouse, they left the screen and are now in front of you. And it doesn’t matter that this is a man in a suit, and that other Disney parks also have people in cartoon costumes, a park visitor must believe that he has met the real Mickey. This is the kind of atmosphere that employees, who are officially called actors there, should create in the parks. Moreover, everyone becomes a cast member, from the cashier and attraction operator to the official Donald Duck of the park.



Gaston.

The most respected actors are those who portray cartoons. The casting for the roles of princes and princesses is serious and large-scale. Height, face, voice, figure, skin color (blind casting won’t work here), the resemblance to the hero should be maximum. Actors' weight is closely monitored. If he has gained a little weight, or on the contrary, his pants are hanging, this means that the actors are removed from the role and transferred to another position.

In adult films there are two age categories for actresses: teen and milf, and in Disneyland there are also two: princess, and then witch/fairy godmother. Princesses are usually girls no older than 25 years old.





By the way, the actress playing, say, Cinderella is referred to as “Cinderella’s friend.” This is so that the actors don't ruin the Disney magic. For visitors, she is Cinderella, but the actress understands that she is not a real Cinderella. Therefore, they explain to her that she is a friend of the real Cinderella. (Seems a bit like a cult).



How will Aladdin explain the fact that he is being photographed with Jafar?

Each actor is given a manual that says why his character ended up in Disneyland in the first place. For example, Aladdin thinks that Disneyland is an illusion that the Genie has placed him in. Everything is according to the Stanislavsky system.



Sally.

For those who play in costumes that cover their faces, it’s a little easier. They are selected by height - for Donald Duck about 1.5 m, for Goofy no higher than 1.8 m.

Wearing big, shaggy costumes in hot Florida or California, the actors quickly become exhausted, so after 30 minutes of work, the characters retire to secret rest rooms where they can take their heads off and clear their heads. The actor who portrays the blue monster Sally from Monsters, Inc. has the hardest time of all. The total weight of Sally's costume is about 36 kg. In such costumes you often have to walk in an unnatural pose, tilting your head too much so that you can see through the small window in the character’s mouth where to go and with whom to take a photo.



After each working day, all suits are washed and disinfected. The actors spray a special spray into the character's head, and the rest of the costumes are taken to a Disney dry cleaner. Park employees say that before, costumes were not given due attention; one actor would take off his costume, the second would immediately put it on, literally getting into someone else’s panties. After an outbreak of scabies, management revised the rules for using the suits.



Tarzan and Jane.

Visitors often pester the heroes. They don’t just ask to take a photo with them, they literally harass them. Hot visitors who found themselves in a fairy tale constantly touched Tarzan, so he was removed from American Disneyland.

When Captain Jack Sparrow (in the sense of a friend of the captain) first appeared in the park, visitors during a photo shoot would sometimes throw a hotel room key or a note with a phone number into his pocket and whisper in his ear something like “I know you’re not Depp.” , but I don’t care,” “I’m waiting in the parking lot in the evening, don’t take off your suit.”



Johnny Depp with animatronic Captain Jack Sparrow at Disneyland.

The actors have secret signs that they give to other actors and security if one of the visitors bothers them too much. In an emergency, they should cross their arms over their chest.

By the way, the actors call conflicting visitors “treasures” because they really want to bury them in the ground, like a treasure chest.



"The Haunted Mansion."

Disneyland amazes adults no less than children. Therefore, sometimes adults behave even worse than their children. First, adult visitors, who apparently believe that everything in the park is real, leave their children in the care of the actress portraying Mary Poppins. It's Mary damn it, Poppins, as the Guardians of the Galaxy character said!

Secondly, adults constantly strive to make love on attractions. Attraction operators keep a close watch on them via surveillance cameras, which many visitors, struck by the Tinker Bell fairy's magic wand, forget about. One former employee recalls once using speakerphone to ask a visitor to stop spitting body fluid into the water during a ride.

Third, about once a month someone scatters the ashes of a relative in the Haunted Mansion.



Adults and children are not allowed to walk around the park dressed as their favorite Disney characters (at most you can wear a cap with Mickey Mouse ears), because, as already mentioned, there must be one of all the heroes in the park. And if not one at a time, then visitors don’t need to know about it. The heroes clearly follow pre-approved routes, so one Belle’s friend will never run into another Belle’s friend, just as park guests will never run into two Aladdins. If someone asks a park employee if someone is wearing a Donald Duck costume, then the answer “I don’t know” is unacceptable. You have to pretend that you don’t understand what we’re talking about at all. What suit? Do you mean a cap and a sailor's shirt? Donald Duck himself walks. I wonder if they are taught to explain why Donald walks around without pants when his anthropomorphic friends always wear pants.

The post was created based on an article on the Bloomberg website.