Cast Member Confidential:. Chris Mitchell

      

      Praise for

       Cast Member Confidential

      “With razor-sharp prose and a keen eye for detail, Chris Mitchell’s account of backstage life at Disney World shows us that the Magic Kingdom isn’t all bedknobs and broomsticks. From pot-smoking princes to ‘protein spills,’ Cast Member Confidential is a witty, compassionate, and ultimately disturbing view of the happiest place on earth. Put it this way: I’ll never trust Winnie the Pooh again.”

      —Kevin Roose, author of The Unlikely Disciple

      “Chris Mitchell’s no-holds-barred account of his year in the Magic Kingdom is harrowing, sordid, and yes, great fun. But it’s heartfelt, too, and intensely readable. Mitchell doesn’t just peek behind Disney’s imposing curtain. He tears the whole thing down.”

      —David Goodwillie, author of American Subversive and Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

      Cast Member Confidential

      CHRIS MITCHELL

      CITADEL PRESS

       Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      PREFACE

      All my life, Disney has been a kind of sanctuary for me, a place that felt safe when everything else was going fuzzy. The music, the movies, the characters—every element so well thought out, it was hard to believe I couldn’t simply jump through a chalk drawing to get to a world where animals sang and danced. So when I hit a rocky road in my life, and desperately needed some magic to solve or at least escape my problems, I turned to the Magic Kingdom for sanctuary and solace.

      In many ways, Disney World is just like one of those animated movies in which everything seems more colorful, more extravagant. It’s a place where everyone is welcome. Whether you’re a pirate or a princess or an anarchic runaway, Disney provides a dress code, teaches you how to behave, and gives you all the tools you need to live happily ever after.

      But there’s danger in losing yourself to a fantasyland of fairies and flying carpets because at some indecipherable moment that fantasy becomes your reality, and the moral code that used to define you blurs. When the only limit is imagination, life can get very strange, very quickly.

      The people I met while I worked at the park were good people. Every one of them signed legal agreements with Disney promising not to talk about their behind-the-scenes experiences. Because I worked for a third-party subcontractor, I signed no such agreement. While I intend to hold nothing back in telling you my story, I have a responsibility to protect the identities of my otherwise innocent fellow Cast Members.

      The people in this book are real, but I have changed their characteristics to mask their true identity from the Corporation. In some instances, I have combined characteristics of people I met and created composite characters. The events in this memoir really occurred. The incidents that happened to me, I describe as accurately as possible. Stories I heard, I present as folklore. At Disney, as in every society, the legend and lore passed down through oral storytelling are a vital part of the cultural experience, so I didn’t leave that out. In certain instances, I have ascribed folkloric episodes to actual (or composite) persons for ease of storytelling. I didn’t include the many rumors that I couldn’t confirm to my satisfaction.

      From my first day as a Disney World Cast Member, people wanted to know what it was like to be a part of Walt’s great machine. I would try to describe the onstage atmosphere or the backstage culture or the after-hours social events, but I could never quite capture the essence. How could I describe a cartoon dream world? What could I say to make them understand the challenging circumstances that drove me there in the first place? The only way to explain it is to start at the beginning.

      You are about to discover what really happens behind the scenes at Disney World. Please keep your hands and arms inside at all times. Things are about to get a little bumpy….

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      My gratitude goes out to the people who helped shape this book: to my mother whose strength and courage I will admire forever, to my family, who has always been incredibly supportive, even when my actions made no sense at all, to my agent, Nancy Love, and my editor, Richard Ember. To the beautiful and talented Ann Christianson, who patiently read a thousand versions of this manuscript, and to Shane Coburn, who helped shape my most convoluted thoughts into words. Most of all, I want to thank the people I can’t name on these pages, the Disney Cast Members who would get fired or worse if the Corporation found out about their involvement: to the Madame of the Safe House and Spiderguy and the Girl of Paradise Cove, thank you for taking the risk and letting me in on your secrets. My biggest thanks of all to Walt Disney, whose vision has meant so much to so many.

Cast Member Confidential

      Contents

      Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

      Heigh-Ho

      When You Wish Upon a Star

      I Wan’na Be Like You

      I Just Can’t Wait to Be King

      Whistle While You Work

      Cruella de Vil

      We’re Your Friends ’Til the Bitter End

      Yo Ho! Yo Ho! A Pirate’s Life for Me

      Something There That Wasn’t There Before

      You Ain’t Never Had a Friend Like Me

      Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

      Part of Your World

      A Spoonful of Sugar

      You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!

      Just Around the River Bend

      A Whole New World

      Beauty and the Beast

      Painting the Roses Red

      I Will Fly No More

      Circle of Life

      Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

      Nobody has ever died at Disney World.

      I discovered this curious truism on a trip to Orlando the year Tony Hawk landed the 900. I was there for work at the time, interviewing a professional rollerblader who worked as a stunt monkey in the Tarzan show.

      It was a perfect September evening in Frontierland. The sky was North Shore blue and cloud free from Saint Pete’s Beach in the west to Cocoa in the east. Butterflies were dancing to the banjo music, chasing beehives of hot pink cotton candy and buckets of popcorn that shone like doubloons in the last rays of the setting sun. It was a waxed planter day, a point break day, a powdery double-diamond day where anything at all was possible.

      I was leaning up against a railing, the murky water of Tom Sawyer’s Island at my back, when a baritone recording announced the beginning of the Magic Kingdom parade. Music rose up out of the landscaping and parade floats began to appear. My interview subject, Nick, had assured me that I would recognize him when the Tarzan float rolled up, and sure enough, he was hard to miss, dressed in a unitard of brown fur, doing cartwheels and flips in his Rollerblades. The audience was entertained by the stunt monkey, but they were enthralled with the dreadlocked bodybuilder in the loincloth, earnestly flexing his muscles on top of the float. Tarzan was the star of this show.

      I could hardly hear myself think over the din of the Tarzan soundtrack, but I had no problem hearing the woman next to me when she belted out a glass-shattering scream. She was pointing at the dark expanse of lagoon that separated the flowerbeds of Frontierland from Tom Sawyer’s Island, screeching like she had just found a crocodile in her cereal bowl. As I watched, the surface of