More Magic!

The pressures of working in any Disney capacity are immense. The employees are called “cast members,” because you are part of the “show” for the “guests”, who in fact the “cast members” really, really “hate” and want to “get rid of” via “kicking their annoying dumpy asses directly in the path of an oncoming monorail.”

Cast members exist solely in underground, labyrinthian chambers far removed from any semblance of fun. This is called “backstage”; any area that a guest might traverse over, under, through, or by is “onstage.” The Contemporary actually had a sign over a mirror in a backstage bathroom that trumpeted “YOU ARE ABOUT TO MAKE MAGICAL MEMORIES!” Because if you don’t, Mickey will fire your ass.

I first discovered this while doing marketing at EPCOT three years ago, when I found large clumps of cast members slumped over crumb-strewn tables in the cast cafeteria. This is not an American phenomenon: actual people from actual foreign nations staff the “countries” at EPCOT, and they were just as droopy as the rest of us. This is what comes of eight hours of being so close to France, if only a simulated version of it.

The next time you are in the process of dumping your entire retirement fund into any Disney park, try finding a door to the cast member areas: You can’t. They blend right in. They’re hermetically sealed. They need to be, because once offstage the cast members dissolve into piles of quiet desperation.