Ancient history time — life at Disney

The Orange County Register is conducting an online poll to determine the best “make-out” ride at Disneyland. Make up your own joke about “It’s a Small World.” At the moment, it’s a landslide for “The Haunted Mansion” and I can certainly understand that. Something about the voice of Paul Frees always got me in the mood for hanky-panky.

In a similar vein, Disneyland is denying rumors that they’ve dismissed actors playing the Jack Sparrow character because women kept flashing them. Yo ho.

via news from me – ARCHIVES – April 18, 2009.

Oh, my, does that take me back.

Way back in the ancient history of time, I worked for the mouse. For about four years, in fact, back in the late 70′s. Backstage, driving a forklift and doing warehouse stuff or supporting the maintenance crews. I worked a lot of graveyard, and dealing with maintenance meant I got access to most of the rides when they were closed and being worked on.

Haunted Mansion might be the best make-out ride today, but the best make-out ride ever had to be the mission to inner space. Why? Because unlike Haunted Mansion, it didn’t have infrared cameras watching you… The personal items that got picked up during ride sweeps and sent off to lost and found were — intriguing. And rarely claimed.

And of women flashing Jack Sparrow? Nothing new. Back in the day, one of my bosses was the former Phantom of the Opera character, retired to a desk job. His favorite trick was to have a security guard haul him out to the main street theater on a hand truck and stick him there acting like a statue. Middle aged women would come up to get their picture take with him, and when they weren’t expecting it, he’d put his arm around them. One too many heart attacks later, Disney decided to retire the character.

Bre’r Bear was a bit luckier. He used to play statue out in New Orleans Square in an alcove near the antique store. At least once a week, women would get their pictures taken with him thinking he was stuffed and haul off their tops for the camera. Only to have him start applauding. Every once in a while, they complained. Mostly they screamed and ran…

Then there was one summer where one of the Alice characters decided to have a lot of fun; if you had an employee badge, she had some free time. She also had an Alice costume that one of her friends smuggled out for her. She lasted half the summer making the rounds, until a mistake created a medical problem and she needed to take time off to deal with it.

No, I didn’t, with or without the costume. But I knew a bunch of guys that year who did, and the costume got rave reviews. Closest I ended up to something like that was a popcorn vendor that I met one day on delivery rounds who suggested we head off to Vegas for the weekend. Since I was seeing someone at the time, I declined…

Oh, FWIW — the rumors of a basketball court in the matterhorn are mostly true; it’s more like a hoop in the maintenance room, you could probably call it a half-court. And there’s nothing quite like watching the sun rise from the top of the Matterhorn while eating lunch, although my favorite lunch spot was down in New Orleans, lunching on the boat in Pirates where they’re firing on the city fort. Only when the park is closed, of course.

By the way, the pirates aren’t wearing any pants. I thought you needed to know that….

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