6 Things Nobody Tells You About Working at Disney World

#4. Visitors Want to Molest the Costume 

 

As Mickey, you get a hand on your crotch a lot. Character training incorporates a male and a female class, because no matter what gender you are, you need to be able to play both, depending on the character. There are plenty of girls who apparently made good Mickeys, because multiple women would slip them room keys or reach out and grab a handful of mouse crotch. (I don't know if that's a fetish or what. Would they insist that you wear the costume to bed?) Other visitors just want you to break character -- it starts with poking and pinching, although some people will straight up punch you in the gut to see if you'll make a noise. I once posed with a bunch of teenage boys while in Minnie Mouse costume. On the count of three, two guys clamped down on my hands and the guys on my feet grabbed them and lifted them up in the air while a fifth guy got a picture of his buddies posing around Minnie's bloomers. Then they ran like hell. Why that is the picture you want to use to remember your time at the Magic Kingdom is beyond me, but they clearly came into it with a plan.
In general, there seems to be a weird desire by visitors to "debunk" the idea of Disney characters, like they're blowing the lid off of some scam. The official position of the Walt Disney company is that all characters are real and there is only one of each of them, and the whole park is organized so that no one will ever see two of a character at once -- Mickey is never dining in a restaurant and walking by in a parade at the same time. And we always have to be ready with an explanation of their schedules, because adults try to trip you up, saying they just saw a character across the park, and now here they are over here as well. You have to try to keep a straight face while pointing out that "Well, you had time to walk over here, so Mickey did, too!"


It's so strange to me, because they're the ones who've decided to spend thousands of dollars to come to Disney World for one of their presumably rare vacations. You paid for the very magic we're trying to preserve here, guys. No one wants to see the wires when they go to a magic show, and no one really wants to see five Cinderellas smoking cigarettes in an alley.
But I think just seeing someone in costume messes with people's brains. Visitors will whisper insane stuff to me, like "So glad we got to see you, the kids don't know we're getting divorced after this trip" or "We haven't told the kids yet that their mom has cancer." Why the fuck would you tell Mickey that? Or a park employee dressed as Mickey?

Speaking of Mickey, every single terminally ill Make-a-Wish kid gets to meet him, and that's hard. And because of how often sick kids visit the park, it can be a painfully regular thing. The Fairy Godmother has it hardest: Kids ask her to cure them. If I made it to the second set without sobbing, it was usually a good day Continue !