Friday, May 26, 2000
by Kevin Yee
By "costume," what I mean is in fact
"uniform." I won't be talking today about the Character Department,
though they might be part of the Costuming Department (I'm not quite sure).
Costuming usually refers to the place all us ordinary Joe's — foods, attractions,
merchandise, custodial, Main Gate — had to go to get our uniforms.
Deserved or not, people who work in the Costuming Department at Disneyland
have a reputation among Park Cast Members. Naturally, like any workplace
there is immense diversity of personalities, but by and large people tend
to believe the worst in humanity lands in Costuming. It makes sense, these
onstage CMs tell each other, that the Casting Department (who decides
where to assign new employees) would put people backstage if they weren't
quite ready for interaction with guests: the prettiest and handsomest
people end up in the high profile attractions, those not quite so striking
go to foods and merchandise locations, and the remainder gets vanquished
to areas not seen by the general public.
There is a logic to that argument, of a sort, but I've found that it
doesn't really hold true (a hot property like me working in Foods is case
in point). Unfortunately, the perception alone does some damage; people
tend to treat Costuming CMs with less respect, leading some them to treat
the onstage CMs with disdain, and voila the prejudice now has some basis
in fact, due to this vicious cycle.
My experience with Costuming is mixed; I know some really nice people
there and I've encountered a roughly equal number of obnoxious and rude
folks from that department. Regarding the distribution of the workforce
on the basis of beauty, I can only say that in nine years there has been
precisely one female CM there I thought was cute. Maybe my standards are
too high.
The Costuming Department used to
occupy most of the ground floor of the (old) Administration building.
When you view the primeval world from the DL Railroad, Costuming was directly
behind those sets you see. It's divided into two halves; the female CMs
had about six windows to serve them, while the men had eight or nine.
Is this a reflection of the pre-60's attitudes that reigned when Disneyland
was built? Possibly. It generally seems that women had to wait longer
than men to change costumes.
Basically, there are two different kinds of transactions possible here.
If you just need a fresh version of the same costume you have now, you
do a costume EXCHANGE: hand them the soiled costume pieces and tell them
your sizes; in a flash you get clean replacements. This is always nice
and quick (once you get through the line, that is). One note here: nine
years can do a lot of damage to your waistline and Costuming becomes a
depressing place to visit!
If you need a different costume altogether, you wait at a different
window and do a costume CHANGE. This takes longer as they have to call
up your account by swiping your ID card's magnetic stripe and check in
your old costume, then issue you a new one, verify your sizes, and actually
go get the sucker. At least nowadays they don't have a paper trail to
worry about &endash; you used to have thin 3 x 5 forms they would fill
out, checking off what you were issued, and making you sign it. Somebody
had to file all that junk. Sigh.
Window #10, which belonged to Costuming, is where they issued nametags.
If you lose your nametag you can buy a replacement for $5. I suppose people
sometimes SAY they lose theirs and buy a new one, but actually keep it
for themselves for after they quit. This is not allowed of course. In
more recent years I've heard stories that they don't ask for nametags
when you quit, but I get the impression this is not very consistent.
Window #10 is also where "found" nametags are turned into. Guess what
this means? Yes, that's right. You can walk up there, hit that little
bell to get their attention, and claim your name is Jose, do they have
your nametag there? Sure enough, they find one, and off you go with a
free souvenir.
I just mentioned that little attention-getting bell. It's not just a
noisemaker, it was actually sophisticated enough to know which window
rang first and is therefore the next one which should be helped. Pushing
it more than once did not engender the noise, even. Some CMs, clever
enough to figure out that multiple attacks on the button did no good,
reached inside and found the button which the window attendant would push
when he finally did arrive. Pushing that released the temporary blackout
on noise, and a rhythm of pushing outside, then inside buttons could create
an incessant ringing. That WOULD get the attendants' attention, of course,
but it only annoyed them. They liked to tell such idiots that constantly
resetting the bell had the effect of making them always last on the list
of which window to help next, which frequently amused me.
Outside the women's issue was an area where they stack all the laundry
bags on their way to the cleaner (an outside company). This is a comfortable
place to lounge if, for example, you are waiting for your girlfriend to
come out from her Space Mountain locker &endash; why must women take forever
to change? No, it does NOT smell bad on those laundry bags; everyone gets
a new costume every day anyway. Oh, and the lockers are not really in
Space Mountain itself, so you can abandon those plans to bring your night-vision
video camera on the ride. It's just called that because their lockers
are attached to the back side of the Space building.
At the end of every shift you are
given fifteen minutes "walking time." So if you're scheduled
off at 17:00 (remember, the park is on a 24 hour time clock, not a 12
hour one), you get to leave at 4:45 and have fifteen minutes paid time;
not to "walk" to your car as the name might imply, but to change your
costume. Thus, the park can reasonably expect you to have a fresh costume
each day since you are paid the time it takes to exchange it. However,
the majority of people just go home right after work and change the costume
before their next shift.
Costuming is a big department; they have tons upon tons of costume pieces.
Any given location will need several things: male shirts, vests, (bow)
ties, jackets, pants, belts (you supply your own shoes and socks), female
shirts, skirts, bows / ribbons, female jackets. Many locations have specialized
pants / jackets, so even those items are specific to that place. Now keep
in mind they need to have a wide variety of sizes on hand constantly.
A location may have 40-80 CMs &endash; and in fact they need three times
that amount of the item because some are always away being cleaned! So
a Blue Bayou vest, for example, size 44 (a common size), might be worn
by 30 people, meaning they need 120 of them. Just for the one vest, just
that size!! You can imagine how large the whole department is.
The new costuming building, as seen from the Lion King
tram boarding area.
As a consequence, when they decided to build DCA they looked into overhauling
the whole Costume division. They built a new facility close to the Pet
Kennel that will supply costumes to DL and DCA from the same area &endash;
centralizing allows them to keep down costs. DL CMs started to use the
new costume facility in 1999, and the old one has been abandoned.
Not that CMs like it particularly.
Here's what Dawson had to say about it when it debuted (note that some
of the problems he makes mention of have been fixed in the meantime):
I took a tour of it and I hated it
from the start. We first went over to the issue window which is also coed.
The windows are separated by lands rather than classification (security,
attraction, food, etc.) I've only used it once so there wasn't that long
a line, but could you imagine a Saturday at around 1600 in the Tomorrowland
line.
The locker rooms are a joke. The worst part
of it is you need to clear out the locker after every shift. The window
hours are staying the same so if you are ever called in for a shift
that starts at 0600 or earlier, you're screwed.
Another crappy thing is you need to bring
your shoes to and from work every day. I asked them during the open
house if they would ever consider putting a bunch of small lockers that
would fit shoes up along the walls. The lady giving the tour didn't
know what she was talking about and got a little defensive. She replied
by telling me that they have purse lockers in the area where you could
keep shoes, which means she was suggesting that we walk to the location
in our street shoes or bare foot. I also mentioned that not all locations
have these lockers, and I told her I worked backstage. That's when she
got defensive. She told me that I didn't have to wear a costume. I told
her I would rather wear a costume and she kept repeating that I don't
have to have a costume.
The way some people are getting around it
is by changing their dirty clothes with clean clothes and instead of
putting it back in their locker, they get on the shuttle with their
costume and store it in their car. No one questions it because of all
the "fast track" people. Carolyn even goes as far as coming to work
in her lead costume and bringing her street clothes in a bag. Another
way people are trying to get around it is by turning in their costume
and then picking up a fresh on the way in. That's what I'm doing. That
and not even changing my costume.
Dawson mentioned something pretty
important here: FastTrack (not to be confused with the ride-reservation
system called FastPass). This is a relatively new program at
Disneyland, designed to streamline the waiting times for costume changes.
The idea is that you get issued more than one version of your costume
at a time, and you wear the costume home. Because you have multiple versions,
you can do this several days in a row without needed to stop by Costuming
and adding to the lines there. When all your clothes are soiled, you can
bring them all in at once, and do the EXCHANGE version to get a whole
lot of new clean ones.
The result is that Disneyland still does the laundry, and they have
to buy several thousand extra costume pieces they might otherwise not
need, but it keeps lines down. More importantly, it allows CMs to wear
their costumes home. In the car. Stopping by the supermarket. Buying beer
at the local gas station. A representative of Disneyland, in the outside
world, no longer held to the Disney standard. This would not have been
popular with previous management incarnations.
FastTrack tested successfully in 1998 in the New Tomorrowland. Operationally,
this seems to work. It will gear up for a broader CM audience in 2000.
Apparently it works well in conjunction with the new Costuming building.
Also on the drawing board are new
Costumes for many areas of the Park. Blue Bayou, for example,
recently switched over a tuxedo-like setup that is a long overdue revision
of their costume. Some areas will get Land-specific costumes that resemble
each other — maybe only a vest is the difference between the various locations.
The idea behind that is to enable shifting; the workers can be moved around
easier. DCA will also be getting costumes with similar ideas behind them.
I'm happy to see new Costumes in Disneyland, though I will miss the
old ones. I miss the Parking Lot blues / yellows, and even the newer Lot
costumes are being replaced by ones that match the trams (white with a
red stripe). Apparently the Lot CMs will have costume lockers in the
new parking structure, which are "magically" able to replace soiled costumes
with clean ones overnight. They will have locker rooms right there in
the Structure!
Long gone costumes for the Blue Bayou Server and Lead.
I tend to miss the old costumes anywhere: Matterhorn, ODV's yellows,
Blue Bayou. Sigh. Yester-Disneyland, if only we could go back.
Enough of this stage-setting nonsense! It's time for a few good stories.
Like... Canoe Races.
Next up: Cast Member Canoe Races
|
Are you a CM or a former CM? I would love to hear and share your stories! E-mail me! Stories and comments you submit become property of and may be published on this site; we normally don't publish last names of current CMs, but if you wish to remain anonymous altogether or do not want me to share your stories, please let me know when you e-mail me. — Shoshana NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in reader-contributed stories do not reflect those of Cast Place or MousePlanet. CM – Cast member; company lingo for “employee.” Empowerment Evolution – The 1995 attempt by newer park management to introduce modern accountability and market forces into the stodgy Disneyland methodology and power hierarchies. The name was meant to “empower” rank and file employees by removing layers of their management, though now there are more managers than ever. TPO – Theme Park Operations; the division of the Disneyland hierarchy that actually works in the theme park itself. TDA – Team Disney Anaheim; the name of the on-site administration building. Area manager – used to be responsible for an entire land, with all business divisions in the area reporting to him. Area supervisor – the immediate boss for location supervisors who divide up a department of intelligently grouped locations. The area supervisors in turn reported to the area manager. Nowadays all supervisors and area supervisors have been replaced by managers and assistant managers — the same idea, but smaller “business units" than a department; usually just one location in fact. RFT – “A” status; a full-time hourly employee. RPT – “B” status; an hourly employee five days a week but just not quite 40 hours usually. CR – “C” status; an hourly employee who works weekends year-round and five days a week during all school holiday periods (including summer and Christmas break). CT – a part-time hourly employee who works five days a week during all school holiday periods (including summer and Christmas break). No seniority, so shifts worked are usually quite short. Locate the employment center to fill out an application, and they will call you for an interview (dress nicely, just shy of an actual suit). Once there, follow these rules, in this order of importance: 1. Smile and be very friendly. They want outgoing people.
2. Do not let the group interview throw you off balance. They want outgoing people who can “perform” a little bit.
3. Do not worry about job (in)experience. They don't care. They want friendly people, not experienced and/or hardened people.
4. Do your best to convince them you already have a Disney attitude: you want to work with people, you're a team player, and you would consider this a dream job (however, don't overdo it on the crazy-Disney-fan side either). Strike a nice balance.
5. Did I mention the importance of a smile? 
|
