- Walt Disney World employees, also known as cast members, are trained in the art of creating a positive experience for guests.
- But some visitors to the famed Orlando park don't make things easy for the people who work there.
- Business Insider spoke with eight former Walt Disney World cast members to get an idea of the most annoying guest behaviors.
- From overly-aggressive pin-hunting to blaming cast members for bad weather, here are things that are sure to annoy or concern Walt Disney World cast members.
Walt Disney World cast members interact with a ton of guests every year.
As many as 20.4 million people visited the park in 2016. Not all of cast members' interactions with guests are going to be positive and seamless.
Former Disney World cast member John Quagliano told Business Insider that most guests are perfectly nice to cast members.
"But at the same time a lot of people can be really testy," he said.
He added that he understood why some Disney visitors might be on edge at the park.
"People have just spent this much money to have this wonderful vacation and come to Florida, and then all of a sudden they get to the park and they realize, 'Whoa. My family and I maybe have to stand in line for 20 minutes.' Or, 'It's raining and now the ride's closed down,'" said Quagliano, who worked in the Magic Kingdom. "A water's $3. So they get thirsty and they say, 'I just spent four grand on a hotel, how is the water $3?'"
But there are certain things that former cast members said you can avoid doing to avoid antagonizing cast members. Business Insider recently spoke to eight people who participated in the Disney College Program at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Here's a number of annoying guest behaviors that they said they wished people would drop:
Getting mad while waiting in line
At Walt Disney World, the lines can get long. And heat and boredom can cause tempers to flare.
But one former cast member, who operated rides like The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and The Mad Tea Party, told Business Insider that, now that she's worked at the park, she'd "never get upset at a merge point when a cast member lets all of the FastPass line go and not standby."
"There's a certain expectation in terms of how that is done, and knowing that, I am more than willing to be patient with the cast member at merge because I know they're just doing their job," the ex-cast member told Business Insider.
Ignoring cast members' instructions — especially when it comes to safety precautions
"A lot of guests sort of ignored safety-related directions," Devin Melendy, a former cast member and author of "Devin Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary," told Business Insider.
Melendy, who worked in Frontierland, said she often helped with crowd-control during park parades. She said she felt "uncomfortable" whenever she asked guests to move to a better location and often got attitude in response.
Quagliano agreed, adding that he sometimes encountered guests who were reluctant to comply with requests like moving strollers to the side to avoid blocking foot traffic.
"We don't tell people what to do just for the sake of doing it," Melendy said. "Disney is very devoted to safety and making sure that guests are happy and in a safe zone. We don't do it for fun. It's so everyone can enjoy the park and the parades in a safe manner."
Debating height requirements for rides
"You'll have guests try to argue about the height requirement when they're at the front of the line," former Disney cast member Christina Hartless told Business Insider. "You'll have guests who try to stuff their kids' shoes."
Hartless worked at the now-defunct Epcot attraction The Sum of All Thrills
The ride, which allowed guests to custom-design a simulated roller-coaster experience, had two height requirements. You had to be 48 inches tall to ride and 54 inches tall to use the feature that would flip the attraction upside down.
As a result, Hartless said she often encountered people who'd try to persuade cast members to look the other way when it came to height requirements.
"I once had a family tell me that they had come all the way from Brazil just so their three year old could ride that ride," she said. "Which I kind of doubted."
Fortunately, Walt Disney World's website allows you to check which rides have height requirements before you waste your time waiting in line and bugging cast members.
See the rest of the story at INSIDER
0 Comments