Children Down the Slide

Have I told you all how much I love my job here at Disney World?

I don’t think I have even explained what I do here. Well, I am working in attractions in Dinoland, USA in the Animal Kingdom. I have two huge responsibilities there. 1) I work as an usher on the “Finding Nemo the Musical” and 2) I work in the Boneyard helping kids dig up fossils. Both jobs are really fun and I like what is going on at each location.

Finding Nemo has been a nice stroll through the park for me, not so much for its easiness, or pleasantry of it, actually it is like a stroll up a steep hill in the middle of a haunted wood at 2:00am in the morning. Don’t ask me about that analogy, I just wanted to type something cool. When I first started in the theater, I was freaked out! There is so much going on in a show that fits 1700 people in five different shows per day. All the cast members were yelling at all the guests, telling them to go to the exact same location, “Go up or down, go up or down”. It is a busy place and there is a lot going on. Then once the lights go down, we have to run around and catch people using flash because apparently flash photography can cause a portal to open and send people to some sort of netherworld. There is always something going on. As time passed, I got sick of the show. I memorized the show, verbatim; the repeated tasks of seating people in a strange order became boring; and trying to figure out what all my fellow cast members who speak Spanish were saying really killed me! But it all got better once I finally decided “hey, this show has a lot of cool stuff in it!” The world of the show opened up for me as I started to look for all the little details of each scene and memorize the musicality of the music. Now, I love Kung-Fu Dory versus Crazy Dory, I appreciate the different Crushes and their style of personifying the greatness that is Crush, the nearly always flawed cue of the school of fishing singing opera at the mention of Sydney. It is now awesome to work at the Nemo show and enjoy the Air Conditioning as I sit to find the next little detail that probably only cast members can seem to learn in the first place.

The Boneyard has experience after experience of excitement! Most people in my work location hate the Boneyard because it has a lot of kids who play in it. I myself love kids and the experience there has just shown me how much I want kids and to raise a stellar family. Maybe some background on the Boneyard is in order. The Boneyard is a large dig site, a playground is you will, with slides, ropes, roaring dinosaur tracks, waterfalls, xylobones, and other similar things found in your regular dig site outside of Disney World. It is a place where kids just get to play and have fun as kids should. My favorite part has been the slide in the position of tower. As I sit up at the top of the tower, I get to see and talk to all sorts of kids while they wait for me to give them permission to go down the slide. The greatest are the kids who have no idea what I’m talking about. There are all sorts of foreign kids who come along and just look at me like I am a retard. Then there are the kids who come along and when I ask them “Where are you from?” they respond “ummm Earth!” “Really, you are from Earth? That is cool, me too!” . . . “No you’re not!” And then there was the kid who told me “I’m from my mom and dad.” Oh, that is totally new information. Seriously, these kids are hilarious. On the ground level I get to hide behind the cave and scream at them like a dinosaur as they come around the corner and laugh at them as they run away in sheer terror. The best were the three girls who did it to me first. They roared at me, I roared at them. The process repeated, until it arrived at the point that I got freaked out and I ran for the hills as the three little girls chased me down and attacked me like the ferocious raptors they are.

Guys, working for Disney is a blast, there are so many fun memories that I am creating and I know this is going to continue to be a great experience until it is all over in August. Bring it on crazy kids, I’m loving every minute of it!