We Had Faces…
The Great Movie Ride is the hardest job I ever had, and it’s not even a little bit close. Shifts as long as 14 hours, entirely on your feet, in a constant state of performance — loading vehicles, parking strollers, smiling, assuring and reassuring guests that this is, in fact, a ride; and that’s all on top of the shows themselves — operating said vehicles, reading audiences, delivering lengthy narrations, hitting cues, and more smiling. Never have I been as physically and emotionally exhausted from work as I was during my five months at The Great Movie Ride. It was the most aggressively demanding work environment of my entire life.
It was also the best job I’ve ever had, and it’s not even a little bit close.
I didn’t meet people like me at The Great Movie Ride, I met people better than me; people who worked harder, dreamt bigger, smiled more, and seemed to tackle life with every bit of enthusiasm and grit one could muster. Every single person I encountered at The Great Movie Ride seemed to embody some form of the adult I was trying to be, and I owe every shred of confidence I have to the people I worked with at that place. And yet, looking back, I was ready to quit after Day 1.
My second day at The Great Movie Ride, I was prepared to go to an attractions manager and tell them to transfer me somewhere else. Let me pick up trash, or help guests scan their tickets at the entrance of the park. Someone had made a huge mistake in thinking I could be placed in such a grueling atmosphere. The Great Movie Ride was not for me. The training alone still gives me nightmares — a three day crash course where you are expected to memorize the duties and responsibilities of seven different roles at the attraction, all rotated around the crucial and necessary Tour Guide; the lifeblood of the attraction, and in some sense, the very fabric and theme of Disney’s Hollywood Studios itself. The Tour Guide loves movies. It’s the perfect job for them, and that’s why this person is the most equipped to take you on this magical journey into the movies. That journey is a 22-minute dark ride, complete with a rehearsed spiel, vehicle operating cues, interactions with both synced animatronics and live actors who appear as a gangster or bandit in two completely separate ride scenarios dependent on what vehicle type you’re on. I expected a few weeks of preparation to fully acquire the knowledge for this task. I was told I would go live on Day 3.
“There’s a learning curve with this ride, and once you get over it, it’s an amazing place to work. You can do it. I wouldn’t tell you that if I honestly thought you couldn’t.”
That was Nicolette’s response to me telling her, “I don’t think I can do this.” Nicolette was my “GMR Mom,” as they are called — the full-time time Cast Member responsible for training College Program participants. Nicolette basically intimidated the living hell out of me, and probably would still if I saw her on the street today. She was tough, fair, precise, and accepted no excuses. Every time I thought I had a piece of the spiel nailed, she corrected a minor detail. She was the embodiment of the Walt Disney plus method, where every interaction, every frame of a movie, every element of the Disney experience can be improved just a little bit more. I was terrified of her, and yet I trusted her implicitly. Whether she knew it or not, she talked me off a cliff. She forced me to raise my game to levels I never thought possible. I memorized the spiel, memorized the cues, and put my handprint on the wall three days later.
There were other veterans that I looked up to in one way or another. Matt Cram and Pat Dooley were like the old wise men of The Great Movie Ride, and I desperately wanted their respect, despite the fact that we were all roughly the same age. Once, I entered the attraction without properly putting my full costume on just as the park had opened. Matt saw me and pulled me to the side, making sure we were out of earshot from others. He didn’t yell or berate me. “Hey man, just make sure you put your jacket on when you’re walking through the park,” he said. “You always want to be in full costume, even if the park just opened.” I complied immediately, and never made the mistake again. He wasn’t out to get me, or trying to lecture me, he was watching out for me.
This happened constantly at The Great Movie Ride. We worked hard, and mistakes were made, but nobody ever got mad. We were corrected, and we didn’t repeat the mistake. Every mishap was re-imagined as a learning experience. I was lucky enough to have relatively few issues during my five months working at the attraction, with my biggest error being the time I instructed Meg Treichel to take her B-show back to dock when my A-vehicle slipped off the track in Finale. We both tried to take the blame for the mistake, which required coordinators to redo the vehicle lineup sheet in the computer and switch out the show boards on dock and at the Casting Director podium. A B-show can never leave an A-show. I still blame Meg.
Other accidents occurred. A vehicle door got stuck on dock, trapping a paraplegic man in the vehicle, forcing me to run the entire track, telling each Tour Guide to improvise with their audience while maintenance took the door apart. Other times the problem could not be fixed, and we were forced to oversee the guest evacuation of the ride.
On one particular night, my gangster did not show up. I hit the cues, and said my lines, and Mugsy never appeared. The animatronics came to life, bullets started to fly, and still no Mugsy. Just as I turned to face the red light being shot out by a non-existent gun, and facing the prospect of the ultimate improvisation (moving through numerous scenes with no script), a gangster appeared in the doorway and screamed something incoherent as I fled the scene and he took over the vehicle to the looks of a bewildered audience. I later learned that my Mugsy had fallen asleep backstage.
Mostly, I’ll remember the faces I saw every day when I came to work. “You can design, and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world,” said Walt Disney, “But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” Nowhere, at any job, within Disney or out in the world, have I found that spirit more alive than at The Great Movie Ride. We lived for those extra experiences that made every long shift completely worth it. Pat Moran and I had a routine worked out where, if one of us was on dock and saw another coming in at the end of the show, the person on the vehicle would exaggerate their exhaustion, wiping their brow and commenting to the first few rows that they were glad it was over. Then the person on dock would walk alongside the vehicle and remind them, “Hey, one more thing,” which led into the, “Oh, and one more thing,” conclusion of the spiel. I don’t even know how we started this or who did it first, but we kept it up for months.
There are countless other memories of these people that are so genuine, if I had ever worked with any of them individually at any other job, they would have been my favorite co-worker by far; and yet I had dozens of them in one single place. Courtney Ann’s personality was infectious and joyful. Patrick Harris seemed to convert energy from nothing. Megan Keyes found ways to laugh at the worst guest interactions. Niki Delatorre interacted with children like a rock star. Erica Longman was chill and down-to-Earth on the worst days, and seemed to put the world into perspective with her presence alone. Michael Fargnoli was talented and creative. Erik Appleyard was smart and passionate, and was always reading advanced business books that went way over my head. I swear, Meagan Stephenson had a smile as wide as the room. Wes Whitten personified class and charisma. Jennifer DeVoll was effortlessly sweet and shy when I met her, but she eventually evolved to be a GMR master who became bandit and gangster trained, and ended up working at the attraction for years. Paul Leggett convinced me to maintain the ironic nature of my performance because I reminded him of character actor Frank Gorshin, best known for playing The Riddler on the 1960s Batman television series (I’m almost certain Paul meant this as a compliment). Literally, one of the single hardest times I have ever laughed was an incident with Leo Kratochvil, Brad Huett, and Kevin Koontz regarding the 2009 Kentucky Derby, that has led to an inside joke between Leo and I for eight years. I still remember the name of the Kentucky Derby winner that year by how I announced it to Kim Cirillo and Melissa Kealey: Mine That Bird!
And of course, there is the incomparable Keith Cannon, of whom I imagine if you polled every person who ever worked at The Great Movie Ride and asked them to name the single most important person to its legacy, about 90% would say Keith and the other 10% are lying and never actually worked there. What surprised me so much about Keith, who has worked at the attraction since its inception in 1989, and will be there 28 years later as it closes, was his unwavering kindness — all the more impressive when you consider that he really had no reason to be kind at all. I cannot imagine how many CP classes he watched roll through, people like myself who stayed five months and returned to our lives, and yet he took the time to get to know every one of us. Once, while I was backstage at Anubis with my robe on, waiting to step onto the platform and save my vehicle, Keith emerged as the bandit from the previous show and started a conversation. He wanted to know where I was from, what my sister was doing on the College Program, were we enjoying the experience? I nearly missed my cue. Late in my program, I asked why he took the time to know everyone when we were clearly not as important to the overall tone and history of the ride. “Your handprint is on the wall, just like mine,” he said. “Once a movie rider…”
If the sudden closing of The Great Movie Ride has robbed me of anything, it is the experience of taking my own children back to Hollywood Studios and pointing at the Tour Guide with the shiny name tag and telling them, “This is what your dad used to do.” Indeed, many Movie Riders older than me have enjoyed such an experience with their own children, and I have felt quite saddened in recent weeks with the realization that my future children will never take that magical journey into the movies. I wanted them to hear the music start on dock, and watch their faces the first time a bandit or a gangster took over the vehicle, and see their spoiler-free surprise when our Tour Guide returned triumphantly in a cloud of smoke on the statue of Anubis. Alas, these future memories were not meant to be. But in a way, The Great Movie Ride will have an influence on my children, whether they know it or not.
Walt Disney once said, “I hope we never lose site of one thing: That it was all started by a mouse.” Despite this being one of his most famous quotes, I’ve often found it to be his most misleading. It didn’t all start with a mouse, it started with a man. When I was a child on vacation, on our last night in the Magic Kingdom, my mom would turn my sister and I around back toward Cinderella’s Castle and remind us, “It all started with a man, a man who had an idea.” I hope all Movie Riders never lose sight of the fact that the spirit of the journey was not in the building, or the animatronics, or the ride itself, but in us. This thing, this collective nostalgia of the movies, came alive through the people who worked there. It lived and breathed through us, and the countless memories of millions of guests who took the journey exist solely because, when the orchestra started up, and the lights dimmed, we willed the magic into existence. We had faces, and it is our faces that symbolize a spirit of The Great Movie Ride that can never die. The building may be gutted, and the wall of handprints may soon be gone, but they will forever be burned into our hearts — a glow of inspiration and creativity that will never be extinguished.
My children will never ride The Great Movie Ride, but they will know the people I worked with. The night before my final ride, my sister reminded me, “The Great Movie Ride isn’t just a ride, it’s the place where you finally made sense in the world.” She’s right, because my place in the world was defined by that most formative moment in time, when the people around me were exactly who I wanted to be. So when I introduce my future son to Pat Moran or Leo Kratochvil, or my future daughter to Meg Treichel or Jennifer DeVoll, they’ll get to see the people who helped make their father who he is, and for a brief moment, a mirror into my existence will reveal itself in the faces of those who made magic happen, not so long ago. So for one final time, please wait until the vehicle comes to a complete stop, gather your belongings, watch your step, and exit to your right. And enjoy the rest of your stay in this thing we call life.
I love you all, and I’ll see you at the movies….
