In Florida in the summer, it rains every day. Every. Day. Never for very long, though. One particular summer, you could practically set your watch by it: the rain would begin every afternoon at approximately 4:25, pour torrential buckets for about 45 minutes, then abruptly stop, and the sun would be shining again within the half-hour.
I know this because I spent nearly every single one of those days on Main Street, USA at Magic Kingdom, assisting the Disney characters. On at least a couple occasions, I drew the short straw and got the unenviable task of standing out in the sideways rain, under a virtually ineffective umbrella, and informing guests that the characters could not come out to take pictures and sign autographs because it was raining.
Because clearly, this was not a conclusion they could draw themselves.
Nobody ever asked. Not ever. But on one particular day, as I stood there, tired, soaked, and VERY grumpy, feet squelching in waterlogged shoes, a woman came waddling up to me. Though she was wearing a belt purse and a pair of crocs, it was clear that the one thing she had NOT worn for her entire vacation so far was sunscreen, because she was disconcertingly lobster-red from head to toe. Apparently, it had not occurred to this woman that her vacation would contain weather in any form, because she was also trying to stay dry by holding a shopping bag over her head.
“Excuse me,” she said, moving toward me as fast as her crocs would allow her. When she reached me, she delivered the most astonishing news I had heard all day. “It’s raining.”
I bit my lip, hard. Thou shalt not address guests as ‘Captain Obvious’, I reminded myself.
The woman continued. “Can you do something about that?”
Okay, now that you’ve had a good hard think on that one, I’ll state that, in retrospect, she was probably asking for a partial refund on her tickets. But that’s not where my brain went, in the moment. In the moment, I thought exactly what you did: What…the fuck…does this woman think I can do about the weather?
Then I got a wonderful, awful idea.
During my entire Disney career, spanning nearly a decade, I can name only three occasions where I was intentionally downright snarky to a guest. This was one of them. This was the BEST one. Did I mention I was tired, soaked and grumpy?
I grabbed the radio off my belt and pretended to key the talk button.
“Main Street to Control,” I said. “Put up The Dome.”
The Dome–tourists at Disney already believe that the seagulls, ducks and rabbits that live in the theme park are animatronic, that the turkey legs they sell in frontierland are actually emu, and that we keep Walt’s cryogenically frozen head in a vault under Cinderella Castle. Why wouldn’t they also believe that, in defiance of all laws of physics and common sense, Disney had constructed a transparent, retractable dome covering the entire property, an area twice the size of Manhattan, that allowed for total climate control?
I pretended to hold a further brief conversation with ‘Control’. “Uh-huh. No, just Magic Kingdom. What? Yeah, that’s perfect. Okay, I’ll tell the guest. Thanks, Main Street out.”
As I clipped the radio back onto my belt, I glanced at the time on the display. 4:55.
“They’re taking care of it, ma’am,” I told her in my most authoritative voice. “Should be about fifteen minutes.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, thank you!” She gushed. As I stood there, slightly stunned that she’d actually believed me, she turned on her be-crocked heel and waddled back to her husband, waiting under a tiny awning that didn’t do much to shelter him. “Honey, they’re taking care of it!” She called to him as she went.
Fifteen minutes later, it stopped raining.
Laura Writes 