© Julia Lillegard
Arguably the most popular ride in all of Walt Disney World today is Toy Story Midway Mania! The attraction is so popular that it runs out of Fast Passes by 10:30 a.m., and standby lines have reached 3 to 4 hours. It’s completely insane. And I work there.
My first day of training was last Wednesday. I woke up bright and early for my 8 a.m. training time, when I met my trainer at the costuming location for Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Like a good girl, I had already picked up my costume the night before, so I didn’t need to get anything. From there, my trainer and I went to our work location to start training.
Since I’ve been in the Disney College Program since August and I’d already gone through Traditions and other College Program beginning-of-program sessions, I am one of the first in the new wave of CPs at Toy Story Mania. This is a definite change from my last program, as there were plenty of CPs already working in DinoLand when I showed up. Two other extending CPs were training at the same time, and there’s one more CP who extended in the same work area. So far, I’m the only one extending from merchandise to my location.
Some of my readers may recall that for my first training, there was one trainer with two trainees. This time, it was the other way around; the trainers outnumbered me. Over the course of five days, I was trained/assessed by no less than five individuals. (They took turns, of course; it would have been just plain too crowded otherwise.) One of them was shadowing to become a trainer, and he remained constant throughout the process. The others were only there for one or two days of the experience.
A customary example of my costume.
One of the first things we did was get a feel for the attraction. This included the strenuous, but necessary task of performing a “ride through.” Yes, that’s right; I had to go on the ride. Toy Story Midway Mania! is a slow-motion ride-through attraction featuring arcade-style games with 3D graphics. Gamers use GIDs, or Gaming Interface Devices (read:guns), to aim at various Toy Story-themed targets throughout the ride. For example, one game is themed after the green aliens; another is themed after the green army men. Throughout the ride, guests can compete for high scores, which are tallied at the end at the “game brain” game consoles. The shadowing trainer and I rode through, and I must say that my score was relatively dismal compared to his. He showed me some game secrets, and assured me that I would improve with time.
Next, I learned the basics of the ride operation. We toured the facilities and observed various cast members in action. We talked about what they did and got a little bit of experience by working in positions such as greeter at the front of the attraction and working in the unload area at the end of the attraction. We also walked around the catwalks, and were able to see the ride in action. My trainer taught me a little about the layout of the ride, as well.
The next day, I came in early to experience a ride opening. While I’m told CPs never open the ride, at least I will know how should the need arise. It also gave me an opportunity to walk the ride track and see a little of what makes the ride run. I learned about important safety features and procedures, such as the intrusion mats that warn of possible people or objects in the ride area, hidden phones, step stools, and wheelchairs placed strategically in the ride, and even how to evacuate a vehicle in case of an emergency. Even being present for the opening procedure gave me a new appreciation for everything they (or we, I guess) do a Toy Story. There is an elaborate opening procedure in which everything is tested and inspected. The ride is powered up in a way that assures no one gets hurt, and everything is in tip-top shape for guests.
This system isn’t the only impressive thing about the opening of the ride. As each of the cars “wakes up” in the morning, they make an “ooh” sound like that of the green aliens. The effect reminded me of the tractor-tipping scene in Cars. It’s not something the guests will ever hear; it’s just one of those things the powers that be designed for the cast members here at Walt Disney World to make our lives more entertaining.
Other roles at Toy Story involve parking strollers, maintaining the 3D glasses, and working with the Wheelchair-Accessible Vehicles (WAVs). Perhaps one of the more intimidating roles for me was that of grouper. If you’re like me, whenever you go on an attraction, you eventually come across a person standing in front of the ride vehicles who asks you how many are in your party and proceeds to tell you where to go with such confidence and swiftness that you wonder how that person did it. Well, it is not as easy as it looks. There is a lot of thought and math behind the loading system which I am only beginning to understand. At Toy Story, two vehicles are in the loading dock at the same time. Each vehicle has two turrets and seats 8 people, so the grouper divides people into eight rows of two. To do that, one must pull from a main line and a “party of twos” line in order to fill in as many seats as possible before the vehicles are dispatched every 42 seconds. All the while, as grouper you can’t always see what’s going on in the rows and people tend to move around on you. It’s basically an invisible game of Tetris, but I’m getting better at it.
Last but not least are the consoles. There are 8 consoles, referred to, in order, as Unload 1 Assist, Unload 1, Unload 2, Unload 2 Assist, Load 2, Load 2 Assist, Load 1 Assist, and last but not least, Load 1 (alternately known as Load Fun.) For each of the two stations, the four people work together to prepare a vehicle to launch, and all four need to be pressing a button at the same time in order for it to advance. Load 1 and Load 2 have additional responsibilities, including making sure people cross the tracks safely and making sure the track is clear of people through a special system. It’s pretty technical.
Speaking of technical, Toy Story is one of the most complex Disney rides. There are 18 vehicles on the track at any given time, plus several more in the maintenance bay. Each vehicle has approximately 9 computers, and as a whole the ride has over 300 computers that work together to make it run. I’ve been in the computer room and I must say that I can now understand why the ride doesn’t work perfectly all the time. It’s amazing that so many computers can work together as well as they do. But because of how computers are and the fact that our ride is extremely popular, we have our own maintenance staff on hand to take care of any glitches we might have. This helps expedite the recovery process whenever the computers decide to stop talking with each other or throw fits on us.
As you can tell, there is a lot to remember when starting to work here at Toy Story. However, I have already worked 10.5 hours without my trainer, and they haven’t terminated me yet, so I still have hope. And if you’re ever in Disney’s Hollywood Studios and you have a Fast Pass or feel like standing in line for a minimum of an hour, you can feel free to come visit me!
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