Through out my various positions within the Disney Company, three questions have always remained the same. 1. Where is the bathroom?, 2. Do I get a pass holder discount?, and 3. It’s my Birthday does that mean I get this meal for free?. These three questions plus many more are my day to day conversations with random guests. I do get the occasional nice conversation about people who have visited New York but that can be pretty rare. As Disney employees we are suppose to keep the magic alive for all of our guests but that can be pretty challenging when the tenth person in a row gets mad that I can not give all of my products away for free.
From being deployed as often as I have, having a constant change of scenery has made it a lot easier to keep the magic for my guests. In every new location there is always been a coworker there for support for questions that I simply could not answer. It was like starting training over and over again, where I had to learn where everything was and before I can even begin to direct people’s questions.
From speaking to coworkers on my downtime I would realize more of the hostility when it came to answering common guest questions. When I have asked about how they remain in “Disney look” most of them do not even know how to respond. It has become such a natural reaction that sometimes they don’t even realize they are doing it. In the article “Why Do Employees Stay? A Qualitative Eexporation of Employee Tenure” by John Self and Ben Dewald, it states that employees stay with a company because of personal reasons, financial stability and relationship with other coworkers. In my home location they consider themselves a family and for this sole reason can be why some have not left. There are even certain full-time coworkers who share an apartment together. As well as the certain benefits that come along with working for the company for an extended amount of years, they tend to overlook the irritating common questions because they know Disney has more to off them at the moment.
How do I keep the magic alive? What has always worked for me was knowing that each guest has a back story, a reason why they are at Disney, so I wouldn’t want to be that person to ruin a trip they could have been saving for years for. As a company we portray these monumental family moments that you can not offer anywhere else, when hired most of us knew this as well. So when I plan to come with my own family I wou Also as much as possible I try to start different conversations with each guest. This allows me to have a change in discussion for my own sanity. Although the questions can be repetitive I know that I have not gotten the worst of it. For people who have been with the company for 10 plus years in the same location have been seen the absolute worst of guest reactions. If they can do the same position for that many years I can keep the magic alive for six months.
