May
23
What’s it Like Being a Disney Character?
May 23, 2008
It’s not often that we get an inside view of what it is like being a Disney character. LAmag.com has an article by Dave Gardetta outlining the hiring, work conditions and eventual dismissal of Brandon Pinto – aka Captain Jack Sparrow – at Disneyland, California.
On the auditions: “Thirty-seven actors showed up that day, four of us in costume. Only eight were chosen for the next round. We were told we would be auditioning the next day at Disneyland. When I showed up, there were now 23 guys—15 that had been pulled from in-house auditions. There was this assistant who would come in and pull people one by one—“Steve, can you come with me?” Then you’d never see Steve again.”
On being “Captain Jack” at a Disney Park: “Disney warned us we were going to have a lot of horny women coming on to us. They were also worried about girls. I heard Disneyland had an Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was very flirtatious, and they finally pulled her because men found her too sexually arousing and were acting out.” In the summer of ’07 we went to Quebec City for Les Fêtes de la Nouvelle-France and a Captain Jack — who seemed to be independent of the festival — showed up on the street. Let’s just say that he definitely drew the attention of the females in the crowd, so I can see why Disney management trained the Jacks on how to act in these situations.
On Disney policies: “When training started, I found out the park allowed mustaches but had a no-facial-hair policy for all employees. I had the Jack goatee, and I threw a small fit. No facial hair for this character? Why would you want to glue on a mustache in summer? You can see the glue!” I found this part especially amusing — they wanted him to shave his real goatee so that he could glue on a fake one. Although I do have to say that we met Captain Jack at Disneyworld and his goatee was very real. He allowed the woman that was in-front of us in line pull it to verify that it was indeed real. Then in true Jack style, he teased her husband for his lack of facial hair (he was a very good Jack by the way).
On the Disney hierarchy: “There was a ranking system in the dressing room: If you were a princess, you pretty much got that long mirror wall. For some reason the Jacks always ended up in the back corner.”
On the implications of social media: “If a character does something a parent believes is wrong, that’s the video that ends up on YouTube. I was on YouTube after I sat in a lady’s stroller. It’s something I often did, and parents would laugh and take pictures. But management came to me and said, “It looks like you’re sitting down on the job, and we can’t have that.”
On the “dismissal”: “You’d hear that it sucks to work for Disney. They’re Nazis in Mickey hats. But I’d thought, “How bad could it be?” By the time I got fired, half of me was relieved. I was getting sick of constantly being barked at about what to do. It was a month before I went back to the park. I missed it. At first I thought it would be a Walk of Shame, but everyone was very nice.”
You hear stories about how strictly Disney adheres to their ‘brand’, and while I certainly take this with a grain of salt, a lot of this story would certainly show this to be the case. In any case, it is certainly an interesting story.
Tags: Brand Experience Stuff, Customer Service Stuff
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