The Weekend I Joined the Circus
When I first visited Walt Disney World in 2013, I fell in love with Magic Kingdom. I wanted to explore every inch of it. It solidified my desire to do the Disney College Program. I wanted to be part of the magic that I was feeling. I’m sure that’s what inspires many college program kids to apply. But the stand out moment to me was an odd moment. It wasn’t seeing the castle for the first time. It wasn’t the first time I saw one of the many inspiring Magic Kingdom shows. No, it was the moment I walked into Storybook Circus. The Cast Members behind the registers were wearing red striped vests, yellow striped shirts, carnival hats, and a giant striped tie. I looked at my mom and said, “I want to be a Cast Member and I want to work in this store with that giant ugly tie.”
I didn’t know my wish would actually come true.
I hadn’t had any luck finding shifts at Storybook Circus. It appeared everybody who worked there, loved working there, and rarely were people willing to give away shifts to outsiders. My friend Emily had recently picked up a shift there though and said she loved it, so I was determined. One girl was giving away two shifts, a night shift on a Friday and a morning Saturday shift. I took them both. It was the only time I had really done that. Because my goal was to pick up shifts in as many different locations as possible, I wasn’t really repeating locations. But, I needed hours and the convenience of it was too much to pass up.
I had always said, “I will work anywhere in Walt Disney World. I don’t care what costume they put me in - in fact, I hope they give me the most ridiculous costume!” I had repeated it to friends before I left SEVERAL times. I was hoping for a costume as memorable as Storybook Circus. The Animal Kingdom Strollers costume is a pretty great costume when it comes to “ridiculous costumes that only Disney would put you in”, but the Circus was my dream costume. I can’t really explain it, I just had my heart set on it. Getting to work there was so exciting. It was the shift I was probably the most excited for and the least nervous for.
The costume has several pieces. The first is an optional carnival hat. I loved wearing Disney’s hats. Strollers had one and it was great at first, but after a while it became too much of a hassle. The costumed band around it always slid off and the humidity made my hat hair unbearable. I gave up on it shortly after starting my program. Still, I knew I had to have the circus hat. The next piece is the big yellow, red, and blue striped tie. Luckily it was a clip on. This sat underneath the collar of the yellow and blue striped, long sleeved shirt. The shirt was a little stiff at the ends where you could either button the white cuffs closed around your wrists, or roll it up a few times depending on the weather. Next were the pants...high-waisted red pants with even deeper red stripes. They were as soft as silk pajama pants, but they sat ridiculously high.
Over the top of all this sat a matching red striped vest. I checked out everything I needed and headed to the bus. I can’t even tell you how thrilled I was.
The thing about working at the Circus is it’s technically part of “New Fantasyland”. The Circus portion of the land had been revamped on several occasions. It started as “Mickey’s Birthdayland” and progressed to “Mickey’s Toontown Fair”. The idea was that the land was filled with vacation homes for Mickey and his friends, who of course lived in Toontown in California. From what I heard, it didn’t go well and was later reimagined to the Storybook Circus around the same time as New Fantasyland. In the land there were two Dumbo rides, a kid-friendly rollercoaster, circus themed meet and greets, and of course, Big Top Souvenirs. Because New Fantasyland was an expansion of Magic Kingdom in 2012, the tunnels system didn’t travel all the way underneath that part of the park. I don’t know how it worked for Mickey’s Birthdayland and all that when it first opened, but Storybook Circus was also expanded a bit when it was rethemed, meeting up with a backroad that the West Clock Buses took to the tunnel entrance. So, instead of the bus stopping at only the tunnels and requiring Cast Members to walk to their work places on stage, they had another bus stop that allowed New Fantasyland Cast to walk to their work locations through the backstage area. I think New Fantasyland Cast Members could use the tunnels if they wanted to but I know that several got off at the other bus stop.
The West Clock Bus’s first stop was at Clown’s Alley, the backstage area behind Storybook Circus and leading to a gate for other New Fantasyland Cast Members. My coworker Emily had recently picked up a shift at Storybook Circus, so she had texted me what to look for and where to go. I felt like I had found where I needed to be, but I was a little bit nervous. I never knew what to expect from doors backstage. Would the door lead me on stage or would it be to another backstage area? Walking on stage half-ready with personal belongings in tow is frowned upon at Disney, so doors always gave me pause. I went in anyway and got lucky. Inside sat a row of lockers, CDS (where we clock in), and double doors that clearly marked the way to on stage. There were also a few offices. I went around the corner to the offices to see if I could find a coordinator that would introduce me to the area. As I waited, I watched the TV that was mounted above the CDS. Music from Festival of Fantasy played as daily announcements flashed across the TV, and then a short skit made up by some Cast Members who worked at Storybook Circus played. The loop went on and on, filling the back area with music from the parade. I was surprised at how much effort they had gone to for this merchandise location. At my home location, we were lucky if we got briefed by coordinators before starting our shifts. Things that were “need to know” were announced to those who opened, and everybody else got their information through the grapevine, if at all. I was excited to have picked up two shifts at the circus, seeing how organized everything was.
I got a tour of the backstage area and the entire store. Big Top Souvenirs is so interesting because it has so many moving parts. They sell almost everything there. There’s of course the regular merchandise like hats, shirts, plushes, jewelry, postcards, keychains, etc. But there was also an entire concession stand in the middle of it all selling caramel apples, dipped marshmallows, and other Disney snacks. They also sold MagicBands, which (at the time) required Cast Members to be able to link the bands up with guests’ accounts. Behind a different register, guests could get their ears they purchased embroidered. I was amazed. Cast Members who work at Big Top are able to be trained in so many different things. To work with food they had to be trained in food safety and have the training to actually make the food, to link MagicBands they had to be trained to link it up with guest tickets, and to embroider ears they had to be trained in Costuming. I was curious about what I would be able to do as a Cast Member who was only qualified to sell regular merchandise and MagicBands. They told me that backstage was called Clown’s Alley, and in that alleyway were the cast restrooms and break room. They showed me where the stockroom was, and then I was on my way!
Assignments were given by register, but each register was themed to look like a circus cage. Each cage was given a particular animal, so instead of being told to go to Register 1, you’d be told to go to Lions 1. There was also the option of working the outside cart by Casey Jr’s Splash and Soak Station. It’s really only open during peak days when the weather is warm enough, otherwise the Splash and Soak Station is turned off and the cart remains closed.
The cart sits off to the side and sells basics like hats, sunglasses, sunscreen, and towels for those who got a little more soaked than they intended.
I didn’t even realize the cart was back there until the coordinator showed me around. My hope was that I’d get a healthy mix of being outdoors and getting to work around the store. Knowing that I wasn’t trained in everything made me nervous that my entire shift would be outside. Sure enough, I started my shift at the cart. It was fun watching the kids play in the water. It wasn’t a boring cart by any means. I was working the cart by myself though, and I wasn’t a fan of that. Every so often somebody would come and restock the cart with a towel or two, but beyond that I was by myself.
Later on I got to be inside, and I loved it. There were parts of the store that were hard to keep clean, like the plush walls or the walls of Mickey ears, and sometimes the registers got surprisingly busy for a story in the back corner of Magic Kingdom, but keeping busy was what kept it fun. When I got my break slip it was called a “cookout”. Something about walking backstage where Festival of Fantasy music is being played and running into a Cast Member who asks if you’re headed to your coookout makes the whole thing more magical. It didn’t feel like real life because it didn’t feel like anybody would live a life where they dress head to toe in carnival themed clothing to sell merchandise to guests. The evening signaled the end of my shift and I went home, all smiles.
I worked a Saturday morning opening shift. We skipped the tour since I had just worked there the night before. The store was incredibly slow. Guests hadn’t really gotten all the way to the back of the park by that time, so we were pretty over staffed. With that, I got to do “tasks”. Tasks are the assignments that merchandise Cast Members pull every so often. They can be because something really needs to be completed or because there are just too many Cast Members at that time. One of my tasks was to take the trash cans out, including the ones in the kitchen area where all the caramel apples and other snacks were being made. It was the only time I was ever allowed back behind one of those counters as I wasn’t food trained or anything. It was neat to see how its set up and how it functions. Not that taking out the trash is special or anything, but when you’re curious about the magic made at Walt Disney World, any glimpse of backstage that you’re not used to is exciting. Another of my tasks was to entertain guests outside. There were a few carnival style games we were allowed to bring out to the front of the store to bring attention to the store and bring that extra magic to guests. The Cast Member who was doing it before me was clearly tired of having to work outside in the sun, playing the same carnival game they’ve probably been forced to play for hours on slower days. It was all new to me though, and it was far more fun than the worn down hula hoops Animal Kingdom Strollers has.
I stood outside and played with guests willingly. It was better than straightening out the Mickey plushes for the 90th time. I was glad I had picked up an opening shift because it was so different than my almost-closing shift from the night before.
With it being so slow, they decided to briefly train me on how to ring out embroidery orders. Typically, one Cast Member takes the order and rings it up while the other Cast Member preps the sewing machine and embroiders the ears. I wasn’t there long enough to be trained on the embroidery part of it, but I read through the rules of embroidery orders, wrote out orders on the little cards, and rung them out. I realized that I really missed being constantly challenged at work. My favorite part of working at Tower Gifts was when I learned how to find, edit, print, and ring out ride photos for guests. Learning how to do embroidery orders, no matter how small that was, was fun for me. I liked being pushed to do new things and learn more. It was the primary reason my job back at Animal Kingdom was getting stale. CP’s were so limited at DAK Strollers that after a certain point, learning new things wasn’t really an option.
I also got lucky in that the Saturday morning I was working also happened to be the day Ricky was in town. He had come in town for Animal Kingdom’s Birthday (and the release of Rivers of Light that never happened) and was hanging around the parks. He stopped in Circus for a visit and even though he had just visited me at Animal Kingdom a few days before, it was awesome to see him again. Plus, he was able to get a few pictures of me working which was cool.
When I made that joke years ago about wanting to work at Big Top in the silly hat and giant tie, I didn’t think it would actually be possible. I honestly think that if I hadn’t done it, it would have been one of my biggest regrets. I loved working at Storybook Circus and if I had to do the program all over again, I think I’d request it as my home location.