Former cast member David M. gave me MORE great stories to share from his days at Disneyland. Enjoy!
Tales from the Park
One time, my supervisor called me from my duties on Tom Sawyer Island to help supervise the Main Street Parade. He told me that my one duty was to keep people from climbing onto the raised flower beds near the entrance to Tomorrowland in order to get a better view of the parade. So, in my Cavalry Trooper uniform, I stood at my assigned station and soon, sure enough, a woman had climbed onto the flower bed and was trampling the petunias. I politely asked that she step down whereupon she replied that she couldn’t see the parade from street-level. I told her that nonetheless, she was killing our flowers and she had to step down. She replied, “You son of a bitch.” I said, “Yes, ma’am, that may well be, but you still have to get down from that flower bed.” She complied, and another guest who had watched the whole thing, said, “Buddy, well done – but I wouldn’t want your job.”
A few weeks later, my supervisor again called me off the Island with an unusual duty. It seems that someone in Entertainment thought it would be fun to have The Big Bad Wolf (who wore loud and intimidating cleats on his shoes) march the Three Little Pigs though the park. The Pigs would be in front with the Wolf following – and with a big club slung over his shoulder. The problem was that little kids hated the wolf and they would come up behind him and kick him in his tail and legs, which of course could be painful. My job was, in my Cavalry Trooper uniform, to follow closely behind the Wolf and protect him from the mean kids.
And speaking of the Three Little Pigs: girls in the know always stayed away from them. Why? Well, because the Pig costumes were made in such a way that the body and the head of the Pig’s ended at the shoulders of the actor inside, with the actor’s head above & inside the Pig’s hat with the hat made of a black gauze material so he could see out. The Pigs all had the job of merrily wandering the Park (at least when the Wolf was not herding them) and happily bouncing into guests. Well, few people knew that the Pig’s nose was as flexible and soft and the actor inside could put his hand inside, almost as if inside a glove and the nose thus became an appendage. This resulted in many a female guest’s being bumped into and providing the actor inside the Pig costume with the proverbial “free feel.”
I also heard from fellow staff who supervised Monsanto’s Ride Through Inner Space in Tomorrowland that when viewing the attraction through unseen slits in the set, that they would see some pretty heavy make-out sessions between the start and the end of the ride through the attraction.
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