Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations Read Online Free PDF Page A

seasonal cast members cannot be scheduled more than 23 hours. CANNOT. Like, no if, ands, or buts about it. There’s actually a button in Disney’s computer system that says “deny this cast member hours”. This is all because Disney doesn’t want to have to deal with seasonal cast members saying, “Well, I’ve been working 40-plus hours for this many weeks, so technically I’m already full time, so technically you need to give me health benefits.”
    Disney watches seasonal cast members very closely for this reason. I learned that the hard way a few times when I got dangerously close to being capped. I started getting warnings about it around week #20. If I hit 28 weeks, there was no going back, and I would for sure go broke. There’s no way I could survive on less than 20 hours a week for the rest of the year.
    Part-time Cast Member. You guessed it, a cast member that is only considered part time. This means that a cast member cannot, and usually will not, be scheduled more than roughly 23 hours a week. During busy times, that number might increase, but part time cast members only need to give four days of availability. Being part time, of course, you aren’t given health insurance.
    Full time Cast Member. Ah, the coveted spot of a full-time Disney employee. This is the big one. You get 16 admissions into the park to use whenever you want during the year (aside from blackout dates), you get health insurance, and you get status . Status is one of the most important things at Disney World, and you learn that almost immediately.
    What’s status? It basically has to do with things like submitting for new work schedules and bidding for vacation time. You earn a status date the first time you are made full time. So, if I were to be made full-time today, and you made full-time two days from now, I have more status than you. If we now go to submit for time off, and we both submit for the same day, I’m going to get it over you. And that date carries with me for the rest of my time at Disney World. I can transfer from role to role, and keep the same status date.
    Let’s say that you’ve been working at a certain attraction for five years, and you are the cast member with the most status. When it comes time to pick a schedule, you get first pick, since you have the most status. Now let’s say that I transfer to this new attraction, and it’s time to pick a new work schedule. You might have been at this attraction for five years, but remember, I was statused two days before you. No one cares that you’ve been at the attraction longer and have earned your choice for time off. If we both submit for the same days off, I’m going to get it.
    Is it fair? I guess. Does it suck? Most definitely. I was always hearing about how someone with a higher status date would show up in a new work location and knock everyone else down a few pegs in the pecking order. Then there were the people I knew who had been with Disney World since the 1970s, and if they wanted to request Christmas off every single year, they got Christmas every single year. No one cares that you haven’t spent a Christmas with your family in YEARS. If Jimmy has been statused since January 1, 1972, and he wants Christmas off, he is going to get it. There’s nothing to debate.
    A lot of times, managers would make mistakes with status dates. My friend Emily, who was statused on the same day that I was, accidentally got her status date imputted into the computer wrong. Because of this, the computer believed that Emily had been working at Disney for four years longer than she really had. So, when it came time to change work schedules and submit for vacation, she got to do it ahead of half of the department, because of a computer glitch. No one wants to admit that they’ve made a mistake like that, so Emily got to keep her posh status, making lots of people in the department very, very mad.
    But how do you even get to actually being a cast member with status?