Happiest Place on Earth

Juliana Herrera is a bubbly, energetic girl whose giggle can make any pessimistic misanthrope smile. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone around her that she wanted to be a Disney Princess at the world’s happiest place on earth, Disneyland. After years of driving miles and miles to tryouts and auditions, she finally landed a place in the Disney College Program in Florida. Although she would be spending a year across the country away from her friends and family in California, she was overjoyed with the opportunity. “I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t want to jinx it,” Juliana told me reminiscing the chaotic days of trying to fly everything to Florida in boxes and not knowing what to expect of a place she had never been before.

Although she wasn’t given a role as a Disney princess, she was given the next best thing: costume character. A costume character wears the costume from head to toe, and often involves multiple layers with extravagant detail to exactly match the character. Based on her height and weight, she was placed in a category that represented Disney characters with similar qualities. She was mostly given the role of “Jesse” from Toy Story, a loving redhead cowgirl. “Much of my 10-hour work day consisted of taking on and off Jesse’s costume. It took about 20 minutes each time,” she said rolling her eyes, “It was so complicated that I would always need at least one other person to help me.” I asked her what it was like to wear all those layers in the summer heat of Florida to which she replied with a very sickening story about the amount of sweat she dealt with everyday.

According to DisneyNews, Walt Disney World in Florida spans across 25,000 acres and an estimated 20.5 million people visited Magic Kingdom alone in 2015. “The best part about my job was making ‘magical moments’ with the guests. It seemed like I encountered at least four Make-a-Wish kid’s a day,” Juliana said. The Make-a-Wish Foundation and Disney are closely tied. Disney has given complete support since the beginning and has already fulfilled 100,000 wishes and counting. Juliana explained, “It was always wonderful to see the kids laugh at one of my jokes or smile from a hug. I knew that this was a special day for everyone I encountered.”

Juliana had to meet and greet thousands of people every shift. Although there were many “magical moments” there were definitely some not-so-magical moments. Her costume required her to have very tight jeans on with a slimming belt, which did make her curvy figure stand out more than the plastic sarcophagus Buzz Lightyear standing next to her had to wear. Juliana pulled a piece of hair behind her ear and said “Many times during family pictures, I would feel the dad’s hand on my butt and a squeeze.” She shuddered, “I had a lot of layers so I couldn’t really feel it, but I definitely always knew what they were doing.” Horrified, I asked her what her response was, knowing well that if she were out of costume, there would have definitely been some screaming. “I couldn’t do anything seriously out of character, so I either ignored it and moved away or sassily kept character and motioned he was naughty.” I was completely shocked at hearing this but Juliana simply shrugged and said, “it was just an awful of the job.”

She went on to explain that there were as many bad things about the job as there were good.  Taking three hours to get to work dealing with the bus system, the heat, and the terrible roommates are just to name a few. But her number one was the entitlement of the other employees. “I was only a part of the college program costume characters. The full time face characters definitely felt that they were superior to everyone else, only because they felt better looking. Working with them was a nightmare. Tinkerbells are the absolute WORST.”

Knowing her perspective and the thousands of training hours, I definitely have a new found respect for Disneyland workers. I also found that the “happiest place on earth” has its problems as well.