Those living in California are likely familiar with Disneyland's Jungle Cruise ride. As one of the attractions from opening day in 1955, it hasn't changed too much over the years. Maybe it's one of your favorites, or maybe you would prefer to wait in line for a churro instead of hearing the tired joke of "It's the 8th wonder of the world- the backside of water!". Disney World followed in 1971 with the opening of its own Jungle Cruise. This Florida copycat, while similar, has some of its own unique pieces. For example, each plant within the attraction was carefully selected by landscape architect and Imagineer Bill Evans to ensure that the foliage would be able to endure Florida's hot summers (Disney Parks Wiki). Passengers on this cruise also get to enter a temple destroyed by a giant earthquake- which Disneyland's doesn't include. In Part 2 of the Life of a Cast Member series (click for Part 1), we take you to Disney World and explore through the eyes of a former Jungle Cruise Skipper and the adventures they had while manning the mechanical boats. Huge thanks to Disney Redditor cinderellae for doing this interview for me and my readers! Did you spend lots of time coming up with material to add to your skipper script? cinderellae -- The material for the Jungle Cruise is taken from a 40-page script. Skippers get to choose which jokes they like, and the script is updated occasionally with new jokes. At the beginning of training, I decided I'd stick with the same script for the entire time that I worked there. Was there a group of poeple that tended to laugh more at the jokes? Did you ever feel awkward when no one laughed? cinderellae -- Definitely! Usually young people who are native English speakers found the jokes more funny. Also, when one bote had a laugher, everyone was more likely to laugh. Yes, there were times where it was easy to become discouraged by the lack of positive response, but usually it was because the Jungle Cruise is hard to understand if you don't know English extremely well. There are so many puns and it moves so quickly, that even if you have a decent grasp of the language, it's difficult to appreciate.
I've heard that Cast Members speak to each other in code. What was your favorite phrase? cinderellae -- I suppose there is kind of a code, but nothing sticks out to me that much. CMs don't talk to each other very much on the job- safety procedure dictates that no two CMs should be speaking for more than 20 seconds at a time while on stage. Backstage, breaks are staggered, so generally most skippers don't talk to each other too much at work. One funny "insider" thing between skippers was when we'd work after dark, we used show lights to illuminate the jungle scenes. These lights were so bright, we could only have them on while in the jungle, we'd turn them off back at dock to prevent blinding the skips on the dock. Well, as you can imagine, many times, skippers would forget to turn their show lights off. So there was a hand symbol to tell the skip, "Hey! Turn those off; you're blinding me!" The joke was to try to trick the skipper in the bote into checking their show light switch. I fell for it so many times!! Who is the most famous person you interacted with at the park and what happened? (repeat question from Part 1) cinderellae -- I saw a lot of famous people while working at the Jungle Cruise. Apparently, I held Chris Jerichos hand while helping him out of a bote. I saw Katy Perry, a whole bunch of professional athletes, Jennette McCurdy, Johnny Depp, and a bunch more. It was always like, you'd go on break and someone would be like "OMG SO AND SO IS HERE!!" It was really cool.
0 Comments
|