TheDemko

I found out that Disney has undercover cops on my honeymoon. We were walking through the EPCOT front gates, and my wife had a small clutch purse with some... ahem... lady items in it. That, plus the lines were hella long, so we stuffed her clutch in my back pocket (that TOTALLY sounds like a euphemism for something, right?), and we walked through the no-bag line. About 2 minutes later, a guy dressed like a complete tourist flashed us a badge, and asked us to see the bag that I'd put in my pocket. Scared the crap out of us. I thought we were gonna lose our annual passes on the spot. The guy wound up being super nice, took a quick look in the bag, immediately expressed his understanding for wanting to skip the line (he told us it was basically the #1 reason why people hide their bags), and let us go on our way, congratulating us on our marriage.

When you're 'off' for 30-45 minutes at a time, what exactly are you doing? Just sitting in the air and cooling off? Hanging out with other cast members? Playing games on your phone?

One of my most memorable experiences with a character performer was at 'Be Our Guest' during dinner service. After dinner, you can go into the library and take photos with Beast. My group went in and started lining up to take pics with Beast, when he suddenly turned to me, and started pushing me out of the photo. I was like 'What in the blue hell?', until he pointed at my shirt. I was wearing a Gaston 'The Ladies Love Me' shirt, and he was attempting to keep me out of the pictures because of that. I couldn't help but laugh. We had a bit of a game of keep away, as Beast kept trying to get the photographer to take pictures without me in them. This led to my favorite picture ever, as the photographer gave me a countdown to when he was going to take the picture, so I got to run in and photobomb Beast. Best character interaction EVER.

And are you paid continuously for a full shift? Or for just the time you spend in CP?

I live in Florida, and have always wanted a job like you've described. Yes, I know to some, it sounds awful at times... but it's always been a dream of mine. I would guess I'm out of the age range (I'm about to turn 40) of people who are likely to get a job like this, but in case I'm not... how exactly would you recommend going about trying to attain a job like this? Is it something you can just walk in and apply/audition for, or is there a lot more prep work involved in just GETTING to the audition step?