Tag: great movie ride

Today it was raining buckets, which was unfortunate for the dogs, Abby and Wilson, as they had to go outside and use the bathroom.  They came tearing back inside, shook the water off them and went to lay on their pillows.

Baby Mojo found this hilarious and started to laugh that cute little baby laugh.  He’s seen them come into the house before and I realized that he was laughing at their behavior when they get wet.

 

 

Everything is new to babies.   It’s their first time seeing everything, so put on a good show, describe it well and enjoy yourself.

Many years ago I worked at The Disney MGM Studios as a tour guide and character actor on The Great Movie  Ride.     The Great Movie Ride is a slow-moving vehicle that goes through famous scenes of great movies.  Interspersed along the ride are various audio animatronic figures and live actors.  Sometimes I was a tour guide, other times a gangster.  As a tour guide you’re the stranger in a strange land and the gangster ‘takes over’ the vehicle about half way through.

The tour guide starts, vehicle gets ‘hijacked’ by a gangster or cowboy and then the hijacker goes to an Egyptian tomb where the tour guide returns.  That’s the set up and it always runs like that unless the tour guide or gangster are friends and want to shake it up a bit.

One day when I was a gangster I was feeling especially frisky, adding lines to mess with the tour guides, loosely chatting with the guests and so on.  On one tour I got in the vehicle, did my opening spiel, looked back and saw Vanilla Ice.

It was back in the late 80’s, Ice was in his prime and had a couple Disney suits around him.  Before the gangster and tour guide switch back again there is a line where they say, “oh, would you get a load of that chunk of that ice up there, now don’t none of you move…I don’t think they’d notice a couple of bodies around here.”

I said, “Oh, would you get a load of that chunk of Ice, Ice Baby up there…”  I won’t win any awards for creativity with that, but I knew the tour guide would get a kick out of it and it made my day go by with a smile.  Walt Disney World is excellent at the guest experience and making certain that their employees know that it’s always somebody’s first time to the park.

It was just like Baby Mojo and his first time seeing a wet dog.  After a couple of times the wet dogs may not be as funny to him, but for the first couple times, that and so much more will be totally new and unique to him.  He’s truly a blank slate that relies totally on me to entertain him, show him what to do and what is special about the little things.

After a while, the tourists and questions like “what time is the 3:00 parade?” (yes dozens of people every day really ask that), start to pile and I had to leave the Mouse.  By the end of it I had spent two years yelling at tourists, making fun of bad clothing and waving a gun at aliens.

I still have good friends that work there, they truly love their job and I’ll be hitting them up for free tickets when The Mojos visit.