Hurricanes and tropical storms are common in Central Florida during late summer and early fall. Visiting Walt Disney World during this time of year comes with the risk of being impacted by severe weather. Safety is Disney’s priority, and the resort closes all of its theme parks during these storms. Once the parks reopen, though, there’s minimal, if any, sign of fallen debris or a recent downpour. That’s thanks to a remarkable undertaking by thousands of Disney cast members, or employees.
In the aftermath of hurricanes hitting Central Florida, Disney World cast members clean up the parks in a matter of hours to prepare to reopen. I was part of one of those teams, and today I’m sharing my experience from a morning I’ll never forget. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including a Disneyland favorite opening a new location at Disney World and a new Disney World Hallmark pop-up.
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Before and After Hurricanes at Disney World
Safety is Disney’s #1 core value. There are signs backstage that remind cast members, “Safe D begins with me,” with the “D” in the famous Disney logo font. Safety is prioritized in every task and micro-decision a cast member makes in their everyday responsibilities.
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Disney’s safety is demonstrated on a large scale each time a hurricane or tropical storm hits the Orlando area. I’ve experienced two hurricanes at Disney World: once as a guest and another as a cast member.
In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne impacted Orlando during my family’s Disney vacation. The parks were closed for one day of our trip, during which we were posted up in our rooms at Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort. We never lost power, and the hotel ran a special channel with around-the-clock Disney shorts and movies. (This was long before on-demand Disney+ streaming.) During an in-between time when the worst of the storm had passed, but the parks were still not open yet, characters visited the lobby and entertained guests.
Disney also gave everyone who had park tickets that day a replacement park hopper that didn’t expire for 20 years.
The next morning, my family had an early breakfast reservation at Cinderella’s Royal Table, the restaurant inside Cinderella Castle. We assumed the meal would be canceled, but it went on as scheduled. We arrived at a pristine Magic Kingdom, with nothing indicating a huge storm had been there the day before.
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In 2016, Hurricane Matthew passed through Orlando during my time working as a Disney World cast member at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. My role was in merchandise, but that didn’t matter. It was all hands on deck to do whatever needed to be done to prepare the park for the storm and keep guests safe.
The day before the storm, when the parks were still open, but it was already announced that they’d be closed the next day, my colleagues and I quite literally battened down the hatches, adding extra reinforcement to anything that could potentially blow away. We cleared all the wheelchairs from their parking lot stations and packed indoor backstage facilities with items that ordinarily remain outside.
It was one of the few times during my work with Disney that reality usurped fantasy. While we were still open, guests were, of course, welcome to visit the park and enjoy themselves, to get lost in the fiction of rides like Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain and shows like Festival of the Lion King. There was, however, an unusual layer of real-life circumstances that could not be ignored.
You may have experienced a version of this feeling if you visited the parks during the pandemic. In such moments, theme parks exist as their surface-level, literal definitions rather than what they pretend to be, if only temporarily. On any other workday, I welcomed guests to a tropical jungle at the beginning of time, which is what The Oasis at the front of Disney’s Animal Kingdom strives to be. On that day, though, I welcomed them to a collection of mechanical and architectural amusements in Orlando, because the safety of the guests was more important than the fiction of the story.
During Hurricane Matthew, the parks were closed for one day, on October 7, 2016. Disney has dedicated teams of hurricane “ride-out” crews that remain in the parks during the storms, but my role would come in the storm’s aftermath.
The morning following the storm, nearly my entire class of Disney College Program coworkers and I, along with many of our location’s part-time and full-time cast members, reported for work several hours before dawn. According to archives from the Orlando Sentinel, Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened at 7:00 AM for Disney World hotel guests that morning, which means clock-in time must have been something like 4 or 5:00. Such an early start time is not all that unusual for Disney cast members, but almost everyone working at that early hour was a rarity and gave the feeling of an important undertaking at hand.
So, clock-in time was no later than 5. The park opened at 7. That is not a lot of time to erase all traces of a hurricane from visibility, much less erase those traces to the level of show quality that a Disney theme park’s storytelling requires. It was not lost on us that a park about the dominant forces of Mother Nature had been dominated by the forces of Mother Nature.
I spent most of the morning de-flooding the Animal Kingdom stroller garage, a feat that, at first, seemed impossible given the time constraints, but that I am proud to say my co-workers and I accomplished by the time the park opened.
This and countless other unseen tasks were achieved by the park’s thousands of cast members that morning in the hours leading up to opening. Such unseen work is the fabric of Walt Disney World, on that day and every day. Many guests are impacted by what cast members’ work creates, but not aware of the work that went into creating it.
When I visit the parks today, years removed from my time as a cast member, I try to be mindful of how a cast member may have made my day safe and special in ways that I, as a guest, will never know. If I were to rent a stroller for the day for a young family member of mine, a lot may have happened that made the stroller rental possible: tasks that would never cross my mind, nor are they supposed to cross my mind.
These functions extend to so many disciplines at hand throughout Disney World. We recently took a look at the incredible work that goes into Disney’s costuming efforts backstage and how housekeeping cast members make guests’ stays extra special.
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