Code 101

[Shorty82]

That is horrible about the duck. Sime people are just plain cruel sadly.

I've heard about live animals at BTRR, besides feral cats, what else is there?

There are all kinds of animals around WDW.

There are ducks and sparrows all over the place, especially in the MK. Heck, there's a sparrow that apparently lives in one of the big wheels in the ceiling of the Confectionery that flies down to eat crumbs off of the kitchen floor. It doesn't go anywhere near the prep surfaces thankfully. Today I was getting a bite to eat at the Gasperilla (sp?) Grill at the Grand Floridian with Susan Magdalene before meeting up with BW and a friend of his to go on our boat ride (lots of fun) and there were two sparrows in there.

There are vultures, swans, pelicans, and a number of other birds that live around property (and I saw all of the above and more around the old Dicovery Island). I've seen rabbits around and tonight saw a deer on a small road that I was on to avoid World Drive after MK park close.

I've heard of alligators in the rivers and lakes. There are snakes around (this is Florida, there's always snakes around) and I've heard they sometimes get into the lazy rivers at the water parks. The lifeguards have to clear that section of river and call for wildlife control to remove it.

[EeyoresButterfly]

A roommie who worked BTMRR said they had a position on their rotation called "gator watching." According to her, if there is a known gator in the river near Tom Sawyer's, they locate it and watch it to make sure it stays out of guest areas. She said they have two weeks to catch it humanely and release it into the wild. After that they go into extermination mode. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, does anybody know if this is true?

We did have our own baby gator in the canal behind the PC where they store the boats for the Electrical Water Pageant. It only had three legs. While we were waiting for our call to the cage, we would go out and watch the gator. somebody even posted pictures of him in the PC. I called him Tic Toc :) .

[Zazu]

Wow, where do I start? Working on the WDW RR, we had E-stops most every trip!

Like the times when the train was traveling at full speed (12mph) and some guest decides to stand up and exit the train (followed by some exciting involuntary acrobatics). The guests were usually able to recover enough to crawl under the moving train before we could bring it to a stop.

Yeah, "times". Happened to me twice.


One day we were coming down the backstretch, between the Indian Village and Toontown, when the train slowed to a walk, then to a crawl. I had to take to the mic and talk the guests from bailing out and walking.

At Toontown, I confronted the engineer. Explaining that he nearly had a trainload of guests unload themselves due to impatience, I asked why he'd gone so slowly.

"A stupid deer was walking down the track and wouldn't get out of the way," he explained.

"What, you don't think the cow-catcher would work on a deer?"

"Oh it would work, but I didn't fancy having to explain to a station full of kids why we had chunks of Bambi stuck all over the locomotive."


Probably the most interesting 101 happened one afternoon just as I was going off shift. My bump had arrived at Main Street station and we both loaded the train and sent it off. As I was briefing my replacement, I happened to look down the track after the train and noticed small puffs of smoke rising from the track.

Not the train--the track. And no, that's not how it's supposed to work.

Fortunately, I'd seen this before and knew what was happening: Something on the locomotive had broken and it was dripping burning oil on the track. (It was a cracked atomizer, in case anyone cares.)

So, I told my bump to call in a Signal 25 and to notify the next station. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and walked off down the track putting out the little fires, poof, poof, poof. (No, this isn't where I got a reputation as an "outstanding poofer", that was another time in Fantasyland.)

I get to the Pirate's tunnel where there's another extinguisher, and find the conductor from that train. No, he's not using the extinguisher, he's leaning on it. I had to physically push him away so I could get it as the first had been used up.

By the time I'd put out the track between Main Street and Frontierland, the train was stopped, the guests evacuated, and the whole railroad was 101. There was even a manager there, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

Unfortunately, this manager was a nice guy with a business degree who didn't know squat about steam locomotives. As a result, he was crawling around under the tender, looking for the oil leak.

"Hey boss, it wasn't just dripping oil, it was dripping flaming oil. And the only place there's fire is in the firebox. Why don't you look there?"

His reply was neither cogent nor relevant, so I just told everyone else to look at the atomizer and went home. Much fun though, especially when it turned out I was right.

"But how did you know?"

"I was a railroader for 28 years before I started on the WDW RR. I've seen this happen twice before. Plus I'm smarter than you are."

They didn't like it, but they took it.


I've got more, but this should give y'all a start.

[felinefan]

That is just sickening about the duck. We had ducks at Knott's and the guests loved them, fed them and photographed them. A few kids would try to catch them, but the ducks were smart and always got away. I remember one time I was on Huff 'N' Puff and the lady at the face painting booth had to get some ducks away from people because the ducks were in the way of guests. So she took a huge bag of popcorn and tossed the ducks some of it, and it got the ducks out of the way so guests could get around.

Over by Independence Hall, there were ducks and geese, and I swear there was one that looked like it was a cross between a duck and a goose! Would you call that a doose or a guck? :D:

[SophiaHapgood]

This one was before my time, but is a legend amongst skips. During one of the Aladdin's Oasis shows, when the jungle outfits were the same as Indy's (khaki pants, white shirt, brown fedora), a skipper on his last day added a leather jacket and whip to his costume to make it just like Indy's. In the middle of the show, he bursts onstage through the tiger's mouth, grabs the magic lamp out of Aladdin's hands, screams, "THIS BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!" and bolts. Backstage he ripped off his costume (under which he was wearing street clothes) and ran. He was never caught. There's a video of it somewhere out there, but I have yet to find it.

You won't find it. The people involved keep it well hidden. I've only been lucky enough to see it once when it was played as an amazing parody on the top myths of Disneyland created for one of the Skipper Stand-Up nights at the Maverick.

And yes, the videographer was planted at that show for a reason. The entire gag was amazingly well planned out.

The lamp is still inside the Jungle queue somewhere although very few people know where exactly.

Here's the kicker to the story. The only CM's who got into MAJOR trouble over this incident were the performers at Aladdin's Oasis. Why you ask? When this happened they were totally dumbfounded and spent about 5 minutes just looking around at each other before doing anything. Due to the nature of the show, these performers are supposed to be able to improvise. They proved their incompetency in the art of improvisation during this incident.

[Mayonnaise]

Performers in ANY theatrical performance, at DL or not are supposed to be able to improvise in case something goes wrong, but I wouldn't call anyone incompetent for being dumbfounded, if someone deliberately disrupted the show by removing an essential prop, and was not caught and made to return it immediately. Performers think ahead to have SOME idea what they'll do if the lights don't work, or an child audience member wanders onto the stage or even if a fellow actor completely misses their entrance, or neglects to bring an essential prop with them onto the stage, but even an incredibly competent performer can freeze up when faced with something as unforeseen as deliberate betrayal from one of their own.

8^S

[DisneyMom]

Well, no one can improvise better than Genie at the Aladdin Show at DCA. I heard from a CM that when the Jafar-Snake failed to arise during a dramatic moment, but the audio kept going, Genie was quickly able to improvise a line about "Hearing voices". :p: Always a good show!

Wish I could see that video of the Lamp being stolen by Indy! Any hints where lamp is in the Jungle Boat Queue? ;)

[EeyoresButterfly]

That just makes my blood boil that the perfomers got into trouble over the actions of some bastard. Okay, so if it was anything like the Jack Sparrow show over at POTC the actors are supposed to interact with the audcience and improvise, but they should not have to think what they want to do when some jackass and his friends ruin their show in front of everybody. This type of behavior is always incredibly selfish, as it shows complete disregard for anybody else. Obviously this person did not care about the performers in the show who were trying to do their jobs, the audience who was watching the show, or his friends who could have gotten into some very serious trouble over his own asinine stunt. I don't think this behavior is funny at all, and I'm glad the video isn't around to encourage any other dumbasses who think this is a good idea.

[joanna71985]

I'd hope they'd shut down with a lot of wind, as we're not too far from those fireworks barges when we're watching!

Though slightly OT, I was there in March one night and it was absolutely pouring rain and they still ran the show! It actually was kind of neat as we were hustling out of International Gateway to see them firing off all the shells and such. I've seen that show so many times (still my favorite show at WDW) but it was, well, different to see it in the rain. It sure didn't stop guests from queueing up early for the best viewing spots!

It is extremely rare that Illuminations or Wishes will be canceled (Wishes moreso then Illuminations). However, if it is extremely windy Wishes can force all of Fantasyland/Toontown to be closed during the fireworks. That happened once in 2005, where Fantasyland was closed off. Then, during mnsshp in 2006, the Treat Trail in Toontown had to be closed off during the fireworks.

A roommie who worked BTMRR said they had a position on their rotation called "gator watching." According to her, if there is a known gator in the river near Tom Sawyer's, they locate it and watch it to make sure it stays out of guest areas. She said they have two weeks to catch it humanely and release it into the wild. After that they go into extermination mode. I'm not entirely sure I believe her, does anybody know if this is true?

I've heard that one too.

[BRWombat]

Wow, where do I start? Working on the WDW RR, we had E-stops most every trip!...

I've got more, but this should give y'all a start.

Love the train stories, o great Zazu! More please!!