What the ride-out crew does isn't always obvious, I had to ask myself. I believe (haven't found out first hand yet), for my area, it is mostly clearing the carts of merchandise, wrapping the carts in pallet wrap (to protect them), and moving everything away from the windows and doors inside the shops. Other CMs (and who knows, merchandise probably gets drafted for this too) secure the trash cans, benches, umbrellas, pretty much all the loose articles that could become projectiles in a storm. After the storm they get the parks ready to reopen as soon as possible.glendalais wrote:Just out of curiosity, what does the ride-out crew at WDW do, anyway?
At the resorts, I imagine they just ensure that all the guests are able to ride out the storm and keep them fed and whatnot. However, I can't imagine what they would do at the parks.
Forgive me if this seems a little obvious, lol. It's not really something we worry about at the DLR - we generally only hear about Hurricanes if there's a collection underway to benefit WDW CMs effected by one, and I personally have never lived in a region prone to Hurricanes, so I'm not familiar with it, lol.
The resort CMs secure the resorts for the storm and then take care of the guests who are riding it out. Keep them fed, entertained, etc. I understand that sometimes park CMs get deployed to a resort to help out after they are done helping in their home area. I wouldn't mind that, better than sitting in the tunnel bored stiff.
Ride-out crews are paid from the time they come in until the time they leave after the storm. I've heard of people being on the clock over 36 hours before during a past storm, most of which was spent just waiting for the storm to pass. 36 hours which with overtime had to be a huge paycheck, what with time and a half once they reached 8 hours then double-time once they hit 14 hours.
