Ok, eleven hours and a few drinks later, here is "The Shuttle Story,
or How I Did Approximately $36,000 of Damage to Disney Property and Lived to Tell the Tale"
Observe the diagram. Here is the legend:
A. A decrepit Backlot Tour shuttle, used to cannibalize parts. Note the grass growing on the roof.
B. Shuttle #38, the one I was driving
C. Shuttle #36, the most technologically advanced of the fleet.
D. Shuttle #Not Appearing in this Story
E. Two cars that are parked on Perimeter Road, windows rolled down and talking to each other, the bastards.
OK, so Shuttle One, our lead at the Backlot Tour (hereafter called the BT to save me from typing it out every time) tells me to bring Shuttle 38 online. So my spieler "J" and I go out to the Wash Site to get it up and running. We do all the morning tests and start to make a right turn in front of Shuttle D in the diagram, and onto Perimeter Road. Unfortunately, there's two yutzes with their windows rolled down stopped on the road having a little chat, so "J" and I decide that we'll go between the cannibalized shuttle and Shuttle #36 and make a hard right past the Maintenance building, figuring that the tracking mechanism on the shuttle will make sure everything goes smoothly.
The problem in our plan lay in two places. 1. There's a metal rung below the driver and passenger cab doors to help you get up into the shuttle and 2. I made the right turn too early. The rung started scraping along the fiberglass wing-door type panel on the first car of Shuttle #38, making a nice groove in the paint. "J" hits the emergency call button and tells me that we've just made contact with Shuttle #36. We decide that we'll just keep going rather than call Backlands maintenance and have them put the shuttle in reverse. That was a huge mistake.
We creep forward in our shuttle, get clear of Shuttle #36 and pull onto Perimeter Road, and then I call Shuttle One to report a "Signal 4," an accident. He tells us to pull up into the Unload zone so he can take a look. We do, and there we discover than the metal rung has scraped the paint on the first three cars of the shuttle, and gouged into the fiberglass doors of the last three cars like a hot knife through butter. I also mucked up the metal rung on Shuttle #36 and knocked the left front turn signal off, sending the shuttle out of commission for several weeks.
Needless to say, as a College Program CM, I'm freaking out and preparing to be told to head back to Vista Way start packing my things.
Mercifully, Backlands One, the Guest Service Manager that day was a very understanding guy, and had a Signal Four of his own one day that not only damaged a shuttle, but also took Catastrophe Canyon out of commission for several hours. Thank goodness he was very cool and relaxed about it. We went back to the Backlands office, I recounted what happened, "J" recounted what happened in a separate interview, and our stories matched up completely. On the BT, if you lose five points, you're terminated. For this incident, I lost two.
Those were the only points I ever lost. I stayed on that day, but didn't feel up to driving a shuttle again until
well after lunch. Weeks later I found out that I had done about $36,000 worth of damage in about 90 seconds. I felt about three inches high and was still marvelling that I wasn't terminated and my pay wasn't permanently docked (like I'd ever make enough as a CP CM to pay off that much damage!)
That event went up on the board in the BT Shuttles breakroom as "Great Moments in Shuttle History #25," and they never asked me to bring a shuttle online again. Well, that's not entirely true; they asked, but I would go pale and shake my head so hard I'd pull a muscle in my neck. They got the idea...
The end.
, one of the things Parades are best it is crashing floats into the wood burm at the roundhouse just before Small World / Parade Stepoff Gate.
