I was a Skipper 2000-2003 Skipper Sam
Margret was our speail coach.
The Boatney was a bus on pontoons and was hard to steer.
It Had a power lift for wheelchairs and none of the Skippers liked it.
The Tropic Trader looked like a large sailboat but strong winds could make it slam into the POE dock
It had an engine failure one day and drifted into the Hulk Coaster.
The Sam Plane was everybody's favorite, but at 6'4, I always had a long day because it only had 6'2 headroom
The dock at Popeyes was used to store the second or third boat if needed.
The bridge between Suess and Lost Continent was a functioning drawbridge that opened to allow our boats back to the drydock area for repairs and refueling.
Our break room was under Sylvester Mc Monkey and that made a long walk to POE and even further to JP docks
We lost our cool break room (Dustin's hideaway) to Grinchmas, where they used it as a make up made up room for the Grinch
Dustin left Island Skipper tours and worked over at Characters.
We moved over to Jurassic park where they decided to no longer have dock attendants.
We were part of the Trike crew now, but still dressed as Skippers.
Our lead was the Trike lead (Nancy ?)
Island Skipper Tours closed anytime there was rain or lighting, many times we sat in our break room for 3 or more hours watching movies till a summer storm passed.
The 7 seas lagoon closed at 2 PM friday saturday sunday so the fireworks barges could be brought out.
If you had clocked in at 9:00 park opened at 10:00 am so by then you had then gone to lunch and had worked 4.5 to 5 hours.
All skippers were full time so we had to find something else to do for 4 hours.
Some skippers at 2 o clock, took the bus back to wardrobe and changed into Jurassic park clothing to then work at the Discovery Center. This took about an hour...(On the clock cause we are slow skippers)
Lisa Whipple was the Supervisor of Jurassic park and got tired of paying Skippers for an hour changing, so skippers worked the Discovery Center wearing their skipper clothes. Or wandered the park for 3 hours acting like we were sweeping !
Dan Gurwitz was a former skipper and took over River adventure.
When Skipper tours closed some of them went to the front of the park to run resort boats.
I was the last Skipper , I worked in Discovery Center and operated the boats on special occasions for about another year. Then moved to Fast pass.
The boats closed for good in 2003 I believe.