The show goes on, ONSTAGE.
As an actor, you should know that the show is not a matter of physical location. It's a matter of actors and audience. Where there is an actor and an audience, there is a show. Disney brought the show backstage by offering the KTKT. If you, the actor encounter me, the audience, the show is on whether we're backstage or not. Your character simply changes. You are now playing a WDW CM instead of the character that you play onstage.
Backstage however, in most performances, is nothing short of chaos, and in a performance, I don't necessarily appreaciate total strangers entering my space (backstage).
From everything I've read, KTKT tours usually stick to the same routes through the utilidors and backstage areas. If a CM really wanted to avoid interacting with guests backstage, it could probably be done.
In 15 years of being a professional actor and 8 years of being a high school director very few performances in which I participated had a backstage area that could be considered chaos. That's what rehearsal time is for.
If you have a problem with strangers being backstage, perhaps you should take that up with the management that let them in.
Also, in most performance, backstage, every other word coming out of peoples' mouths is cursing.
Now
that sounds like most of the shows I've been in! People don't know that the best show is really in the dressing room.
As for calling them tourists... a tourist is a person on a tour... what is KTTK? It's a tour. Guests are invited to come somewhere.
I think you know the distinction I'm talking about. Someone who has paid admission to a WDW park is a guest. It's been that way since Disneyland opened. Would Walt have approved of a CM calling a guest a tourist?
No one is invited to go on KTTK. The people on the tour, found out about it on their own, and made their own plans to attend. No invitation to go to on the tour was given to them by Disney
I must disagree. As a DVC member, I recieve all sorts of advertising from WDC. In a recent edition of
Vacation Magic the KTKT tour was enticingly described and a DVC discount given. Sounds like they were asking us to come and making it easier for us to do so.
I'm probably being too sensitive and perhaps have unrealistic standards for CM's but, as I said earlier, I have a very high regard for WDW CM's. In my mind, they're on a different level than the average hack actor...