t3techcom18
Well-Known Member
Having worked at the parks I can guarantee that cast are not sitting around for days at a time just playing with their phones. If they are not being put to work organizing and getting the cast areas of the ride put together they will be super greeting and out handing out stickers and pin trading while also helping with area stroller parking. Further if they know it's going to be days they will deploy the cast to other areas or even other parks until they are needed on site. If Disney is ride testing, it's possible they have a few cast on site to run the ride while they debug and adjust but that would be just a few people and likely the ride coordinators and or leaders and not your average joe cast member.
Some portions of this are true, others aren't.
1) In terms of organizing and putting together cast areas of the ride, can't do that until the fire marshall gives the all clear. Otherwise, it's at the contractor's/fire marshall's mercy. CM's can't build their own IKEA furniture if they wanted to...it's all engineering/maintenance who can only do that.
2) In terms of super greeting and such: the ones who are doing test and adjust right now are NOT the opening team CM's, but rather from Future World. Due to visa legalities, the Norwegian CM's are the only ones who can actually appear onstage. The Future World CM's are doing this until they get an opening crew in and start training their managers/coordinators and THEN the Norwegian trainers that will train the CM's (phew, long sentence). Last bit on the sitting around statement though: yes, test and adjust can be rather busy, or it can be extremely dull with only 1 thing to do for 8 hours. It happens, but yes, just as we find ways to spend the time, they do too. It's only human.
3) It's definitely true during test and adjust that few people would be onsite, but it's definitely not the coordinators or managers (and that isn't the case right now). Trainers, some non-statused coordinators (aka reliefs)? Yes. Statused coordinators or any managers? Not one bit.