I work at the Haunted Mansion at WDW and I'd like to give a few comments here.
1.There is never a reason to take a rude tone with a guest; you should always keep your cool. That said I forgive people who occasionaly feel the need to stop being so civil when encountered with guests who won't listen to reason.
2.There is of course, one other exception to the when a CM can be rude rule...and of course that is when you work at the haunted mansion
3.As far as fastpass goes, CM's are following rules that they are trained on. The ratio is 16 fastpass guests to a family of 4 (It's not the same as 4 to 1, I'll explain the weird termanology later if needed) but that's just what we are trained on...realistically there are other needs. If a fastpass line is huge merge will be told basically to drain the line and move up to 20 to a family of 4 or 25 to a family of 4. It's not their fault, they have no vendetta against standbye guests, but the guests will take it out on the merge person whole heartedly.
4.As far as height requirements go...to let in anyone shorter is an extreme nono, if a child is on the line it is up to the CM's discression. CM's are constantly rotating (I didn't see if you thought it was the same person) so if it was someone new to the position, what another CM was willing to do holds no water. If it is your job to check height, and a manager sees a shorter kid that has gotten by you...you can pretty much count on being fired.
5.As far as fastpass return clocks go, it's time to dispel a little myth about every clock being equal. The clocks actually break all of the time. There was a time when CM's were encouraged to use their own watches set to Disney time and many still follow this proceedure. I understand how it can be very frustrating to a guest to have to wait until an inseen clock says when to go.
6.Foreign guests are potentially my favorite. Those with special needs be it with language or physical KNOW that they have special needs and therefore they are always on the lookout for information from where do I park my stroller to what is expected of me right now. Of course those that don't follow this patter give those that do an especially bad name because it can be more difficult to get someone on the right path. Still it is very gratifying to be able to somehow get a deaf persons attention, very poorly do l;imited sign language, and have them quickly and easily understand...as opposed to those who could easily understand the english coming out of my mouth, if only they bothered to listen to it
7.Where is the bad guest post? Oh the stories I could tell, think of how many CM's you run across in a typical day...200 at the most? 200 that are trained to deal with guest situations? At the haunted mansion I can deal with as many as 200 guests in 5 minutes every single day, so yeah I've got a good vault of bad guest stories.
8.I want to thank you all, I don't post on boards much but I occasionally surf them and of course this topic caught my eye. There are many boards out there that down down down CM's as being horrible even if they don't understand what a particular job is, but here at this site in a thread dedicated to the lesser of Disneys cast members most everyone here has been very fair and understanding, and in all honesty after some of the other stuff I have read at other places I was blown away.
1.There is never a reason to take a rude tone with a guest; you should always keep your cool. That said I forgive people who occasionaly feel the need to stop being so civil when encountered with guests who won't listen to reason.
2.There is of course, one other exception to the when a CM can be rude rule...and of course that is when you work at the haunted mansion
3.As far as fastpass goes, CM's are following rules that they are trained on. The ratio is 16 fastpass guests to a family of 4 (It's not the same as 4 to 1, I'll explain the weird termanology later if needed) but that's just what we are trained on...realistically there are other needs. If a fastpass line is huge merge will be told basically to drain the line and move up to 20 to a family of 4 or 25 to a family of 4. It's not their fault, they have no vendetta against standbye guests, but the guests will take it out on the merge person whole heartedly.
4.As far as height requirements go...to let in anyone shorter is an extreme nono, if a child is on the line it is up to the CM's discression. CM's are constantly rotating (I didn't see if you thought it was the same person) so if it was someone new to the position, what another CM was willing to do holds no water. If it is your job to check height, and a manager sees a shorter kid that has gotten by you...you can pretty much count on being fired.
5.As far as fastpass return clocks go, it's time to dispel a little myth about every clock being equal. The clocks actually break all of the time. There was a time when CM's were encouraged to use their own watches set to Disney time and many still follow this proceedure. I understand how it can be very frustrating to a guest to have to wait until an inseen clock says when to go.
6.Foreign guests are potentially my favorite. Those with special needs be it with language or physical KNOW that they have special needs and therefore they are always on the lookout for information from where do I park my stroller to what is expected of me right now. Of course those that don't follow this patter give those that do an especially bad name because it can be more difficult to get someone on the right path. Still it is very gratifying to be able to somehow get a deaf persons attention, very poorly do l;imited sign language, and have them quickly and easily understand...as opposed to those who could easily understand the english coming out of my mouth, if only they bothered to listen to it
7.Where is the bad guest post? Oh the stories I could tell, think of how many CM's you run across in a typical day...200 at the most? 200 that are trained to deal with guest situations? At the haunted mansion I can deal with as many as 200 guests in 5 minutes every single day, so yeah I've got a good vault of bad guest stories.
8.I want to thank you all, I don't post on boards much but I occasionally surf them and of course this topic caught my eye. There are many boards out there that down down down CM's as being horrible even if they don't understand what a particular job is, but here at this site in a thread dedicated to the lesser of Disneys cast members most everyone here has been very fair and understanding, and in all honesty after some of the other stuff I have read at other places I was blown away.
