What was it like to work Splash?
You mean the pitiless titan of steel and water? The black hole that absorbed your schedule completely as soon as Disneyland schedulers caught wind that you knew how to operate it? Not great.
Though I think this is mostly the case with any popular attraction. During my time there, I quickly discovered that the more fun a ride is to ride, the less fun it is to work. -and vice versa. Splash is obviously a popular, fun ride but that just made things all the more painful when something would go wrong and shut it down. Which happened all the time.
There was no worse feeling than standing in the middle of the merge point, surrounded by hundreds of Guests whose Fastpasses you'd just collected or who had been waiting in standby for over an hour on a hot day, just to hear the dreaded Brer Rabbit,
"Whoops! Looks like there's a log jam up ahead! Just stay seated, we'll have you on your way in no time!" Which was an outright lie because as soon as you heard those words, it was the signal that the ride was down and not coming back any time soon.
Not sure how best to express this next bit but Splash was also very "GO GO GO!" in terms of workflow. It makes sense because it's normally very crowded and very popular, so you needed to be efficient. But often it felt like I was being forced to come off "rude" to Guests or just generally didn't have the time or opportunities to make those sort of "magical moments" for Guests that you come to expect from Disney. Most often it felt like the only real way to create a magical memory for Guests at Splash was to either let them skip the line (not encouraged by the team) or that one time they randomly handed me a crudely made copy of Brer Rabbit's bindle and sent me out into Critter Country to try and have some "fun interactions" with Guests. A process I was woefully unprepared or trained for, mind you, given that every waking moment of my time at the attraction before that had been the total opposite. I just came off
super cringy.
The type of ride that Splash is, also sort of (for the most part) determined what kind of demographic was most interested in it, which meant more often dealing with troublesome younger Guests who would put themselves at risk by trying to hop out, stand up or just be more generally tempted to do things they shouldn't be doing while riding an attraction. Also, since hotter days in the park tend to be more stressful and negatively affect the experiences of park Guests, hotter days were especially painful at Splash because those folks were coming your way all day (it being a water ride and all).
The Cast that staffed the attraction (at least, during my time there) also had a bit of a reputation for being one big drama show. Splash was sort of seen like the "high school" of the NOCC attraction line up at the time, if you can imagine what kind of drama that normally entails.
Needless to say, once I learned Winnie the Pooh, I never looked back. Guaranteed 8 hour shifts, a far more relaxed attraction atmosphere and generally more friendly/forgiving Guests and a much less drama-infused set of CMs made it the place to be!
