You’ll need a secret identity and super powers to get a job in Disney’s new Marvel land - OCR/SCNG

[Darkbeer1]

You’ll need a secret identity and super powers to get a job in Disney’s new Marvel land

Disneyland took an unusual approach to assembling the team charged with opening the new Avengers Campus themed land by combining Marvel comic book storytelling and role playing games to illuminate …

www.ocregister.com

You know the drill, head to the OCR or any SCNG website to read it.

 

[DanielBB8]

Disney carries the storytelling way to far especially since it largely doesn't work and no one cares. Their employees forget it after a month or two. Secret identity applies to Spiderman only. Tom Holland's Peter Parker is still in high school after 5 movies appearances and haven't worked in the Daily Bugle yet. The other Marvel superheros are exactly who they are and don't hide it much.

 

[Mickeyboof]

These poor employees and prospective employees.

These are the folks selling popcorn and asking “how many?” in your party, NOT actors or trained performers.

They deserve respect. Not this new Bob Chapek style of managing, where they’re forced to become the land’s only constant source of entertainment.

This is just bad management.

 

[truecoat]

These poor employees and prospective employees.

These are the folks selling popcorn and asking “how many?” in your party, NOT actors or trained performers.

They deserve respect. Not this new Bob Chapek style of managing, where they’re forced to become the land’s only constant source of entertainment.

This is just bad management.

Um, yeah. Someone is overthinking this a bit.

 

[TP2000]

Um, yeah. Someone is overthinking this a bit.

Bright Suns! I think @Mickeyboof is spot on.

In May, 2019 Mr. Chapek schmoozed around in front of media cameras and YouTube vloggers alike and said painfully canned, corporate Newspeak like this...

"You suspend your disbelief that you're in a theme park and you actually start believing you're in the land of Batuu", said Chapek. "If you interact with a 'cast member,' you get the depth of their own story and they've woven it into the larger story, the larger mythology, of Star Wars."

Or this groaner...

When asked about the possibility of creatures and droids roaming the land, Chapek says Galaxy’s Edge will grow over time and add elements, but he also comments that it "already has more characters than any other land because each Cast Member has their own backstory."

So when Star Wars Land opened to crickets and low waits, I jumped in a Lyft a couple weeks after it opened and spent the evening wandering around the land and rode the Falcon three times with never more than a 15 minute wait. The land was brand new with very light attendance that mild June evening, and you would think the CM's would have been bounding around wanting to share their stories!

Instead I found an aesthetically stunning land with many gorgeously uniformed CM's doing the following...

• Talking to each other in corners in groups of 2 or 3, ignoring all the paid customers wandering by them.
• Shop clerks talking about how upset they were to be scheduled to work the 4th of July (which I'm sure is not a Batuu federal holiday).
• Shop clerks talking about how "lit" Katie's parties always are. The term "lit", according to Google, is not young Batuu slang, but young American slang that means something is good but not actually a fire hazard.
• Ronto Roasters cashier leaning on the counter silently staring into the middle distance while I stared at the menu board above him. When I was ready to order I was met simply with a silent, tight smile. The first (and almost only) words out of his mouth were my total in American dollars. Words are hard for the Ronto crew.
• The two restaurant hostesses guarding the doors of the Cantina, the only place with a small yet engaged crowd, were angry and dour and appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown if you dared approach them.

And on and on like that for the entire evening. There was one girl staffing the front of the Falcon ride who was friendly and outgoing, a few CM's were polite and pleasant but only after you engaged them in a transaction, but almost all other CM's were talking among themselves and/or totally disinterested in their jobs and the paying customers milling about.

Their much touted "stories" were mostly non-existent. But I did learn that Katie is an excellent keg party hostess.

If Mr. Chapek and his Anaheim execs are now publicly doubling down on the smarmy and fake Corporate Newspeak as a way to describe how "Immersed!" we are going to be by the CM's in Marvel Land, it doesn't bode well for what they actually have planned for this new land.

If they can't pull it off for Star Wars Land, why should we believe they're doing it again for Marvel Land?

 

[Ismael Flores]

These poor employees and prospective employees.

These are the folks selling popcorn and asking “how many?” in your party, NOT actors or trained performers.

They deserve respect. Not this new Bob Chapek style of managing, where they’re forced to become the land’s only constant source of entertainment.

This is just bad management.

surprisingly I know of a few CM's that are excited to change positions and try out for the new super heroes campus and they like the idea.

 

[TP2000]

surprisingly I know of a few CM's that are excited to change positions and try out for the new super heroes campus and they like the idea.

Let's hope the Marvel culture resonates more with the 18 to 25 year olds who make up most of the CM ranks at Disneyland.

Maybe the hipper and newer Marvel brand is thought of as more lit than the older and slightly nerdier Star Wars brand?

I used "lit" in a sentence! Did I do it right?

 

[DanielBB8]

I noticed how little shade is in Avengers Assemble (I mean Campus).

 

[DavidDL]

Well, I'm happy to know at least the folks working in the area will love the source material or care enough to have gone through this, though I admit it seems a bit much for some.

I for one would have actually loved to work in GE after hearing about the whole citizens and backstory thing, I had given consideration to it but I live a 2 hour drive away with no traffic so it just didn't seem feasible. But I actually had a back story all worked out (I put more thought into it than I care to admit). While I was in the land the other night, the CM's working the creature stall were in character and friendly, they told me that the Krykna spiders weren't available for purchase right now because their eggs were incubating and they weren't sure when they'd hatch.

 

[ProjectXBlog]

to be fair — the article makes it sound like they only did this “make a character” business with the small team responsible for test & adjust, training, etc. not sure if they will take the same route with the hourly employees, but if they are, i am not excited. a big issue in my eyes with the whole “we outsourced story writing to hourly employees” thing is the fact that the guest essentially has to take the lead and ask a CM something about their backstory - they don’t just tell you out of nowhere; that would be weird. at least in anaheim, the last thing i want to do is strike up a conversation with one of the roughly 70% of CMs that look like they want to beat my to a pulp

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Let's hope the Marvel culture resonates more with the 18 to 25 year olds who make up most of the CM ranks at Disneyland.

Maybe the hipper and newer Marvel brand is thought of as more lit than the older and slightly nerdier Star Wars brand?

I used "lit" in a sentence! Did I do it right?

It's legit, as the kids are saying these days.

 

[Disney Transplant]

Disney carries the storytelling way to far especially since it largely doesn't work and no one cares. Their employees forget it after a month or two. Secret identity applies to Spiderman only. Tom Holland's Peter Parker is still in high school after 5 movies appearances and haven't worked in the Daily Bugle yet. The other Marvel superheros are exactly who they are and don't hide it much.

didn’t think I’d read someone say “Disney carries storytelling too far, especially since it largely doesn’t work and no one cares”

isn’t that why we all love going to Disney? Theming and storytelling?

 

[TP2000]

didn’t think I’d read someone say “Disney carries storytelling too far, especially since it largely doesn’t work and no one cares”

isn’t that why we all love going to Disney? Theming and storytelling?

Bright Suns!

I don't think any of us are saying we don't want engaged and informed CM's using cutesy phrases and themed greetings as they ring up our order, or slide our Instagrammable cheeseburger across the counter, or load us into the ride vehicle.

But we've all seen in practice that CM performance in Anaheim is mediocre at best, even after a park-changing Billion dollar expansion and massive corporate push like Star Wars Land that will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes.

So when those same Burbank execs like Mr. Chapek belch forth the same corporate drivel that just like in Star Wars Land in 2019 the Marvel Land CM's in 2020 will be "engaged!" and "immersed!" in their "stories!" as they sell plastic crap from China and flip Instagrammable cheeseburgers and load us into ride vehicles and tell us to pull on the yellow tab for the 300th time that hour, you'll have to excuse us if we are more than a tad skeptical.

Mr. Chapek seems to enjoy saving a few bucks by making the $15 an hour shop clerks and ride operators and burger flippers do all the work instead of hiring $30 an hour actors and musicians and stuntmen. This latest corporate press release on how IMMERSIVE! the low paid CM's in Marvel Land will be just makes most people roll their eyes after we all saw how Star Wars Land turned out in 2019.

 

[Disney Transplant]

Bright Suns!

I don't think any of us are saying we don't want engaged and informed CM's using cutesy phrases and themed greetings as they ring up our order, or slide our Instagrammable cheeseburger across the counter, or load us into the ride vehicle.

But we've all seen in practice that CM performance in Anaheim is mediocre at best, even after a park-changing Billion dollar expansion and massive corporate push like Star Wars Land that will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes.

So when those same Burbank execs like Mr. Chapek belch forth the same corporate drivel that just like in Star Wars Land in 2019 the Marvel Land CM's in 2020 will be "engaged!" and "immersed!" in their "stories!" as they sell plastic crap from China and flip Instagrammable cheeseburgers and load us into ride vehicles and tell us to pull on the yellow tab for the 300th time that hour, you'll have to excuse us if we are more than a tad skeptical.

Mr. Chapek seems to enjoy saving a few bucks by making the $15 an hour shop clerks and ride operators and burger flippers do all the work instead of hiring $30 an hour actors and musicians and stuntmen. This latest corporate press release on how IMMERSIVE! the low paid CM's in Marvel Land will be just makes most people roll their eyes after we all saw how Star Wars Land turned out in 2019.

ok first let me say this, I agree with some of this. But it also sounds so much like an anti-Chapek agenda (which I don’t necessarily disagree with fully) that it’s hard for me to really think this is anything other than “boo chapek bad!”

 

[TP2000]

ok first let me say this, I agree with some of this. But it also sounds so much like an anti-Chapek agenda (which I don’t necessarily disagree with fully) that it’s hard for me to really think this is anything other than “boo chapek bad!”

Okay, so take Mr. Chapek out of it. Absolve him of any responsibility for anything that happens in his parks or any statement he or his executive underlings make to the media. So instead...

Blame the Burbank communications team who approves and pumps out these laughable media statements.

Blame the Anaheim execs who are either so delusional they think their systems and processes for CM training and supervision actually could create this result, or who think so little of the media and their customers that they will believe that this type of customer engagement will actually still happen two weeks after the land opens.

Blame the mid-level Anaheim management who kiss the behinds of their TDA execs and tell them they can easily make sure that their entry-level managers in Dockers and the $15 an hour CM's will be ENGAGED! and IMMERSED! in their fake STORIES! with all the paying customers. Even though those mid-level managers know full well that will cease to consistently happen within two weeks of opening.

Blame the TDA training team who do such a poor job of training the hourly CM's that they can't even sustain the product of engagement one or two weeks after the land opens.

But whatever you do, don't blame Mr. Chapek. He's just perfect for this job.

 

[Mickeyboof]

ok first let me say this, I agree with some of this. But it also sounds so much like an anti-Chapek agenda (which I don’t necessarily disagree with fully) that it’s hard for me to really think this is anything other than “boo chapek bad!”

Okay, ignore Chapek.

Focus on this: do you really expect or want low paid theme park customer service employees to “act” for you over trained professionals?

 

[lazyboy97o]

This concept isn’t new but it’s also something that elsewhere in the parks can get you fired.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

This concept isn’t new

Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror are the most obvious examples of CMs in "character". Except in Japan where everyone is perky and smiling even at the "scary" rides.

Paris ToT CMs are the best I've seen at this. They're really into it, and sometimes do things that would get them fired in the US or Japan, but delight their European customers.

But Galaxy's Edge and Marvel overthink this. It's not just a frame of reference for personality and tone, it's this whole scripted LARPing thing that becomes tedious when you're also trying to do your job and communicate with guests.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror are the most obvious examples of CMs in "character". Except in Japan where everyone is perky and smiling even at the "scary" rides.

Paris ToT CMs are the best I've seen at this. They're really into it, and sometimes do things that would get them fired in the US or Japan, but delight their European customers.

But Galaxy's Edge and Marvel overthink this. It's not just a frame of reference for personality and tone, it's this whole scripted LARPing thing that becomes tedious when you're also trying to do your job and communicate with guests.

I was thinking the World Famous Jungle Cruise where once going off script was tolerated and provided a great deal of variety to the attraction along with something Cast Members could own, be proud of and improve without classes. Now it’s only the same lame script. Disney overscripts because despite all the puff words they distrust no one more than their own employees. Letting people be characters could be great, and would be better than encouraging interaction though place-breaking things like Pin Trading.

 

[TP2000]

But Galaxy's Edge and Marvel overthink this. It's not just a frame of reference for personality and tone, it's this whole scripted LARPing thing that becomes tedious when you're also trying to do your job and communicate with guests.

I liken this recent phenomenon directly to the Puns Are Punny! craze of DCA 1.0 circa 2001. Instead of building attractive lands and exciting attractions, they built stucco lands and off-the-shelf carnival rides that had punny puns attached to them. And we all know how DCA 1.0 turned out.

Now, instead of filling their aesthetically gorgeous Star Wars Land with all the roaming droids and stunt shows and interactive aliens who knew how you crashed the Falcon, Mr. Chapek cut all of that from the budget and tried to tell us that Ky'le from Tustin working the Blue Milk snack bar would have his own backstory that would totally make up for the lack of a rooftop stunt show or roaming droids or interactive aliens.

That didn't work, and Ky'le from Tustin wasn't very good at acting. But at least he can apply your AP discount while he grumbles to his coworker about being scheduled on the 4th of July.