Reliving Fond Memories
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The Zoo
By David Mink

Part 2: Sunday In The Park With Fur

If you missed it, Part One is still available.

 I was now a blushing rookie in the Disneyland family. The phone rang with my first assignment: Winnie the Pooh.

I still had no idea what to expect. I survived the tryouts, still a mystery to me. I had been a Disneyland fan since a child, but never spent any time with the characters. To me, they just stood around and shook hands. Danced around in the parades. The biggest character memory I had is King Leonidas playing the calliope in the electrical parade. But how heavy were the costumes? How hot does it get inside? Do I wear the costume for hours at a time?

I drove into Harbor House entrance, parked and walked through the ticket house into the back stage area. I picked up the set list for my unit from a folder hanging on the wall of the Zoo office (The "Zoo" was the character office. Characters are part of the "Zoo Crew"). I claimed my T-shirt and shorts from the wardrobe workers in the headroom and looked up my locker.

The headroom was where the costumes were stored. The bodies, gloves and feet were behind a counter, multi colored furs and costumes hanging from racks. The character heads were ranged on metal shelves. Along one wall were lighted mirrors for the "face costumes" (Snow White, Alice, Mary Poppins etc.) to get their make up and wigs ready for the day. Under the counters were spare t-shirts, Velcro, pins, needles and thread for quick repairs.

I was handed the lower half of the costume and the shoes. These were workboots with a large round sole attached. Around the edges was Velcro, the mustard yellow fur attached and gathered around my ankle with elastic.

After I had the lower half of the body on, I claimed the enormous head. I lugged that thing out of the headroom and past the back end of Space Mountain to the main street break area. It is right behind what is now the pin trading area, but once was a breakfast place. The break areas are outdoors, with a tin roof overhead, and racks of hangars and stumps, metal rods with wooden tops, to place the character heads on. There are two benches facing each other for the characters to sit, talk, listen to headphones, or read.

My very first set was rather uneventful; since it was during the week on off-season, so the crowds were light. What did take me by surprise is how children and parents perceive the characters. Winnie the Pooh and his pals are enormously popular, so when Pooh showed his face, the crowds turned. Kids pointed and shouted out his name, parents scrambled for their cameras or checked to make sure they had their film. The crowd surged as if it were of one mind towards me.

Sets last roughly a half-hour. The heat builds inside the costume, so the characters would wear a headband, bandana or a surgeon's skullcap to keep the sweat from running into our eyes. The question we are frequently asked is how hot it gets inside. Once someone put a temperature gauge inside his head, but it steamed up and was unreadable. Anyway, we didn't want to know. Picture yourself jogging inside a sauna for a half-hour in a sweat suit and you have a basic idea of being inside a Disney character costume.

As the outside temperature climbs to 90 degrees, five minutes are taken off the set. During the height of the summer, our sets are usually ten minutes. When the temperature was peaking at near one hundred degrees, we hardly go out at all. People had been known to faint from heat stroke inside the costumes.

Character costumes, in my day, weighed around thirty-forty pounds. Some of the larger costumes such as Brer Bear, Baloo and Little John weighed more. They sat on the wearer's shoulders with a backstrap that cinched around the waist with a seatbelt clasp. Mostly the heads sat directly on our own with headgear and a chinstrap. Supporting that weight day after day, month and year would eventually cause back problems. It was the most common character curse.

Characters are put together according to movie, called units. There are usually three or four characters to a "unit", such as Pinocchio with Foulfellow, Gideon and Geppetto. Sometimes there would be double unites, like two Fab Five units, so there was always Mickey out by the mad Hatter’s hat shop. The leads had to make sure the two units didn’t overlap, like Mickey coming out to replace the other Mickey!

Several of these units working the same shift (8-5, 9-6) would be under the direct supervision of a character lead. Since units are dispersed throughout the park, the lead walks everywhere, checking up on the characters under his or her charge, making sure all is well and everyone is following the rules and doing a good job.

There are some rules we all had to follow, such as no talking. We couldn't be pushy, even when the dreaded 11-14 year olds were surrounding us. The enforcement of that and many other rules depended on the leads themselves. The older characters, which couldn't be in costume anymore due to injuries, were the coolest, because they understood intimately how hard being a character is. They are lifers, and had worked as characters since they were young, moving up the ladder.

The wonder of the old Pooh costume was that my arms were free inside the giant head. I would wiggle the nose at the giggling children ("He's kissing me!"). After the repetition of the day set in, I’d just stand there and read, bringing a paperback stuffed into one of Pooh’s limp arms.

As a character, I developed a sixth sense when troublemakers were around. While Pluto was looking down at the kids shaking hands, I was inside the head looking around at the crowd. When I would see suspicious kids, I would put as much people between them and I until they moved on. This wasn’t too hard, because characters are usually swamped with well-wishers looking for that perfect photo op. Most of the time, anyway…

I had the pleasure of meeting the most interesting of characters. Paul Castle was his name, and he was the original Mickey. He was hired by Walt himself, and was Mickey #1. Remember the famous picture of Walt and Mickey in the firetruck? That was Paul. He was definitely an "old school" character, likable in his eccentricities. He was the 8-5 Mickey, Monday through Friday. The character department built up around him. He's retired now.

Despite what I once thought, being a character was very hard work. By mid afternoon I was exhausted. You really have to be in excellent shape to handle this job for eight hours. Since most people I deal with are less than four feet tall, I am constantly looking down, stooped over. The weight of fur and fiberglass hang off my neck and shoulders, straining the muscles.

The end of the day I dragged myself and costume back to the headroom. I was soaked. I toweled off, walking in the late afternoon breeze, hoping my shirt and shorts would dry out.

Once in the headroom, I sprayed disinfectant into the head and aired it out with air jets, putting it back on the shelves for another day. I handed back the body and shoes, which were sent to the laundry department to be cleaned. Collecting a fresh set of shorts, shirts and a towel, I headed to the showers, drained and sore.

So began my five-year journey through a corner of the Entertainment Department at that happy place called…Disneyland.

NEXT: Airing out the heads.

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-- David Mink

-- Posted November 20, 2002