Land of the Rising Mickey
Page 2 of 2
Ok, enough venting. I feel better.
I can understand where the contractors are coming from, too. They have deadlines. They'll be in big trouble if their work isn't finished on time. I mean BIG TROUBLE. Hotel MiraCosta is the most behind schedule. Looking at it, it's hard to believe that it'll be done by September 1st. Yes, that's the deadline for the opening of MiraCosta and DisneySea itself. If I hear September 1st one more time...!!! Anyway, people are saying that if the contractor in charge of Area 2, which includes MiraCosta, doesn't get done on time the penalties they would have to pay to OLC just might put them out of business. I don't see how they're going to do it, but something tells me they will. They're working like crazy over there.
After ninety minutes of making birds cross the plain (I guess I wasn't quite done venting!), it was - Break Time! Sometimes I spend my break in this little groove that's right up against the side of Mysterious Island that faces Cape Cod. When you see the "volcano" it looks like it runs all the way to ground on that side, but it doesn't. It stop suddenly and there's a wall that leads down to a trench (it's an access road) between it and the back of some of Cape Cod's buildings. But today it was closed off... and the way to anything else at all near-by was also closed off. I wasn't going to waste all of my fifteen minutes walking over to an official break area, so I found I nice spot, sat down on a "rock", and lit up a cigarette. I closed my eye's for a few seconds to rest my tired eyes (did I mention that I'm tired?) and that was my mistake. The first thing I saw when I opened them again was one of the Shimizu guys! He was about 20 feet away and coming right at me! And there I was with a cigarette in my hand!!
Our break areas, like that groove I mentioned, are the only places we're officially allowed to smoke. We smoke other places pretty often, though. Hey, a lot of the time, like today, it's a long way to a break area. The smoking areas are for safety reasons. There's a lot of paint and other flammable chemicals that people are using. But we're not stupid (at least most of us), and we're not going to smoke somewhere that's going to blow the place up.
You really don't want to get caught smoking outside of an official area, though. The guys from Shimizu don't take it lightly. But they can't be everywhere... and they're easy to spot. When I first started working here a supervisor from my company was actually the one who taught me how to get away with not walking all the way to a smoking area. He said it was ok as long as there isn't someone from Shimizu around. We can tell who's with Shimizu because they're the only ones wearing matching work clothes and white helmets with the DisneySea logo on them. And there's something even more obvious about them - They're the only ones who aren't dirty. Luckily he was distracted by someone else that was smoking before he saw me! After he moved on, I still managed to have a cigarette.
Now don't get me wrong. I respect the guys from Shimizu. That smoking thing is the only time I don't listen to them. They're thinking about us and really know how to get things done. Most of the companies on this project, like mine, are pretty cheap. Shimizu goes to bat for us to make sure our companies give us what we need. For example, our company wasn't supplying things like safety glasses and rubber gloves for us until Shimizu put pressure on them to do it. And they help me out a lot. They understand which F.A.D. know what they're doing and which ones don't. Basically, when two F.A.D. tell me to do two different things a lot of times a Shimizu guy will tell me which one to listen to.
Ok... Back to lava creation. I AM A GOD!.
In our next and final episode (to be published later this month), Yamata-san has some lunch, finishes out his day, and goes straight home for some much needed rest... At least that's what he would've done, if that painter hadn't broken his heart!
Jikai made - ogenki de!
(Until next time - Take care!)
-- Marc Borrelli
Marc Borrelli has been visiting Disneyland in California for over thirty years and has had the opportunity to observe many of the Park's onstage and backstage workings. He is an entrepreneur who alternates between working obsessively and having way too much time on his hands. In the past few years he's spent much of that time exploring his hobby of trying to figure out just what it is that makes the people who design, build, operate, and go to Disney theme parks tick. He is now living in Tokyo, Japan and has turned his attention to the Tokyo Disney Resort and the unique culture in which it exists. He also created and maintains his Tokyo DisneySea Preview website.
Land of the Rising Mickey is posted on the first Monday of each month.
The opinions expressed by Marc Borrelli, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
© Marc Borrelli and LaughingPlace.com. All rights reserved
-- Posted February 5, 2001