Woman who worked as Mickey Mouse at Disney details week-long training she went through for the role
For some people, a trip to Disney World is the experience of a lifetime, a chance to meet their favorite childhood characters and get immersed in a nostalgic fantasy world where they can escape from everyday stress.
But for the people who work there, the day-to-day experience can be much more full-on.
Elaina, a former employee at Disney World, shared her experience in 'playing Mickey' at the beloved park on the What Was That Like podcast.
The podcast explores people's unusual experiences, everything from people who survived plane crashes, animal attacks - things like that.
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To be fair, being Mickey Mouse must be quite an unusual job, and Elaina shared her insight into exactly how she landed her role in Florida.
What training do employees at Disney get?
What stood out in Elaina's interview is how intense the training process to be a Disney character was, and the very specific skills they had to pick up during it.
She shared the drawn out training process, where potential employees have to go through a week-long intensive history of the company.
Elaina, who worked at the park in the 90s, explained how there was some very specific 'dos and don'ts' at the time, some of which were fairly strict.
She said: "You couldn’t have dark nail polish. Your nails couldn’t be a certain length. Your hair had to be a certain way. There was, I don’t think, facial hair. It was very strict back 30 years ago with how you looked."
Elaina said there was a lot of talk in the backstage areas about what a big deal it was to be a cast member, and what it meant.
She continued: "So [it was] just really history of Disney and try[ing] to make you drink a little bit of the Kool-Aid, to be honest…"
Elaina told the podcast that character training took about three days, unless you were 'mouse height'.
What training is there for Mickey specifically?
"So the training is a full week, and the first three days are regular character training, then the last two days of it are for mouse height."
Also, because the characters don't talk, trainees have to learn to articulate what they are trying to say through movements and gestures.
She continued: "A lot of movement training is associated with pantomime and learning how to emote and do things without speaking."
Hilariously, this meant that a lot of training was just standing in a dance studio full of mirrors, while trainers gave you different scenarios to 'mime'.
"One of the exercises that they had us do is, I remember us standing in a circle and they handed us the top of a trash can, a circle trash can lid, and they passed it around one by one.
"Each person had to come up with something to do with this lid. Be creative. Some people put it on the top of their head like a hat. One person used it like the steering wheel, somebody else rolled it on the ground like a wheel.
"So that was the goal of a couple different sessions of trying to come up with creative ways to say something without saying something.”
You can see the full requirements to become a Disney Character on their website.
Topics: Disney World, Podcast
Thomas Bamford