Custodial 101

Today was our first day of on the job training! It was not really glamorous and we didn’t walk around the park as much as the last 2 days of work, but we had fun!

As soon as we all got there we met our trainers, learned how to clock in, got our (free) shoes, got lockers, got our costumes, and got a quick tour of our custodial building back stage. After all of that, we were in our classroom for most of the shift just learning basic custodial things. We didn’t learn how to clean anything but it kind of felt more like custodial 101. Today was our guest interaction training 🙂 (my favorite part about my role).

We learned that there are day time custodians (me) and night time custodians (when the park is closed). Day custodians “maintain the magic” and night custodians “restore the magic.” I just love that they say that because it really is true! It’s amazing how awesome this role is, and yet it is so over looked! My trainer was right today when she said that this is a really humbling role for that reason!

 
They had these Custodial Mickeys all over the place in my building, it was so cute! I love it because it really is an important job and that’s one thing Walt wanted the most for his theme park; to keep it clean! I’m glad I can maintain the cleanliness and help make it magical for the guests!

Custodians use to be referred to as “Ninjas” as they would clean quickly and then disappear (go backstage)! Obviously this isn’t true anymore since you see custodians in white (to stick out to guests, but also blend in with any land). Custodians also have the most guest interaction in the park so we don’t want to be known as ninjas. We need to make sure we’re available to our guests as their go-to information booth. It also amazed me to hear that there are 400 custodians in the park! I had no idea there would be that much!

After our class room training we got to actually take the things that we learned and apply them out in the park on Main Street. Before we went out though we got our “goodies” for our satchel haha. We got some gloves, scrapers, paper towels, a water spray bottle, a flash light, maps, and buttons. We also got to put a lanyard around our neck for pin trading and we carried a claw pick-up tool around with us for trash. As if we don’t stand out enough with white on, there were about 15 of us so we walked onto main street right by the train station as we got a lot of stares (wondering what we were doing as a group). One man spotted us right away, a dedicated pin trader, and was ecstatic from the “jack pot” he found hahah! After we had a quick talk from our trainer we got to do our first pin trading with him and afterwards he said we “made is night no matter what happens” so he asked for a group picture which made me feel good (even though he didn’t want any pins from my lanyard lol).

We started walking some more and stopped right in front of City Hall where tons of pin traders bombarded us with pin trading. It was so much fun and I was so happy to actually practice guest interaction. I even played with a baby a little bit and told people to have a “magical night”. I FINALLY got to use the things I’ve been learning about the last couple days and it was wonderful. Once we started walking down to the end of Main Street I started picking up some trash and right before we went backstage I got to interact with a little girl by getting down on knee level to ask if she saw Snow White today (she was dressed as Snow White).

I forgot to put this in my last post, but I just found out that since California is in a drought, custodians wouldn’t be able to perform water art until May (after I’m gone), so that made me sad.

Although we were only on stage for about a half hour, tonight was definitely a magical night and a fun beginning to my new dream. I was really happy with how today turned out and it was exciting to meet all my DCP DLR custodian family! There were more then I thought! I know this will be an awesome role and I’m looking to some more training tomorrow (even though I’m exhausted). I can’t wait to see not only what else this role has to offer, but what else I’m capable of! I can’t wait to make those magical memories and experiences!

 
My custodial costume!