My Friend Walt
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966 while Walt Disney World was still under construction. He entrusted his brother, Roy Disney, with completion of the park. In the Magic Kingdom, on the castle hub, stands a statue of Walt holding Mickey's hand. The statue is called "Partners", but the partners are not who you may think. Walt's statue hand is pointing toward the front of the park... where another statue can be found in front of the train station of Roy Disney sitting on a park bench. Walt is pointing Mickey to the front of the park, to Roy, his partner.
Both Walt and Roy are beloved by Disney enthusiasts, and perhaps even more so by Cast Members. This was driven home to me in the fall of 1999. I had arrived for my College Program internship just a week before hurricane Floyd, the hurricane that prompted the fourth largest evacuation in US history, and the first hurricane that caused Walt Disney World to close ever, was on its way to Florida.
I had done the work. I had run to the grocery store and bought all the bottled water and canned food. I had taped the windows with my roommates. I had helped them clean and then fill the bath tub and all the sinks, and there was nothing left to do. Floyd was expected to make landfall in the wee hours of the night and then barrel its way through Orlando as a category 5 hurricane early the next morning. Disney had already announced the parks would be closed.
But the night before the storm came, in my frazzled, mid-western, "I-don't-know-what-to-do" state, I had ventured into the Magic Kingdom for a last hurrah. The air was still calm, the park was still open and many were out having a good time before the storm came. We watched the wind gusts closely. The monorail would be the first thing to shut down when the gusts reached 40 mph.
As the night began to get breezy, I hopped on the monorail to the TTC, thinking it might shut down soon. Only once I got there did I realize that somewhere in the craziness of the night before the storm, I had lost the ID badge that permitted me onto the bus and into the gates of my Cast Member housing.
I didn't know what to do, so I flagged down the nearest Cast Member I could find, a bus driver who was leaving his bus and headed into a kiosk at the TTC. I told him my situation, that I was in the College Program and had lost my badge in the Magic Kingdom and I wasn't sure if I could get back because the monorail would soon shut down, and a storm was coming and OH MY GOD I was from Wisconsin, and my roommate who had survived hurricane Andrew was telling us things were going to get very bad and I was so scared!
He invited me into what turned out to be a transportation office where several bus drivers were sitting around drinking coffee and talking about the coming storm. I used their phone to call my roommates to arrange for them to vouch for me and at least let me in. This is when things started to get magical.
Magical thing #1: My roommates informed me that my other roommate who worked custodial at the Magic Kingdom had just called them. She had my badge! She had seen it lying on the sidewalk of Main Street USA and had picked it up and laughed. What a miracle she was the one who found it! And she was headed to find me at the end of her shift in just a half hour.
Magical thing #2: While I waited for her to arrive, the bus drivers were talking about when to shut transportation down. I must've looked sickened hearing their conversation. This was the first time in history Walt Disney World would shut down. At the time it was unprecedented. I was nauseated at the idea and even more scared of what big bad thing this storm must be to cause it to happen.
One of the bus drivers must have noticed my scared expression and asked outright if I was nervous. I told him I was - that I was nervous for me, that I was nervous for the animals at the Animal Kingdom where I worked, and that I was nervous for the park because if anything should happen to the parks...
And he told me something I will never forget. With a gleam in his eye, he told me "You know, Walt is watching. He won't let anything happen to his baby."
It was crazy and silly, I know. That Walt could do anything from beyond the grave was not a logical idea, of course. But what stuck with me was the confidence with which this man spoke of Walt.
And many, many people speak of Walt like this still. We look back to his vision. We consult with what he would have wanted. We remember his values. He is still a living, breathing thing in the culture of Disney.
Long story short, I made it home. My roommates and I set up a watch so that someone could always be awake monitoring the storm in case things intensified quickly and people needed to be woken to take shelter. Having survived Andrew, my roommate was not going to let us be taken off guard as she had been when she was a child.
My watch was to begin at 4am, but I awoke the next morning to the palms gently swaying in the breeze in the light of day. I had missed my watch. I ventured to the living room to find out why, and found some of my roommates out there. The storm had turned away from us. The day would only be rainy and breezy, but mass destruction was not in our near future anymore.
Did Walt protect his baby? I am inclined to say it was a meteorological certainty that the storm would turn when it hit the coast, but if that's so, why wasn't it predicted? Who knows - but I know there is a bus driver out there who knows it was his friend Walt that saved us.
