We’re taking it back and reminiscing with my old friend Patrick about those early days at Disney Hollywood Studios almost 35 years ago. Take a trip down memory lane with us and relive the excitement of opening day, an unexpected celebrity encounter, and the memories we’ll cherish forever from our first summer at Disney.
Download my free guide: 10 Tips for A Luxe Disney Vacation or connect with me on Instagram @jetsettingwithmichele
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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.
We’re taking it back and reminiscing with my old friend Patrick about those early days at Disney Hollywood Studios almost 35 years ago. Take a trip down memory lane with us and relive the excitement of opening day, an unexpected celebrity encounter, and the memories we’ll cherish forever from our first summer at Disney.
Download my free guide: 10 Tips for A Luxe Disney Vacation or connect with me on Instagram @jetsettingwithmichele
Michele's IG
Connect with Michele on FB
Leave us a Review on Apple Podcasts
Leave us a Review on Spotify
This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.
Michele:
Welcome to let me adjust my ears, a weekly podcast about all things Disney and luxury travel. I'm Michelle from Makin' Memories Travel, your extra a f host. Grab your favorite cocktail and join me as we immerse ourselves in pixie dust and Disney vacations, minus the pint sized entourage. Unravel the secrets of bougie travel and indulge in amusing conversations with fellow extra friends. Hold on tight to your ears as we launch right in. Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of Let Me Adjust My Ears. Or should I say, hello, jetsetters? That's right. We've got something very special coming your way next week.
Michele:
I sure hope that you will be one of the first to listen to next week's episode. Download it. Listen to it. Follow it. And share it on Instagram. And you can tag me with my new handle even at jetsettingwithmichelle, and that's Michelle with the one l. And who knows? You could win a super special prize. And without further ado, here is a special behind the scenes look at the opening of the Disney MGM Studios theme park.
Michele:
And all these special behind the scenes, they're gonna make a lot of sense after next week.
Michele:
Hello, my friends. I am very happy today to have a very old friend. I mean, we are going back a hot minute to my college program days at what I can officially call the Disney MGM Studios theme park. I have my friend Patrick here who has known me since my first day in training on the job, OJT. Patrick, how are you? It's great to have you.
Patrick:
I'm doing well, Michelle. Thanks for having me.
Michele:
Oh, thank you so much for being here. I've been really excited to have someone who can go back. So I actually started at the studios, like, 8 weeks after it had opened. Even though I call myself part of the opening crew because it was still the summer that the park opened.
Patrick:
It was crazy times.
Michele:
It was crazy times. So you were there the night it opens. I guess wait. I should backtrack. So tell everyone, please, how we met, what you're doing nowadays, and then we can, like, reminisce. Throw it back.
Patrick:
So today, I manage money for large corporations. And the easiest way to explain it is I used to work for Starbucks. I used to manage Starbucks money all over the planet. That was about 20 years ago. So anytime you handed over cash to barista, we needed to get that cash sort of back to Seattle, and we needed to pay our bills. I manage all that interaction with the banks around the world, whether we were collecting money or paying it out. So I managed all of that. And that's what I do for a living.
Patrick:
Most recently, I've been at a big multimodal transportation logistics company, but I was also VP of finance for a $250,000,000 shipping company.
Michele:
If you guys are getting the idea that he's like a bigwig, he is. He's managed to take time off from working a 9 to 5 and travel a lot, so he's being modest.
Patrick:
My Disney experience, I started working in high school and college in the Magic Kingdom, and I spent about 4 years in the Magic Kingdom in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland doing It's a Small World and Skyway and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Space Mountain and Parade. And I basically did all the attractions in Fantasyland and most of them in Tomorrowland. And I was there when Michael Eisner announced that we were gonna open a studio. This company was gonna open a studio. And I went and applied, and I was chosen to be part of the opening crew. The park opened May 1st, and I wanna see Easter that year. Spring break was sort of late March, like, maybe March 15th through March 30th or whatever. There had been people there doing a lot of the initial part of the testing of the rides and figuring out how everything would work.
Patrick:
But then we all came in as staff roughly April 1st, and we learned how to run the park and how to make the shows all work. And most of us had come from another park, so most of us had other Disney experience. There weren't a lot of new hires on day 1 in the park. And I think they really did that strategically. They wanted to really try to force the competition and up the game so that when Universal opened a year or 2 later, Disney would really have some good legs under itself. And then I met Michelle because if I remember correctly, I was your trainer at Superstar Television.
Michele:
No. Actually, it was Alice.
Patrick:
Oh, it's Alice.
Michele:
Yeah. But you were a trainer. I mean, not to take anything away. There were 3 of us that were all under Alice. And, historically, training for me has never been fun. Like, I got really, really flustered. I remember we you befriended me and kinda helped me through training, for sure.
Patrick:
Okay.
Michele:
You were definitely the first we called perm. You know, there were CPs, college program, and then seasonals, which there weren't nearly the amount of that there are now, and then perms. So you were definitely the 1st perm cast member at where we were stationed, which I'll let you tell everybody about, to invite me out and to welcome me into that particular family. So what attraction were we at?
Patrick:
So we were at Superstar Television, and that was an opening day attraction. There were based I think there are 5 opening day attractions. There was the animation building. The backstage studio tour at that time was a 2 hour tour. You went through the entire back lot and to the soundstages. There was a great movie ride. There was superstar television, and there was the monster sound show. And Indiana Jones was still in development.
Patrick:
They were still trying to get everything to work correctly. And I think they began showing some shows about a month later. Superstar Television was we would pick about 30 people out of the audience, and we would pair up those audience members with some of the great moments in television history. So the classic one was that I love Lucy scene where the candy is coming down the conveyor belt and Ethel and Lucy are trying to wrap that candy up as fast as they can, and they just can't keep up. So we would pick a woman out of the audience, put her in that, and we would computer merge her together, which sounds not that difficult today. But in 1989, that was a big feat. Our studio guest, Ethel, would have to try to deal with all the chocolate just like Lucy was doing in the chocolate scene. And so that was the first time the company had ever taken guests out of the audience and made them stars of a show.
Patrick:
And so it was a quite interesting and and fun process. We had everywhere from kids from about 3 or 4 years old being our cowpoke to sort of some of the older folks in the audience were our soap opera star and our newscaster and some stuff like that.
Michele:
Oh my gosh. You're taking me back. I remember the Lucy scene, but I had totally forgotten the cowpoke scene and the soap opera. And, of course, the one I remember the most, and you'll have to remind me what the actual TV or show came from, was the pie.
Michele:
Oh, that would have been the 3 stooges. Right?
Patrick:
The 3 stooges. Yeah. So we had an audience member take a pie to the face every show. So the show was about half an hour long. It was every half an hour show in the beginning. Yeah. Studio member would take a pie pretending to be the butler or getting stuck in the middle of a pie fight in the 3 stooges.
Michele:
So despite the fact that we were both over at Superstar Television, we are honorary movie writers, and that is because we spent a lot of time over there helping with crowd control and being greeters.
Patrick:
Yeah. So that first summer, the studio was it was very interesting because it was brand new. It was designed to be a half day park, which sounds good in concept because people were only spending about 6 to 8 hours in a park historically, but the park was small. Like I said, it only had 5 attractions. And so the lines would get out of control, and the movie ride was probably the one of the most intense rides for the cast to learn. They had a 20 minute spiel they had to do. And so they were always needing people to be actually working on the ride, and they would pull us from other attractions to go and stand in front of the building and answer questions and direct wheelchair guests to where they needed to go or help with where's the bathroom, things like that. So we were always over there.
Michele:
It's actually my favorite assignment. I know it's crazy, but I loved working at MaybeRide.
Patrick:
I had a great time.
Michele:
Because you were always busy. I mean, the time just went by and you had to know every single thing about the park because it was the first thing people hit. I mean, and the lines were down Hollywood Boulevard. I mean, it was out of control.
Patrick:
When the great movie ride closed, we had a big party and
Michele:
RIP. RIP.
Patrick:
Yes.
Michele:
I just can't believe she's gone.
Patrick:
It was fun talking to some of the younger folks or the people who were working there recently. And they didn't understand that the backstage tour line, the animation building line, and the great movie ride line would all merge together.
Michele:
That's right.
Patrick:
One of my favorite comments that one of the best moments I ever had working the line, the cue at great movie ride. I was with Cheryl Barnes, who I think you remember.
Michele:
She's Oh my god.
Patrick:
Passed away.
Michele:
Also RIP. Cheryl was dear friend, my favorite lead, for sure.
Patrick:
We're standing there trying to keep the line under control, and somebody asked, what line is this for? And she just turned and looked at the lady and said, it's the line for the bathroom. Didn't you know? So, yes, there would be thousands of people in those lines and trying to keep them all clean.
Michele:
So Cheryl Barnes. But that was true. People are like lemmings. And so even today, when I'm giving advice about the theme parks, I'm like, don't just follow the people in front of you because they probably don't know where they're going either.
Patrick:
If you knew how to do the park, you could do it in a half day if you did it differently than most people would do it. Yes.
Michele:
Yeah. So you were there opening night, which I still remember some of the scenes from this televised version with the dancers that were supposed to be as b Berkeley's. Tell us about what that was like being there that opening.
Patrick:
Opening night was the galley evening was really interesting because we've been planning for this. We've been testing the park up, you know, for a couple weeks before the actual opening of the park. So we were letting resort guests into the park for free and things like that because we needed audiences and stuff like that. The park, I'd never seen so many lights and electrical cables put around the park to deal with all the theatrics of the opening night. And then, of course, it rained. I don't remember what time the evening was supposed to begin. Let's say it was 6 o'clock, and all of a sudden, 4 o'clock in May or in late April, in Florida, it doesn't rain in April, but it's gonna be the forest fire season, It deluged, and it deluged for an hour or 2. I mean, it deluged as all people were coming into the park.
Patrick:
And in true Disney fashion, the umbrellas were handed out and people were kept dry and the show went on. I was over at Indiana Jones most of the day dealing with people there. We had George Burns there. I think we had the Pointer Sisters. I wanna say maybe Willie Nelson, but I can't swear to that. A couple people got moved into Indiana Jones because of the rain. I didn't get to see the motorcade go down Hollywood Boulevard in the big show. I was on the other side of the park.
Patrick:
But my favorite moment of the night, we had all these electric cables all over the park, and most of them had nice sort of wheelchair accessible ramps over them. But we had one that was laid down very quickly, and it was very awkward the way it was laid down. And so there's a whole slew of us out there with flashlights, you know, watch your step, please, watch your step, please, pointing out so people don't trip. And John Ritter comes up, and I, just as normal Disney person, am saying, watch your step, please. And then he proceeds to pretend to trip over the cable, which is totally his stick his entire career. And I felt so honored because, you know, he didn't have to do that. He was doing that for me. I was an audience of 1, and I felt so honored that he did it.
Patrick:
He was the host of the opening show, but I thought that was just so funny that you saw the stars maybe in a way you wouldn't have seen them otherwise. Because a lot of times you saw them backstage and waiting for a parade or waiting for an interview, and you could chit chat with them. So that was a fun moment for me.
Michele:
Very, very cool. Any other kind of BTS behind the scenes from that day that you remember?
Patrick:
I just I remember being hot. And, I mean, I remember being super excited that the park was about to open. I remember also Lucille Ball died, like, 3 or 4 days before the studio opened. And that was sort of sad because she had been such a big star. She was honored in Superstar Television, and part of the show was dedicated to her. It was really sort of passing of the torch. But, yeah, it was a great wonderful night. I mean, all the stars were there.
Patrick:
All of Hollywood flew down to Orlando to open that park.
Michele:
Yeah. So I was working there either I don't think it was part of my college program. It must have been when I came back as a seasonal cast member before I moved while I was in school. Jim Henson dying just before the Muppets attraction opened. Muppet Vision 3 d.
Patrick:
He'd been in the park like a week or 2 before he died.
Michele:
Yeah. I remember that.
Patrick:
And then I remember the guests, they started putting flowers on his handprints in the Chinese cedar when they started hearing that he died that day. To me, that was probably the way a lot of people felt about Walt Disney dying because I grew up with Jim Henson more than I did with Walt Disney. And to have the creator of the Muppets die, that was a huge part of my childhood.
Michele:
Yeah. It was. And I remember there was a full page ad or a full page thing maybe in our eyes and ears, which is the Disney Weekly cast member paper, which still comes out, but now it's digital. We actually had printed papers for you, youngsters, ask your parents. And there was like a full page with Kermit, and he said, I've lost my voice. I'll never forget that because it was one of those moments where we all remember where we were when we heard when we found out.
Patrick:
I was at the park.
Michele:
I was too. I was in the couch cafeteria.
Patrick:
Yeah. But speaking about the eyes and ears, I do have the eyes and ears from opening day.
Michele:
Wow.
Patrick:
I need to get it framed. I'm glad I picked up a couple copies of that.
Michele:
Would you trade that experience of opening a new park for anything? I mean, even though you don't work for the company anymore?
Patrick:
Yeah. So a couple of things that I've thought about over the years. 1, before Facebook came along, I would go I'd move around the country, go for to different jobs, and I'd always be talking about Disney and how wonderful a time it was. And honestly, I think people will look at me like a little weird. And I always would start with everyone looks back fondly on a particular part of their life and maybe that's their fraternitysorority days, their football cheerleading days or their FFA days or their military service or whatever. It just happens to be for me, it was my time at the studios, not even as much the Magic Kingdom, but mostly the studios.
Michele:
I'd have to agree with that. Even though I went on to work in resorts, there was nothing like it.
Patrick:
And Facebook came out in, what, 2009, whatever, 2008. And I reconnected with all these people who I hadn't talked to by that time. It'd been, like, about 10, 15 years. And it was just incredibly shocking how we all reconnected and how fun it was. And there would be times shame on me. I'd be sitting in a boring meeting. I'd be looking at my Facebook page, and somebody would crack a joke on Facebook or one of our studio colleagues. And that was all I could do to not bust out laughing in the middle of a meeting because I felt like I was back in that break room behind Superstar Television and just having a good time with everyone.
Michele:
Those were the days. Now we were lucky at Superstar because we had, as you mentioned, it was a half hour show. So we had, like, kind of an easy day. There was only one rotation that we were ever out side for a little bit. We had one rotation out of 3. And then we also got half hour breaks instead of 15 minute break. So we were living the life back there in that break room.
Patrick:
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, most attractions when I worked at Space Mountain or whatever, you sort of worked at a greeter position and then somebody would come and say you're bumped and you'd move down to like a load position, and then you would move down into the unloaded position, and then you got a break. And at Superstar Television, we were taking audience members out of the audience. We, as cast members, were teaching them their parts and how they would perform on stage. So Disney wanted to have that continuity between us and the guests. So the guests were nervous about what they were gonna be doing stage, and they didn't want us to be switching out in the middle of a show. So our schedules our work schedules tied to the show schedule, which meant that our breaks and our lunches were exactly a half an hour. And that's always a funny story too because, you know, when you work at Spaceman back in the day, if you're a couple of minutes late, it was no big deal.
Patrick:
I mean, people might be upset at you, but it wasn't a big deal. But if you were late at the studio coming back from your lunch at Superstar, there were people waiting for you to show them how to do their role, and that was a problem. So I would say our lunches were not always half an hour, but we got half an hour break, so it sort of all made up for it.
Michele:
Yeah.
Patrick:
It really allowed us to all join together. And it was also sort of a I was obviously never in the military, but it was like trial by fire or whatever because most guests were happy and excited. But you'd have some really upset irate guests at you And because it was hot, there wasn't enough water fountains on day 1. There was no shade. There wasn't as much air conditioning. There were no ceiling fans. The building's all echoed. And those things all got had to get taken care of that 1st summer.
Patrick:
I remember how many water fountains they built that 1st summer and how many people were passing out. But the park got all better and it sort of forced us all together and to become good friends. And the park was closing, like, at 8 or 9 o'clock at night in the middle of summer. And so that allowed us to all go out in the evening.
Michele:
Which we did
Michele:
all the time.
Patrick:
Which we did. Because if you were in the Magic Kingdom, you're working till midnight. At that time, you're working till 11 o'clock. So we all would go out drinking, and that was the year Pleasure Island opened.
Michele:
Oh, that's right.
Patrick:
There was a lot of development on the property, and it just allowed us to go out and enjoy each other and have a good time.
Michele:
It was also the year I turned 21. I remember. So I started my college program, like I said, about 6 to 8 weeks after the park opened, which was in May. And I turned 21 that October, so very soon after I was there. And Pleasure Island had a annual pass
Patrick:
Yes.
Michele:
That as cast members, we got at 50% off, which, like, no cast member gets that kind of discount on anything anymore.
Patrick:
They certainly made up the price, you know, the alcohol is ready.
Michele:
Yeah. We would get paid on Thursdays. We would go to cast member night at Pleasure Island and have Friday off.
Patrick:
Nice. I sort of recall it was Tuesday was nickel beer night at Rosie O'Grady's downtown Orlando.
Michele:
Yep.
Patrick:
Long before Universal's there. Wednesday night was Calico Jack's, like, quarter beer night. And then I sound like an alcoholic. I'm actually not a big drinker. But Thursday night was fireworks factory at Pleasure Island and dancing at mannequins on a revolving dance floor.
Michele:
Yeah.
Patrick:
And then Friday was jungle gyms. I think it was called the jungle gym drink was half price. We also had a softball team. We all played on the softball team. Forgot about that.
Michele:
Those were amazing, amazing times. And so you've mentioned that Indiana Jones wasn't actually even open, but it is considered an original attraction. And it today is?
Patrick:
The only one that's left.
Michele:
How do you feel about that? Because for me, I just have PTSD from working it. We had to wear those
Patrick:
Wrangler jeans. They
Michele:
weren't even polyester. They were like really hot Wrangler jeans, which looked good on nobody.
Patrick:
Right.
Michele:
But I thought we were gonna be crushed when we would load that stadium. There was no queue back then.
Patrick:
There was no queue. So it was very interesting. The park was built to beat Universal, and it was built on a budget. And it probably cost them a lot more money to go back and fix the park after the park had opened. But, yes, I spent a good chunk of my summers over at Indiana Jones. And, yes, those regular jeans, when it's 98 degrees, 98% humidity, and there's no shade, there was no umbrellas that we were allowed to have.
Michele:
We weren't allowed to have water bottles.
Patrick:
We weren't allowed to have water bottles.
Michele:
The cast today, they don't know how good they have it.
Patrick:
They don't. We were in full length jeans. We weren't in shorts. There was no shorts left. The big saving grace is we were allowed to wear black tennis shoes. Because in the Magic Kingdom, you had to wear because that was sort of studio fitting type thing. But in the Magic Kingdom, you had to wear a shoe with a defined heel. So the women hated that because they had to have defined heels, and the guys didn't like much either.
Patrick:
But, we were allowed to wear tennis shoes, black tennis shoes. And then ultimately, they did change the costume around and gave us some more lightweight pants, but it was odd. And you just people would pass out either cast members or guests. And, yes, that theater had, like, 24 100 people, and we would pack that theater full. And there were no fans in the theater at the time either. So it's hot in Florida, and they went back. They added fans. They built the queues out so they would all be in the shade.
Michele:
But for me, that attraction I mean, come on. It's almost 40 years old now. It needs an update. Like, for it to be the sole surviving attraction.
Patrick:
It's hard because, you know, when I think about my studio days, I worked at Superstar Television, which is gone, Monster Sound Show, which is gone. I worked at Star Tours. I opened up Star Tours. That's sort of gone. New York Street was there, and you actually weren't allowed to be on New York Street. I worked at the Bogus Film Crew during summertime. They would pay us to go out there and make people think that we were filming a movie or getting ready to film the movie. And then they opened that up to the guests and allowed them to walk through that.
Patrick:
I stood in front of Star Tours the fall of 1989 saying, yes, it's gonna open up next year. That was hot. Yeah. It was a hot summer.
Michele:
And to think it's actually even hotter now.
Patrick:
Yeah.
Michele:
I can't even go in the summers anymore. It's just too brutal.
Patrick:
Well, I live in Seattle, so my hot summer is a nice 75 degree day. But, yeah, there was also there was a secret place you'd go find Indiana Jones. There was a big place with all the computers for Indiana Jones, and that room was kept at about 50 degrees in the air conditioning because it had all the computers in it. And that was the place to go and just first few minutes and get a cold. You know, feel like you were in a freezer for a bit. But, otherwise, you were just hot. And there were no water fountains. Even if there was, you weren't allowed to drink.
Michele:
Right. And we weren't allowed water bottles on stage like today. Yeah. We were abused, but we loved it. I feel like we almost paid for the privilege even though technically we were collecting paychecks.
Patrick:
Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna get into the whole thing, but I always felt felt like we were well paid back in the day for what we were doing. And Disney really had a good strong commitment to being flexible to education. There are times when I worked part time with Disney and go to school full time and there were times I was working full time and going to school full time and I always managed to get my schedule to work out with the university education. So I'm always grateful for that. I got a good degree without going into a lot of school debt because I was working at Walt Disney World.
Michele:
We did have great health benefits.
Patrick:
There are a lot of good benefits of the company.
Michele:
Yeah. And park benefits, which at that time meant a lot because we were young. And all those other restaurants, like you mentioned, gave Disney cast member specials. But we did live 3 to an apartment or something.
Patrick:
We live an exorbitant life.
Michele:
Yeah. Patrick, this has been so fun and you have to come back because I feel like we didn't get enough time to reminisce. And you didn't tell any embarrassing stories about me, so I'm so grateful, which means you can come back.
Patrick:
There are no embarrassing stories about you, Michelle. I don't know what you're talking about.
Michele:
I can think of a few.
Patrick:
There are some funny stories. Have me back, and we'll talk about somebody's shoes getting glued to the, stage at Superstar Television.
Michele:
Oh my god. Please. It took us a while to set this up. So let's not let it be another 7 months before I can get you on here. Because you are like the OG of our Facebook group. Like, you are very active and you keep us all informed and you really keep us together. And we're planning another reunion now, and I wanna be heavily involved in that. So I see you on Facebook all the time now.
Patrick:
It is. The 35th anniversary is coming up. It's hard to believe 35 years ago, we were all getting excited about opening the park right now. And I would honestly say some of my best, best long friends are from those days. And when we all get together, it's like we are sitting in the back break room still.
Michele:
I know. I can't wait. I'm hoping for October, not May, but we'll see. Okay. So you heard it here. He's gonna come back. And until then, I will see you real soon.
Michele:
And just like that, this episode is over. Thank you for joining me. To ensure that your next vacation is nothing short of divine, I've hand picked my top ten tips for a luxe Disney experience. Find the link in the show notes, and until next time, stay fabulous.