A new audio documentary, Keys to the Kingdom, looks at the lives of people playing characters at theme parks. Their stories range from heartwarming to just plain creepy. Co-hosts Matt Gourley and Amanda Lund met while working as characters at Universal Studios.
“We just were so excited to do a podcast where we could give people a peek behind the curtain of what it's like to work at these theme parks,” notes co-host Amanda Lund. “Some of the people we called in really were nervous to talk to us, and hence why we use code names in certain situations and disguise some voices.”
Lund detailed some of the creepier run-ins she had with park guests when she played Disney princesses. “Dads or bros on a fun guys’ trip to Disney will come up and lean in and smile and manhandle you, like grab you around the waist like they're posing with someone they know really well. Cinderella is a married woman, she can't be photographed posing like that with another man. So you just really pleasantly say, ‘Oh, well, let me show you how to pose like a prince.’ And you make it a fun little cute thing you're doing for the picture.”
Married couple Matt Gourley and Amanda Lund met while working as characters at a theme park. Now they have a new podcast about what that life is like. Image courtesy of Amanda Lund.
Beyond the kooky interactions with guests, working in the SoCal heat inside heavy costumes can, unsurprisingly, be less than ideal.
Matt Gourley, the show’s other co-host, says he had a memorable interaction with an actor who played Harry from Harry and the Hendersons at Universal Studios. “It's a costume made out of 100% yak fur with a huge foam padding suit underneath in the San Fernando Valley in the height of summer. And he talks about how he would take his gloves off and just turn them upside down and sweat would just pour out of there like you're emptying a full glass. So there's definitely not enough pay that you could ever give these people.”
Gourley shares that the weirdness doesn’t just come from park guests. He says some employees may have “partaken too much of the Kool Aid of the Disney idea, and you sometimes feel like you're walking through a cartoon yourself. And people have glazed-over looks in their eyes.”
After working on the podcast, Lund says the takeaway from current and former park performers was more complicated than she expected: “We interviewed a lot of people who worked in all sorts of capacity in entertainment at the theme parks. And across the board, everyone would tell all of these horrifying, crazy, fascinating stories. And then at the end of the interview, they would go, ‘But it's the best job I ever had. I'm so grateful for the experience. I made lifelong friends. I still love going to Disney.’ So it's just an extremely complex experience that you have as a theme park performer. It’s unlike anything else.”