Free Chris Mitchell by Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir Page B

fundamental level, break rooms were a rest area for the performers, a place to re-hydrate and recharge between sets. But they were also the social hub of the character program.
    “Hey, you guys! Question time!” Alan stood on a chair to address the room. “Suppose you were stranded on a desert island. What three items would you want to have with you?”
    “That’s easy,” the Tigger said who, this week, was calling himself Shayde. “A flare gun, a tent, and one of those satellite phones with a GPS system that lets you call from anywhere on the planet. That way, I could get the fuck off the island before some cannibal finds me.”
    “Girl,” Rusty called everyone girl, but he pronounced it “gr,” like a growl without the rumble. “Girl, that’s too sensible. This is a fantasy desert island.”
    Alan held up his hand. “That’s okay. What’s his name is entitled to his choices.”
    “Wanna know my three things?” Rusty asked “First, I’d have a beautiful catamaran to sail around my island. Second, I’d want one of those see-through airplanes like Wonder Woman has so I could look at everything from above. And third, a computer so I could e-mail all my friends to tell them what a great time they’re missing.”
    “I’d want three of my friends with me,” Sunny piped.
    Alan nodded his head at me. “What about you, camera guy? What would you take to your desert island?”
    “My longboard,” I said. “Assuming there’s a good break there. Or maybe a skimboard. I suppose it’s no good to ask for a boat and a wakeboard, since I’d have to drive it myself, and then what fun is that, right?” Crickets. “A speargun would be useful too.”
    There was a moment of silence while everyone in the room tried to translate whatever I just said. “Well, I know exactly what I’d take.” Alan dropped down into the chair, crossed his legs, and looked intently around the room to make sure everybody was listening before he continued. “I’d lay my Fendi towel across my Chanel lounge chair and wait for Johnny Depp to serve me mimosas!”
    As a rule, serious conversations were avoided in the break room. Philosophical discussion topics ran the gamut from sexy celebrities to desert island fantasies, abjectly avoiding all serious news. The 2000 presidential election, for example, while hotly contested in the courthouses of Central Florida and obsessed over by record numbers of concerned citizens around the nation, went largely unnoticed in the break rooms under the Magic Kingdom. At the time the final count was made official, ushering in George W. Bush as the forty-third president of the United States, the break room behind Camp Minnie-Mickey had divided into two passionate factions: one that proclaimed The Sound of Music to be Julie Andrews’ greatest role, and the other, which steadfastly argued for Mary Poppins .
    Since I had no opinion whatsoever of grand issues like this one, I was quickly marginalized from the rest of the character performers. I didn’t get hazed or excommunicated or anything. I just wasn’t let into the inner circle. If characters were talking about something scandalous when I walked into the break room, they would suddenly drop their voices to a conspiratorial whisper or change the subject. As someone who was accustomed to being part of the cool clique, I found it a little disconcerting to be on the outside.
    To preserve my self-respect, I decided I needed a place of my own. The dubious charms of the World Famous Budget Lodge were wearing thin, and I wanted with increasing urgency to integrate myself into the Disney community. And so, when I saw a note on the DAK character bulletin board advertising a room for rent, I called.
    Johnny was a soft-spoken good ’ol boy who used a lot of exclamation marks in his text messages. His avatar was a smiling image of a NASCAR driver, waving from the top of a champion’s podium. His ringtone was Justin Timberlake. He claimed to be a nonsmoker with no