Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - Day 5 to 16 - Training time

Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - Day 5 to 16 - Training time

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In my last post, I discussed my first few days in France before I officially started working for Disney. This post is all about the training that got me to where I am today.

Day 5 - Tuesday, 10th June 2014 - Traditions
Anyone who knows anyway about working for Disney knows that the Traditions class is one of the most highly anticipated pieces of training. This was my third traditions and to be honest, I was not looking forward to it as I expected it to be a lot of repetition of what I had done on my last contract at Disneyland Paris in 2011, and at Traditions at Walt Disney World.

I have got to say I was pleasantly surprised, although the content was much the same our formateur was great and he really added life to what could otherwise have been a rather repetitive day for me. Yes, there was a LOT of repetition (and the content of this day is a closely guarded secret), but it was more enjoyable than I thought it would be.

Woohoo - Free lunch and park entry

Best of all the day included a 2h 30m lunch break in the park and we were given food vouchers to get whatever we wanted with them.

Quick tip for people doing Traditions at Disneyland Paris - don't take any notice of what it says on 'what to wear'. it very explicitly stated professional dress, no jeans and trainers. What did I see when I got there...a room filled with people with T-shirts, jeans (some people even worse shorts which really annoyed me!) and trainers. So, just dress how you would for any other day of your life. I've noticed this in general here in France - there are no dress codes for any type of business situations so people just wear what the want. Unprofessional in my opinion, but hey it's France. (Rant over)

Day 6 - Wednesday, 11th June 2014 - Orientation
I honestly can't remember a huge amount about this day but I know that we talked about the company as a whole, our advantages for working there, how to use The Hub (intranet), we got fitted for our costumes, and we did a tour of the park and then did a smaller tour of Adventureland with a Team Leader. The highlight of this was finding out that they'd changed the lockers (which were incredibly hard to master before) to modern number-based locked.

Day 7 - Thursday, 12th June 2014 - Security and Medical Visit
Today was all about Disneyland Paris' rules and regulations and I wasn't overly excited to be honest. However, yet again I was pleasantly surprised - the day was basically all about safety. How to use fire extinguishers, how certain fire devices work, and other things like that. I remember a lot about fires. It was actually very useful and I learnt a lot of new things which was great. The day was something that I didn't get last time I was at Disneyland Paris.

The medical visit didn't happen for me as I am on a CDI (indefinite contract) as opposed to many people who were on CDDs (contract with a defined length) - they were the priority as they want to get throughout those visits first. Mine will come in time apparently (note: 1 month on and still nothing). Instead we went in costume to Adventureland and did another tour of the land where we looked at some more specific things like safety devices. With the third and final day of general training done it was now time to learn my attraction in detail.

Day 8 to 16 - Friday, 13th June 2014 to Saturday, 21st June 2014 - Days off and Attractions training
Nothing hugely of note happened in the 4 days off I had in this time period.

Training lasted 5 days and covered absolutely everything you can imagine from how to do all the positions (from greeter to Fastpasses to grouper, the control tower, load and unload and more), to how to start the attraction up in the morning and how to shut it down at night, how to measure wait times, where all the fire extinguishers are, how the break system works, safety codes, how to add and remove trains, how to get the ride working after it goes down, causes of the ride breaking down, and so much more. That really is just a small snippet of what training involves. It is mostly practical but there is also some sitting down and reading the very, very, very long operating guide. At the end there is a written test (I got 100 out of 107 questions right) and a practical test where you do all the positions. I passed - woop!

My attraction - Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril

To be honest it wasn't overly difficult and very similar to what I had done before but this time I am working on a proper rollercoaster instead of small attractions. There is a great team spirit, everyone's very friendly and I enjoyed training a lot. The training did however remind me how hard each Cast Member works in attractions to keep everyone safe, even if guests don't notice it.

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NEW: Want more detail? Download my book about my 16 months spent living and working at Disneyland Paris now on Amazon. Get the full inside scoop on my time as a Disneyland Paris Cast Member.