- Decoding the secret language of Disneyland.
I'm Chris.
This is Yellow Productions.
I do travel guides that are fun,
information, and entertaining.
This video is part of my series on Disneyland.
You'll find more of my Disneyland videos,
links in the description below or at the end of this video,
but in this video I'm going to be sharing with you
25 phrases you absolutely need to know
when you come to Disneyland.
I'll share with you some phrases
that the employees say to each other when they wanna talk
and have you not know about what they're saying
and third I'll share with you some phrases
that you will never hear a Disneyland employee
say within the park.
The first thing you need to know
is about how to refer to the employees.
And the employees in Disneyland Parks
are not called employees.
They're called cast members.
This owes to the fact that Disney always considered
the theme park and inside the theme park
to be a show and so when the cast members
are in the public areas of the park,
they are actually on stage.
Oh and number two, the uniform they're wearing
is not a uniform.
It's a costume.
And then the third type of employee, the imagineers.
The imagineers are the engineers and the artists
that come up and design the rides
and design the experiences that you see.
The imagineers generally work in an office building,
not in the Disneyland Theme Park itself.
So now that we know how they refer to the employees,
how do they refer to you, the customers?
You are not a customer.
You are their guests, just like the Disney song
(singing) be our guest, be our guest, be our guest.
By the way, I'm not going to start a music channel.
Don't worry.
But the fifth phrase to know is treasured guest.
You do not want to be a treasured guest.
It is rumored that Disneyland employees
when they want to introduce you to another
Disneyland employee as a troublesome guest
or someone who might be slightly irritated
or problemsome, in that case, they will introduce you as
"Can you please assist our treasured guest?"
Number six, magical moments.
These are best described as random acts
kindness between cast members and guests.
This happened to me once.
I was in Disney's California Adventure.
I was in front of Toy Story Midway Mania
and it was under construction
and they had moved the FastPasses
like a quarter mile away in the park.
I was really very disappointed.
A cast member noticed and this cast member
pulled out their smart device
and issued me a FastPass just for the ride
to be a magical moment and that random act of kindness.
Number seven, backstage.
I mentioned that when cast members are in the park,
they are on stage, so when cast members are backstage,
they are essentially anywhere that guests can't go.
But sometimes Disney's actually been opening
some of the backstage areas to guests.
If the park is really busy, then on Main Street
they'll actually open up the backstage areas of Main Street
back behind the shops for people to walk down.
And when you walk down there,
it really does look like it's backstage,
because those buildings that you see on Main Street,
they're really just a facade.
It looks exactly like a theatrical stage.
Number eight, rope drop.
This is the equivalent of park opening.
If you hear somebody talk about a rope drop,
that's the time when the park opens.
This happens on certain days in Disneyland
when they let guests in 30 minutes early.
The cast members literally hold a rope.
Guests stand behind the rope.
And at park opening time, they drop the rope
and then guests can walk quickly
to the rides they want to go on.
But they walk behind cast members
that actually work at those rides,
so that way there's no running
and it's actually a pretty orderly way to start the day.
Number nine, extra magic hour.
Sometimes abbreviated EMH.
If you are staying at a hotel on the Disneyland property,
well then, you can typically get in
to one of the two parks one hour early.
This sounds like a good deal
and it's good for about that one hour,
but then I'll say generally the park
that has the extra magic hour
is actually busier the entire day,
because that's where all the Disneyland Resort guests
are staying so if you're coming
and you're not staying at one of the Disneyland hotels,
I'd actually encourage you to go to the other park
than the one that has the extra magic hour that day.
Number ten, park hopper.
A park hopper is not a type of insect like a grasshopper.
It's a certain type of ticket.
By default, tickets that you buy for Disneyland
are good for entrance to only one
of the theme parks per day,
Disneyland or Disneyland California Adventure.
By the way, I'm going to start abbreviating
Disneyland California Adventure as DCA.
So if you buy a park hopper ticket,
then you can go into both parks,
Disneyland and DCA on the same day.
They cost you a little more money,
but they're a bit more flexible,
because you can ride Space Mountain in the morning
and then you can see World of Color
at night on the same day.
Okay so now let's talk about some of the words
that go along with the characters at Disneyland.
You'll see lots of Disneyland cast members
dressed up in costume as characters
and the characters come in two varieties.
There are fuzzy characters and face characters.
So first, let's talk about the fuzzy characters.
Fuzzy characters are one that are dressed
in full costume including a mask.
Think like Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck,
any character that you cannot see the cast member's face.
Fuzzy characters, they never speak
and they are generally out in the park
for less time because it's much hotter in that costume.
So if you want to take a picture
or greet a fuzzy character, get on that when you see them,
because they might be gone quickly.
The second type of character is a face character.
And these are things like the princesses,
Cinderella, where you can actually see their face.
The face characters will actually talk to you.
And there's a character escort.
A character escort is attached to every character
that's in the park.
The character escort is the person
who takes them where they're supposed to be.
The character escort's the person
who might hold your camera to take a picture with them
and the character escort helps keep things orderly
around the character meet and greets.
And there's one more phrase to go along with characters.
It's character dining.
If you see a restaurant that advertises character dining,
what that means is that while you are dining
at this restaurant cast members in costume
and as characters will show up to the restaurant,
mill about, generally greet you,
and be in character in the restaurant.
If you've never done character dining before,
I think it's worth while to go at least once.
The restaurants that offer it are typically more expensive,
because you have to imagine the money
that you're paying for the food,
you're also paying for those cast members
to be dressed up in costume as the character,
but it's pretty fun to have these people
come up to your table, interact with you,
and just be sitting there eating,
and you're like "oh, there's Chip and Dale.
"Oh look, there's Mickey, there's Pluto, there's Donald."
It's a fun way to have a meal.
Okay, now let's talk about some of the Disneyland language
related to rides and number 15 is E ticket attraction.
What's an E ticket attraction?
It is one of the best attractions in Disneyland.
This phrase hearkens back to an earlier day
in Disneyland's history when guests
used to have to buy tickets or coupons
for specific rides in certain categories.
The cheapest were A tickets
and the most expensive were E tickets.
So when someone refers to an E ticket attraction,
they're typically talking about something like
Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
The big rides, the best rides,
the ones that everybody wants to go on.
Phrase 16, E stop, not to be confused with E ticket.
An E stop happens when a ride is malfunctioning
or there's some danger and they need
to cause an emergency stop.
This will also happen if there's an earthquake
or in the case of a natural disaster.
You'll pretty much know if there's an E stop,
'cause the house lights will come on
and they'll likely be directing you to get off the ride.
Number 17, dark rides.
You'll hear some of the rides at Disneyland
referred to as dark rides.
And what's a dark ride?
It's essentially a indoor ride
that has a vehicle on a track.
Something like Winnie the Pooh's Adventure
or Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
Also things that aren't classified as rollercoasters.
These are the classic rides of Disneyland.
You'll find most of them in the Fantasyland area.
Number 18, FastPass.
This is essentially a one hour guaranteed window
to get on a ride without having to wait
in a super long line.
The corollary to FastPass is stand-by
If you see entrances to rides that say stand-by,
the stand-by entrance is the entrance
where you're gonna wait generally a long time
and the FastPass entrance is the one
where when you've got that FastPass
that you picked up at a ride earlier
then it gives you a one hour window
to come back to that ride
and ride it with a fairly short wait
in that one hour window.
In addition to stand-by lines,
there's a single rider line
and then there's also a special way
to get FastPasses called MaxPass.
For those two things, I'm going to introduce
some fellow explorers to tell you about those.
- Hey, I'm Steve from Silverdale, Washington.
My son, Zach.
And we have taken advantage of the MaxPass
and the single rider things here.
Those are two words, two pieces of lingo
that you're gonna need to know
coming to California Adventure Disneyland.
We were about to get on Cars ride
using the MaxPass this morning
and immediately after got in the single rider line
and we were riding it a second time
ten minutes after we rode it the first time.
We were able to get on, did the same thing
with Goofy's Sky School using the single rider.
You can get in line while you're in line for one ride,
use the MaxPass to get the FlexPass
for another ride at the same time.
Helpful not to have to walk around the park,
going to the places, getting a FlexPass,
just to do it right in line
and whenever the time runs out, it's been a good day.
And thanks to Chris for his videos.
- Okay and so to be clear, MaxPass and FastPass,
they're two different things.
MaxPass you can add on to your daily ticket
for like $15 a day or you can add it on
to your annual pass for $100
and MaxPass allows you to get FastPasses
from your phone without having to go to the ride.
It is definitely a huge time saver,
so if you're gonna spend a few days here in the park
and you have a smartphone,
I would recommend that you add the MaxPass option
so you can get those FastPasses much quicker.
You'll also find some rides that offer child swap,
rider swap, baby switch, they call it
a few different things, but basically what this allows
parents to do is if there's two parents
and they've got some kids
and the kids can't go on the ride,
well they can both get in line together
and kind of swap out as they get towards
the front of the line so that both parents
can ride the ride but they don't have to wait in line twice.
If you wanna take advantage of rider switch,
baby switch, baby swap, ask one of the cast members
at the front of the ride.
You can find the list on the Disneyland website
for all the rides that have this option.
Disneyland has a couple more passes
not to be confused with the FastPass or the MaxPass.
This next one, number 23, is the PhotoPass.
If you hear the word PhotoPass,
that's not really a pass.
PhotoPass more referred to the service
by which Disneyland has photographers
that stand around at some of the major attractions
and they will take your picture.
You give them your park ticket,
they scan it, it links to your Disneyland account,
then you can go to the Disneyland website
and download the pictures that you want to buy
of the pictures they took for you.
If you bought MaxPass, that $15 a day option,
then you will get PhotoPass pictures for free
the day that you had MaxPass.
Yeah, confusing enough?
Number 24, annual pass, often abbreviated AP.
You'll see people with magnets on their cars that say AP.
Those are annual pass holders.
Annual pass, that's the ticket that you get
all year for Disneyland.
By the way, they are really expensive.
Sometimes the people that have annual passes
are called lifestylers.
Lifestylers are people who come to the parks often
not to go on any rides,
but just to kinda walk around.
It's part of their lifestyle.
Maybe see the new things.
Myself and OC Girl, you can probably consider us lifestylers
'cause you'll find us at the park Friday nights, 6 p.m.,
Sundays, are we here to ride a ride?
Maybe.
Maybe one, maybe go see the Frozen show,
but mostly just to experience the park,
maybe make a couple videos.
When you hear the term nighttime spectacular,
that refers to one of Disney's big nighttime shows
like the biggest show they have in the park.
There's typically just one in each park.
At Disney California Adventure right now
it's World of Color.
That happens right here on this lake
in the middle of California Adventure.
And over in Disneyland it is Fantasmic.
So if you're here and you're here at night,
and you wanna know what the one big show to watch is,
it's the nighttime spectacular.
Okay so those are all the basic vocabulary things
you need to know to be fluent in Disneyland-ese.
Now let's talk about some of the secret codes
that cast members use to communicate
with each other when maybe they don't want you to know
what they're talking about.
If you hear a cast member call out "Code V,"
that means there's been vomit in some place
and somebody needs to come and clean it up.
There's a couple of these other letter codes.
There's code P and U.
These are used interchangeably.
U stands for urine.
This is what happens when somebody gets
a little too excited or scared on a ride
and the urine needs to be cleaned up.
There's one more letter code that you might hear.
This one's code H.
What's H stand for?
Horse poop.
This means there's horse poop in the park
that needs to be cleaned up.
And yes, this happens too.
Now I mentioned there's a few phrases
that you will never hear a cast member say
inside a Disneyland Theme Park.
And the first one of these phrases
is that a ride is closed or broken.
You will never hear them say
a ride is closed or broken.
They are trained to tell you that
this attraction is temporarily unavailable.
But there are some numbered codes
that they'll use over the radio
to communicate just how broken that ride is.
If you hear a cast member radio
that an attraction is code 100,
that means that the attraction
is closed all day unexpectedly.
Code 101 means that the ride is closed
and they hope to reopen it.
This could often be caused by a code V, P, or U.
Something happened and they need to clean it up
before they can reopen the ride.
Code 102, that's a ride operating as expected.
And code 104, that signals a ride
that has been closed is reopening.
And why this code?
Well, because if you heard over some radios
or you heard cast members talking about a ride
that's been closed is just reopening,
that would likely cause a stampede of guests to go there.
That's why they use this code.
Oh and if you hear a signal 70,
that means there's a lost parent in the park.
By the way, children or kids, they are never lost.
It is always the parents that are lost.
So now that you know the lingo and the secret codes,
let's talk about some things
that you will never hear the cast members say at Disneyland.
You will never hear cast members say the word Timeshare.
There are no Timeshares at Disneyland or Disney World.
There's just the Disney Vacation Club.
I think Timeshare has a negative connotation,
so the staff is instructed never to use the word Timeshare
when selling you into the Disney Vacation Club.
And the final thing you will never hear a cast member say
are the three words together I don't know.
If you ask a cast member a question,
they are not allowed to answer I don't know.
If they truly don't know the answer,
they need to find the answer for you
and that would require them to ask another cast member
who does know or perhaps even call somebody.
So if you're planning a trip to Disneyland,
make sure to watch some of my other videos
in my Disneyland series.
You'll find them right here and right here.
Links in the description below as well.
As usual, I won't say goodbye,
because I'll see you in one of those videos.