So you have decided to take a walk around World Showcase Lagoon. Be sure to stop by Canada to get a BeaverTail. You may run into some of the Fellowship working in any of the following jobs.
| The focus of the Ambassador Role is to be super-greeters walking the World Showcase Promenade interacting with guests and making "magical moments" for as many people as we could. We tried to achieve this through stopping to talk with guests, playing with children, taking pictures for people, giving out balloons, blowing bubbles, dancing with the Junkanoo Bus, and occasionally making fools of ourselves for the guests enjoyment. Also included in this job was staffing Germany Kiosk, a small information kiosk in front of the German Pavilion. It all sounds pretty easy huh? Well it is, but it is also very cold in the winter and incredibly hot and sweaty in the summer months. In addition, it was easy to lose motivation in this job and many ambassadors did. This was by far the easiest job I did all year and if I just kept that in mind, the job was a breeze. As it was, some Ambassadors fell into a rut and spent most of the time complaining about how exhausting and useless the job was. Those people made the least impact on the guests and usually brought the rest of the group down. Sorry if I am offending anyone by saying this, but it's what I think. |
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Another long term work location (especially for Chris Ebsworth) was International Gateway. This area is located between the UK and France pavilions and serves as a second gate for the park, accessible from the Epcot Resorts on Crescent Lake. At this gate you will find a merchandise shop and a coffee shop. Since this is an "international" zone, it makes sense to have cast members from multiple countries working there, and that's where the Fellowship program comes in. Throughout the year a number of ambassadors worked at IG selling shirts, magnets, key chains, and watches.
| This was my first work location and every Canadian Fellowship put in their time here. The work was physical and messy. On the upside, we got to move around a number of different positions within the Canadian pavilion. In my case I worked at the Refreshment Port as a cashier and a money counter (general teller), the Fruit Cart, and in Le Cellier doing seating, podium, assigning, drinks and stock (ugh!) I felt like I was given a fair amount of responsibility during most of my time there and I think that it was for the best that I started my year with the messiest job I was going to do. If I started with an easier job and moved into Foods after, I probably would have had a much harder time. |
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Another way of participating in the World Showcase Fellowship Program is to be hired as a representative for a handful of participant companies and organizations. These were Twinnings Tea, the tourism board of Wales, and Mitsukoshi. The people hired in these positions took part in the seminars, living experience, and other parts of the Fellowship program, but they spent their whole year working in one location for their sponsor.
During the first half of our year, many of the Ambassadors were boat captains. If you rode the boats then, you could have a young captain in an international costume who could have given their speil with a little bit of extra information about their home country thrown in. You could have heard a performance of an Arabic song during your ride or maybe you would have been asked to sing Christmas Carols during the Holidays. Unfortunately, due to a change in policy, if you step into one of the boats travelling across the World Showcase Lagoon today, you will most likely be ferried across by an American in a white uniform who has been driving the boats and giving the same speil for years. Too bad.
| One of the "hidden treasures" of World Showcase is the tours of the Moroccan pavillion. These tours are conducted by the Moroccan participants in the Fellowship program. They act as part regular cast member and part storyteller in their job, often teaching guests things they never knew about Morocco before (like where it is). Since the tours are given for the guests all year long they can't be stopped for weeks during the training of the Fellowshp in September so a few Moroccans are brought into the program early (around late July, early August) to conduct the tours through the transition period from the departing Fellowship group to the arriving one. |
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| We ended up working in Guest Relations because they had a staffing shortage, plain and simple. At many times the Fellowship acts as Epcot's extra help, filling in whenever a department such as Entertainment or Special Events needs extra staff for a short time. Of course few of us minded, since it gave us the chance to try out a number of different work locations through the year. Guest Relations was one of my favorite jobs for the simple fact that it was the only one where I really had to use my brain every now and then. We were expected to be able to answer any question or deal with any guest situation that arose. Personally, it was also cool that all the Disney stuff that had accumulated in my brain and that I had previously considered useless finally became useful. Just call me 4500! |  |
| Many Fellowship participants are involved in staffing special events at Epcot and in the community. In 97/98 some of these were school visits in the community, Science Jam at Epcot, the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival, Drum Corps International Competition at the Citrus Bowl, national holiday events around World Showcase, Black Heritage Month and Oddessey of the Mind competition opening and closing ceremonies. Special events, like anything in the program, could be a lot of fun or a lot of directionless work with no real instructions on what to do. |
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| This could be classified as a special
event I guess but I think it deserves it's own category.
Holidays Around the World is World Showcase's
Christmas/Holiday event running from American
Thanksgiving through New Years. Typically, there are
showings of the Candlelight Processional (a reading of
parts of the Christmas story accompanied by a large, very
good choir), holiday storytellers in each country in
World Showcase, a nightly tree lighting ceremony, and a
special "Holiday Illuminations". For their part
the Fellowship Ambassadors acted as hosts (ushers) for
the Candlelight shows and as escorts for the
storytellers. There's nothing that will get you in the
holiday spirit quite like hearing the same Christmas and
gospel music two or three shows a night for a month
straight! "When they saw the star they rejoiced,
they rejoiced!...." |
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