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When I tell people that I used to work at Tokyo Disneyland, everyone turns into a comedian. With the same joke.

"Really? So which one were you? Goofy? HAAAAAAAAA!"

After my gracious smile fades, people are often curious about the details.

Behind the Tokyo Disney and Tokyo Sea parks, there is a big warehouse, with a large office housing a couple of hundred people. This was back in 2001, and I was outsourced there by the company I was working for at the time : SysTech. They sent me out for a 1 week contract to fix a big problem they were having with about 200 of their Windows 98 computers. Hear that? Windows 98. The happiest place on Earth runs the operating system from hell. Anyway, all of their Windows 98 machines suddenly started crashing 2 or 3 times a day, and they were at their wits end.

On Monday morning, I arrived at Maihama, Disney’s train station. I walked through the groups of families, school-kids and couples, and found a small, obscure sign under the station. "Office, this way." it said. I followed that direction for a while, and eventually I came across a security station. I walked over to the security station, and nodded to the guard.

"Hello there. I’m here to fix an IT problem, I’m Firefly from SysTech." I said.

The security guard eyed me, and checked his list. "You’re not on the list here." he said, flatly.

"Uh, can you call IT please? I have a meeting with IT in 30 minutes." I said.

He got on the phone, and presumably spoke to someone in IT. "Sorry Mr Firefly, Kenichi will come out in a moment to greet you. Please wait in front of the building. He gestured to a building inside the compound. I smiled and walked through the gate, into the Disneyland Office.

I looked around for something that would betray the office as the backend to Disneyland, the worlds most successful themepark franchise. I couldn’t find anything - it looked like a standard office, with standard office workers running about. I couldn’t help but being irrationally disappointed, like I was expecting Mickey Mouse to be bouncing around the carpark handing out stationary. "Waahahoo! Get to work! Heres a pen!"

Kenichi arrived after a couple of minutes, and tapped me on the shoulder. I introduced myself, and we swapped meishi (name cards).

"I must admit Kenichi-san, I was hoping to see a crazier Disney style office building. It’s about as normal as I’ve seen." I said lightly as I continued to absorb my surroundings.

"Really? We have 15 minutes before this meeting starts. Let me show you something quickly." Kenichi said with a smile.

He walked me over to a smaller warehouse off to the left-hand side of the main office building, and we walked inside the opened shutter door entrance.

"Check this out," Kenichi said.

My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkened lighting. I blinked twice, and in one foul sweep, years of precious childhood memories were destroyed. After years of bed-time stories, fairy tales and Disney cartoons during my childhood, before my eyes, stood Cinderella, dressed in a Cinderella dress. She was desperately sucking on an already expired cigarette, and slamming a bottle of coke. She had ragged hair, and no makeup on. She looked drained and stressed. I almost went into shock. Despite being a full grown adult, I somehow wasn’t ready for the full impact of this scene.

I turned around again trying to erase the image from my mind. We were in a huge costume repository. There were around 3 industrial strength and size coat racks stacked on top of each other, and the coat racks extended deep into the warehouse. People of all sorts of shapes, sizes, genders and ages were coming up and requesting costumes. There were ‘little people’, presumably a member of the Seven Dwarfs walking off with Dwarf costumes. Acrobats were walking off with latex. The REAL Goofy costumes were hung up off to the side, but no-one was requesting one. Perhaps they had already fulfilled their Goofy quota. I stood for a few moments, mesmerised by the odd exchanges taking place.

I cast my eyes over to the right, and noticed a fully functional convenience story, right next to the costume place. You could buy all manner of food and drinks, exactly the same as a regular convenience store. This whole store seemed to be only for the benefit of the costumed staff members. Fascinating, I thought.

Kenichi pulled me away, and we went to the 9:30 meeting. It ended quickly, and I sat down at one of the crashing Windows 98 machines. I did some troubleshooting, found some possible causes, and began testing. I had a possible solution worked out before lunchtime involving a rare patch only available from Microsoft. Kenichi dropped by the office, and knocked on the door.

"Lets go to lunch!" he said.

"There are restaurants around here?" I asked, surprised.

"Yes and no. Come on," he said. We left together, and exited the main office building. We walked across the car park and came up against a huge wooden door.

"What is that?" I asked, peering up at the door.

"It’s a huge, badly hidden secret door. It doesn’t actuall open. But this one does!" Kenichi led me off to the right hand side, and we stepped through a tiny door that was hidden in the concrete. Crazy. Within a few minutes, we were walking through the park, looking very conspicuous in our suits. After a few minutes of strolling through the park, we were in the Prince of Arabia themed food courts, ordering expensive, bland Indian curry with nan. I felt mildly ridiculous paying 1,400 yen ($14), but I suddenly realised I was having an office lunch in Tokyo Disney, and immediately felt better about it. You don’t get to have your office lunch in Disney very often.

I returned to the office, and resumed work. I installed some test patches, and the problem immediately stopped on one of the test PCs. I tested a few more PCs with the same patch, and once I was satisfied, I put the patch onto a 3.5" floppy disk (remember those?) and walked around to each computer applying the patch.

Now, when you interrupt most people and tell them you need them to get off their computer, so you can install a patch, a lot of people can get a bit irritated. They’re busy, and in the middle of doing lots of important stuff. People tend to get a little upset or impatient, even though their PC is going up and down more frequently than a Shinjuku sex worker.

Disney shocked me. It wasn’t like this at all. It was like they shot each and every one of these people with a happy gun on the employee initiation day. They were bright, bubbly, cheerful. "Oh dear! I just lost 2 hours of work to another one of those nasty crashes. Oh well, I’ll do an even better job this time!" they would chirp. "Oh, you need to get on my computer? Sure! I’m writing an urgent document for the board meeting taking place in 30 minutes, but whatever you’re doing is probably more important. Take your time! Would you like a coffee?"

Compared to Financial companies, where people start screaming expletives when they accidentally minimise the email they were typing.

After a few days, all the computers were patched up, and everything was working great. All the office workers were full of warm Disney style gratitude, and I went home feeling great.

I assume they upgraded from Windows 98 after this, by the way.

——-

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