Yo.

Welcome to my brain, enjoy the ride

The Day I met The Doctor

Worked at DisneyQuest 9 years.

One day, I was at a ride called Cyberspace Mountain, where you used to build your own roller coaster, then ride it in an enclosed, barrel like simulator.

Im standing outside the ride, and at my station, behind me, theres a big 48″ flat screen monitor that displays the guest’s ride to anyone watching, a smaller black and white monitor for safety, a touch screen, and a cars reader. Below all this is a locker.

Its been a fairly busy day, so I exited my guests, hit the touch screen and called for my next guest.

AS SOON as I saw him walking up, my brain started thrashing me inside my head, SCREAMING at me, I know this guy, but Ive never seen him before, he’s about my height, Im 6’3″, way older than I am, white curly hair. By my memory, he had a muffler, a scarf, but its Florida and Im pretty sure it was in summer, so thats highly unlikely.

You can get fired at Disney if you fanperson out of a celebrity, so I started being all stealth, trying to figure out who he is.

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“Nope, first time.” He says, and he has a clear English accent, so now Im FAR more confused, and in my head that little guy is tearing up all my nerd cards, Im freaking out, as I have no idea why.

“Have I ever seen you before? You look familiar.” I said.

“Perhaps.” He said, unhelpfully.

I loaded him onto the ride, and when I got back out, seeing him in the black and white just made that feeling like I should KNOW WHO THIS IS, even harder. I started grabbing cast members asking them if they knew who he was, and of course, none watched the show that I knew him from, so noone knew. In desperation, when I heard English accents, I started grabbing random guests and being like “Do you know who this is?” Noone knew.

The ride ends, Im defeated, Im out of time to figure it out, and apparently, I deserve the loss of my nerd cards as I do not have any idea who he is at all.

I unload him, and its when he’s taking his stuff out of his pockets, that I see him in profile, and it just snaps into place. The reason he looks different, is the last time I saw him, was in the 1960’s. It was Tom Baker, the 4th incarnation of Dr Who.

I froze, he noticed it, looked at me, with a smile, I said, “D-d-Doctor?”

He put his finger by his nose, then took three steps back and vanished into the crowd. I was stuck for a bit, but then I ran to the exit, rules be damned, to see if that was who I thought it was, but he was gone. I swear I heard the engines of the TARDIS.

Now, there are lookalikes, Ive seen the perfect clone of Vin Diesel before but he had a non Vin driver’s license, and he was in Maine, so…

So I can accept it may or may not have Been Tom Baker, which is why when I tell this story, I say, “It may or may not have been Tom Baker, but it was definitely the Doctor.”

For reference, I shared this story on Facebook one time, in one of the larger Dr Who groups, and a “Tom Baker” ‘like’d it. I clicked on the name, expecting to see a throwaway lookalike account, and it led to his official account.

A Magical Day at DisneyQuest: Meeting Michael J. Fox

One time at DisneyQuest, (worked there 9 years)I think it was my second frigging day, first assignment of the day.

I went to CDS (Cast Deployment System – its where you were assigned your job), got Pirates 2, went by way of Cyberspace Mountain, and when I got to the bottom of the stairs, the door between the entrance and the exit (as Exit is at the bottom of those stairs) opens, one of my managers exits, slowly closes the door, looks around and screams, “ITS MARTYY MCFLYYYYYY” as he runs across Exit, into the manager’s office.

I didnt quite catch what he’d screamed, but I was quite shocked because it was my second day and Id been impressed upon how easy it is to get fired for your actions on stage, and a manager had just screamed something and ran by me. I shrugged, and went to my first position.

I was in the bend of the exit, that cut off vision from where the guests were, but you also couldnt see me from outside the exit to the ride, so I thought it was an “off stage” area, so I leaned against the wall.

Under my outstretched arm, this VERY short man walked (Im 6’3″ and he didnt need to duck.). I was like “Excuse me youve,-“

And Michael J Fox turned around.

Inside my head, it just became this MASSIVE BUZZING fog, I could see, I could hear, I COULDNT move. I was screaming at my body to move, but I was stuck in the position I was in when he turned around, and after a bit, Michael was like, “Is he OK?” and everyone else realized there was an issue.

I apparently let the manager lead me out of the area to the break room. I actually dont remember how I got there, I just remember everyone looking at me then being in the break room with my head down, and noone else was in the room.

I guess they put me in there then told noone else to go in, but because MJF had Parkinson’s and didnt want to be seen, they gave him the break room, and told everyone to go elsewhere for break, forgetting I was already in there.

I had my head down on the table, and someone sat down across from me. I had been crying, and didnt have my eyes open.

“Im having a bad day, I dont need company.” I said.

“If Id known you were autistic, I would never have done that, Im sorry.” friggin literal Michael J Fox said as he sat across the table from me.

I froze again, and he started having a conversation with me, but filling in my parts with his own voice. So it kind of went:

“How are you today?”

(high squeaky voice that immediately made me angry)”Fine, how are you?”

The conversation went on for like a minute until I was like, “I do not sound like that.”

And finally looked up at him, engaging him directly.

He defused the situation, explaining he was trying to figure out a way to distract me from the issue I was having, so I could engage him, which, after all had worked.

After I got over the starstruck, I thanked him for Marty McFly, and like every role he’d ever been in, and was surprising him for the better part of five minutes with some really early work that I do not remember at the moment that I’d seen. We talked D&D, Pathfinder, I told him about the game I was currently playing, I showed him my Magic decks, taught him the rudiments of how to play Commander.

We ended up talking for the better part of 45 minutes, until he was like, “Well, your manager seems to need you, and I should find my family.”

What was it like working at Disney as an autistic person.

Everyone always asks me what it was like at DQ or at Disney as a neurodivergent person. I worked there for 9 years. I always tell them one story before I go on to the bad stuff, the funny stuff, or how hard it was to pull a 10-hour shift.

I was working on Aladdin (Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, a 90s-ish tech VR game), and as I was talking with someone in line, this woman walked up to me from the exit. I started to explain to her she had walked in the exit, when she looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re Asperger’s autistic arent you?”

I was for one stunned then angry, because I hate it when people see that, and I was about to kick her out of the ride because now I was holding up the whole line, when she said (again making that hard as iron direct eye contact stare), “My son, the one you JUST loaded into that ride, just got diagnosed ‘Autism Disorder” (at the time it was known as Asperger’s) “Yesterday, and he’s extremely upset about it. We came here to try to make him feel better. You’re very good at pretending not to be autistic, but I know what I’m looking for. Could you talk to him after he gets off the ride? Tell him he can be like you?”

I agreed, despite being probably the most uncomfortable that Ive ever been in my entire life at that point.

The ride ended, I took him off to the side, he was kinda curious, I gave him kind of a personal version of the Magic Moment we had for Aladdin, showed him this plushie lamp we have set aside for the ride, and told him that it was a secret, that “I have worked for Mickey for 5 years, and that no one, other than Mickey, knew that I was autistic, just like HE was.”

I wish I remembered his name, but I don’t, but the kid started crying. I was at a complete loss of what to do. I looked at the mom, just like “what do I do here?” and she was crying too and quite useless, I looked at the other cast member (IE the guy supposed to be there to help me) Aladdin 2, who was ALSO crying (and to say you can get fired for the way you act on stage at Disney is an understatement to tell you how bad that was), and like anyone in the queue who was paying the slightest attention was too, but the queue was just a swath of cell phones.

I looked back at the kid, he’d stopped crying, he just said, “So I’ll be normal?”

I said, “You will be what YOU WILL be, kid. There is no normal.” (I can’t contract words under stress)

That’s what Disney was like as an autistic person. It was incredible, it could be life-changing, but that’s what it was like for me.