Scott Wolf: What did you do when you first started with Disneyland?

Julia Onder Bannon: The first very first thing I did when I started with Disneyland was Merchandise and I trained at Tinker Bell's Toy Shop.

I had never been to Disneyland before I worked there. I had been to Disney World once when I was a child but I hadn't been to Disneyland, I didn't grow up in California and I wanted a job for spring break. Disney was appealing to me so I was interviewed and I was hired for Merchandise.

They trained us at night, so I went through orientation and then I came back another time for like four hours I think on the cash registers and everything in Tinker Bell Toy Shop. Then I started in Merchandise in New Orleans Square and Critter Country.

I started in spring break of '92 and my first summer was all about "Fantasmic!" and doing Guest control. It was a great way to get Merchandise and Attractions people mixing up which was nice.

When did you end up at the (Disney) Gallery (the shop over "Pirates of the Caribbean")?

JOB: I ended up there I think in '93. I was working all the shops in New Orleans Square, I worked a lot in "Pieces of Eight" and "One of a Kind" and the Mardi Gras shop, and then I got to work in the perfume shop ("Mademoiselle Antoinette's Parfumerie") for almost a whole summer. That was a really special place and I really loved working there. It just felt like a place where you got to be so personal with the Guests and mix up a special scent just for them. You really got to know the Guests.

After I worked there for awhile they asked me to to come up to the Gallery. I started there and was there for the rest of my time.

And I know the Gallery was a real special place for you.

JOB: It was amazing. Again, the opportunity to be so personal with the Guests, and get to know the history of the park and the company as a whole in a way that I hadn't known before and in a way as a newcomer, it was all the more special to me because I hadn't grown up with it. So I really got to see the magic of the park through a Guests eyes and people who would come up and tell me stories and little anecdotes that I had never heard before. I learned so much when I was there.

That was an amazing place and the people that we had come through, nowhere else in the park did we ever salute the (Disney) Legends as much as we did in the Gallery.

Getting to meet Marc & Alice Davis and Ollie Johnston and everybody, all the "old men" who were still around and the Imagineers. I remember how big Eric Robison was for years with his "Aladdin" and "Lion King" art. It was just real special.

One of my favorite times was I saw the Sherman brothers (songwriting team) and one of them came up to me and he started singing to me and telling me the story about how he made up songs and how he would play them for Walt... he was amazing.

When you became Ambassador, was that the first time you applied?

JOB: It was my first time. I had seen a picture of Kathleen (Mitts Micalizzi) on the cover of the (Disneyland) line (internal newsletter), so that would have been in '93. It was a picture of her standing in front of the Eiffel Tower and I had always studied French and I knew I wanted to either work or study in France and I thought, "Who knows if I can go to France working for Disney?" and what a really neat position.

I had never really heard about the Ambassador program before that. So I followed it for a little bit, and then the next year when Bonnie (Delehoy) was Ambassador I saw the advertisements for the interview sessions so I went in for one of those to understand what the program was about and I decided to go for it.

I made it to the semi-finals, as they called it then, and then was chosen which was really amazing. It was my first time and I was very honored, obviously, to be selected.

What year was that?

JOB: Well, it was November 17, 1994 that we had the ceremony and it was for the '95 Ambassador year that I was chosen, the 40th Anniversary.

There were a lot of changes for the Ambassadors that year. For one thing, it was the first team wasn't it?

JOB: It was the first team.

Did you also keep your job in addition to your Ambassador duties?

JOB: We did. It was expected that we would work part time, if you will, in our old jobs. We were still working, definitely full time or usually more than full time, but we would have one or two sessions a week in our old positions. Frankly, I felt that was the best use of our time, and they pretty much phased that out after our year. I think it was hard for them to try and maintain the resources in our areas and have us retain our positions in our old areas and then do the Ambassador duties at the same time. It was kind of hard on like the Gallery, for instance, where I was a working lead yet I couldn't do that very often. They couldn't rely on me or know that I would be there all the time. So we did that, but it was the first team, and I was there with Gerry Aquino who was also the first man chosen to be Ambassador, and then Michelle Tryon who'd been with the park for a long time.

Did you know from the beginning that it was going to be a team?

JOB: I think we did know from the beginning. Nobody knew how big the team would be, just that there would be more than one.

Who was the manager of the program at that time?

JOB: It was Jennifer Gray. She had taken over the year before for Cicely during Bonnie's year and then she was full time for the remainder of the year with Bonnie and then full time with us and in charge of the program, but there was interface with Public Affairs as well. Not quite as heavily as it is today but we were essentially part of that department.

What were the big things that happened in the park in 1995?

JOB: The very, very biggest thing of course was the 40th anniversary, it was "40 Years of Adventures" and there were all sorts of different celebrations. You'll probably remember the trading cards that we had. Over 40 days they gave away trading cards. If you collected them all there was an opportunity to get a special card or two at the end... if you had them all. That was a big deal. We had a birthday celebration every single day in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle with all the characters. That was a lot of fun.

That was the show where there was always an Ambassador in the show, right?

JOB: Yes, every single day, and what we did was recite Walt's speech when he dedicated the park, we would recite that. It was fun, and it was a good time.

We also took the "40 Years of Adventures" on the road. We had a traveling tour where we went to different cities with the characters and we essentially had a birthday celebration at different places, malls and things like that. So between the road shows and then the birthday celebration everyday we really got to know the Entertainment Cast Members very well and that was quite a treat.

Were you at the park on the actually 40th anniversary?

JOB: I was. It was quite a whirlwind and we had a great big celebration planned.

We got there very early in the morning for rehearsals and one of the things we did is we had the whole cast line up on Main Street and we sang "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" for CBS "Good Morning." We sang that song together and there must have been a couple thousand of us lined up on Main Street which was pretty cool. We gave away cake to anybody who came through the gates. We had Goofy scaling the Matterhorn, and Randy Travis sang "Happy Birthday" from the top of the Matterhorn.

Were you involved in the opening of the Indiana Jones attraction?

JOB: Yeah, we had all sorts of celebrities who came and right around the opening of the attraction we had Steve Young and Jerry Rice from the San Francisco 49ers at the park so I got to ride the rides with them.

Do you have any particular favorite memories of being Ambassador?

JOB: One of the neat things we got to do in my year and I think they still do it is we got to do cross training with the cast. I really loved that. I got to see Cast Members and interact with Cast Members that I never would have any other time. I got to place the fireworks with the crew that would do that for "Fantasmic!," I got to do gardening with the grounds crews, I worked the front desk at the Disneyland Hotel, I even cleaned rooms at the Disneyland Hotel. Just parts of the park I probably never would have seen and Cast that I wouldn't have met otherwise. It really made me appreciate how diverse out Cast was and how skilled and how interesting. It made me even more proud to be there every single day.

One of my favorite times at the park was always at night after the park had closed. When I worked in the Gallery, a lot of times I would close and oftentimes we would stay open later than other parts of the west side because of "Fantasmic!" and the fact that people could view the show from the balcony so we would still be open when other shops might have closed down.

I always loved having to go to Cash Control at that time of night because the castle was still lit up and the music was still on and the twinkle lights in the trees around Main Street were still on but everything else was still quiet and it was such a neat opportunity to soak up the magic of the park, but then also get to meet Cast that I wouldn't have met otherwise. People who had to hose down the streets or take out the trash or do repairs and things like that, so I always appreciated that. So then as Ambassador I got to do the cross training which was pretty special.

I also loved visiting the hospitals. We went to CHOC regularly and if we were on the road we would take the characters to see kids at the different hospitals and that was always pretty amazing. That was really cool, and now I have even more of an appreciation for it. I've spent more time in hospitals since then. When you're a kid you don't see that as much. Now, being a little older and having more perspective I see what joy it brought to the kids. That was pretty amazing.

I did get to travel to Canada when I was Ambassador which I enjoyed as well because I am from Canada originally and while I didn't grow up there I still have extended family there and it was pretty cool, we went to Calgary for the stampede which is this huge annual celebration they have out west in Calgary. I'm from eastern Canada, but the stampede is always a big deal for the whole country and I was actually Grand Marshal of a parade there with Mickey, really Mickey was the Grand Marshal and I just got to sit with him, but they took a picture of us together in our car which actually got to be syndicated in a paper in Canada and it's cool because my grandfather out in Toronto saw the paper and saw me on the front page of his paper which would never have happened otherwise.

Did you ever make it to Paris as part of being Ambassador?

JOB: Not as part of being Ambassador. I did, the following year, actually work at Disneyland Paris for a summer.

Is that what you did immediately after?

JOB: Well, I was Ambassador in '95 and I had taken a year off of school in order to dedicate myself to the position, so after I was done with Ambassador I returned to school, I was going to Cal State Long Beach and my major in school was international relations, and part of my major requirements were either to work or study abroad, so following the Ambassador year, going back to school, I still worked at the park on weekends and on breaks and then leading up to that following summer, the summer of '96 I was able to make arrangements to work at Disneyland Paris.

It wasn't Euro Disney anymore, it was Disneyland Paris, they changed management so it was now under French management, whereas when it started it was largely Americans running it. The French has pretty strict rules about the percentage of foreigners that were allowed to work in any company. It was pretty strictly controlled, so to get the opportunity to work in France in itself was a big deal but also to work at Disneyland Paris was pretty cool.

I was able to make those arrangements so I went up there in late May of '96 and actually I thought was going to work there and be just the schmo in Merchandise and get to know people. It turned out they made me a manager of this shop on Main Street, which was really cool. A little more responsibility than I expected to have for a summer position. I worked there from the end of May through the end of August in '96 and I got to use my French, and I used my English of course because there are a ton of visitors there where English is the universal language.

I got to meet some great people and see a different take on the Disney way in terms of a much more diverse Cast and people coming from different countries. I think I worked with people from fourteen different countries just in my small area, because you not only have the European countries but then you have the former French colonies, people who are now living in France and working there. It was really amazing. I actually worked for a guy from Boston, so that made it easy to have an American boss, but he was permanently settled there with his wife who was French.

I just really loved it. It's a beautiful park.

Did you end up going back to Disneyland when you came back to America?

JOB: I did. I came back and stayed with the Gallery. I was still going to school and actually I ended up doing two years worth of work in one when I returned in order to be able to graduate that following summer. I worked on break at the park, really not weekends so much. Then I worked again the summer of '97. I think I worked probably up until November or December of that year in the Gallery primarily.

Then it was time to move into the real world so sadly I had to leave the park at that time and I did find full time employment elsewhere so it didn't make a lot of sense to even stay just to work weekends or breaks because I really wasn't on the same schedule anymore.

When I left the park and wasn't Ambassador anymore I would go to the get togethers and the ceremonies every year and it was always like a family get together. I moved to the east coast in '99 and since then I've really not been back for those kinds of things so I really miss it and I miss the people.

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