Scott Wolf: What were you doing before you were Ambassador?

Chris Allen: Before I was Ambassador I was in a department called guest talent programs, and we ran the Magic Music Days program. It was fun, I managed marching bands and show choirs and clogging groups that would come to the park and perform.

Really, even clogging groups?

CA: You name it. If they can dance down a street or dance on Carnation Plaza Gardens stage we would hire them and they would come to Disneyland.

When were you Ambassador?

CA: It was '96, it was my third attempt. I tried twice before, once in '94, the year Bonnie Delehoy was selected, and once in 1995 for the 1995 Ambassador team.

I really wasn't planning on doing it again and a couple people were very influential and kind of steering me towards trying one more time. I gave it one more shot and the third time was the charm. I was very surprised. It was a dream come true.

I read about the Ambassador program since I was a little kid, and I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I would read about the Ambassadors every year and I thought that is the coolest job and that is the job I want to have someday, so it was a dream come true.

What kinds of things happened with the park the year you were Ambassador?

CA: I will tell you the year I was Ambassador something closed and it was the Electrical Parade. I should say the Main Street Electrical Parade because now it's Disney's Electrical Parade over at California Adventure, so not quite the same thing. The other big thing was the "Hunchback of Notre Dame Festival of Fools." That was my big thing there.

Over at the Big Thunder Ranch, right?

CA: Yeah. I spent opening day there and remember vividly it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of media out there and I spent the whole day out there with the media, doing a lot of hosting for that and doing a lot of interviews for that. That was great fun and since I was an Entertainment Cast Member, I got to do tours of the stage as they were building it for media and everything. It was fun.

So you were also doing your job as well as your Ambassador duties?

CA: Yeah, '96 was one of those off years. It was only the second year that there had been a team in place and they were going to try to have us do our regular job as well as our Ambassador jobs and about halfway through out year they realized that wasn't going to work anymore and so we all just kind of took on our Ambassador roles full time. It was ironic because the next year, in '97 was when they went back to making the Ambassadors full time again. It was a neat experiment.

Do you have any favorite memories of being Ambassador?

CA: Yeah, there's a couple. The whole year was amazing, and one of the things I always try to tell people who are applying for it is you really need to try and treasure every single moment individually.

One of my favorite experiences was spending a day at Bell Gardens Elementary School. It was one of the most impoverished schools in the nation and they put together a whole show about Disney music. It's a widely Hispanic elementary school, so a lot of these kids didn't know English and they actually learned English so they can sing all the Disney songs, and the janitor painted these beautiful Disney murals, and the school board was there and I got a tour of the school and I got to watch the show.

I remember it just really moved me because it really made me understand the power and the emotional connection that Disney has with people regardless of their economic backgrounds or their cultural backgrounds and it really gave me a good sense of the diversity that Disney really reaches out to across the country and around the world.

The other one, I got to spend a couple weekends with Ward Kimball and his family. One of my favorite pictures is a picture of Ward and I. Both weekends he wore this Jiminy Cricket ball cap. If you remember Ward, he had this wild, crazy white hair and his bald head and I'd been teasing him all weekend, like "Ward, you've got to take off the hat at some point in the weekend," and it's like, "I'm not taking off the hat, Chris." So he finally took off the hat at one point and said, "Come with me!"

We walked around the corner, we were in the Disney Gallery, and he took me off to the corner of the gallery and he took off his hat and he's like, "See my character, Jiminy Cricket!" So I managed to grab a cast member for two seconds and I said, "You've got to take a picture of us!" and it's a picture of the two of us pointing at Jiminy Cricket. It kind of captures I think the essence of who Ward was and what an amazing man he was, so I was very privileged to spend some time with him.

What was he doing there?

CA: He was doing a signing, some kind of signing and we were at the gallery for like a whole two weekends.

What struck me was for all of his eccentricities, he was also a very private man and both weekends we spent with his grandchildren, his grandson in particular. He kept wandering off from the den of the media and the autograph hounds and just kind of wandering around the gallery and I would just come up to him and say, "How are you doing?" "Is everything all right?" I thought he might be sick or something but no, he just really didn't want to be in the midst of that limelight. It was a really neat bit of insight I was able to get those two weekends with him.

A lot of Ambassadors talk about the celebrities that they get to meet and the wonderful amazing places they get to go, but for me it was all about those little moments that made a big difference to me.

Did you get to meet any other legends?

CA: Yeah, we got to meet Frank (Thomas) and Ollie (Johnston) during cross-training we had.  Myself and Janet (Tanasugarn) and Gina (Armendariz) and Heather (Thompson Putnam) were the other members of the team that year. We got to have lunch with Frank and Ollie and get insight into their lives together as friends and as animators and it's just like they were in the movie (about their lives), that's who they were. These normal, natural guys. Also, I got to meet John Hench.

I got to spend a couple weekends with Frankie and Annette. It was Annette's last visit to the resort. She is an amazing woman and just the warmth that she projected out around her and the welcoming sense that she has is extraordinary. My mom was a big "Mickey Mouse Club" fan so I told her I was going to get to meet Annette and she said, "You've got to let me meet Annette!" So my mom came down and got to meet Annette. The fact that she was there meant a lot to people like my mom and her generation. Annette was a role model for them. So to be able to be a part of hosting her, that's another big part of what being Ambassador is all about. It's really hosting people from around the world. VIPs and not so VIPs, welcoming them to the park experience.

When I first signed up for Ambassador there was a slogan on the paperwork I got which said that becoming an Ambassador means a commitment to Disneyland and all that it stands for and I really think that's the case and those little moments really drove it home to me.

What did you do after you were Ambassador?

CA: After I was Ambassador I went back to Magic Music Days for a year, just for a year, and then I got transferred to Walt Disney World actually, and I spent two and a half years out of Walt Disney World. I worked at Epcot, gearing up toward, to and through the millennium celebration which was an amazing time at Epcot and I got to manage some of the international students that worked in World Showcase for the millennium celebration. It was an extraordinary experience. The best thing is that it really gave me a good sense of how a multi park complex works, and then I got transferred back to California for the opening of the new park, and I was there for a little bit of time before leaving the company.

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