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

Dorell Mitter: Before I was Ambassador, I actually had two different types of jobs here. I worked at the front desk at the Disneyland Hotel as a front desk lead, and then I also did the orientation as a university leader for all the new hires.

SW: Do you think being the university leader helped you become Ambassador?

DM: I think it kind of helped just for the fact that it’s a job about public speaking and it really was a great way for me to really learn about the resort because I would cross the street, I was at the hotels, I was here two years before I got the Ambassadorship, so I really didn’t know too much about Disney, honestly, I didn’t. I’d come, visit, and that was pretty much it. Then I got the job here and after the first year, decided to go after university leader. We had one for the parks, and then we had one for the hotels, the university leader type of thing. They separated it. It was like, “Hmm, let me go ahead and do the park side, because I don’t know much about it I already work at the hotel, just so I can expand my knowledge,” and I knew I wanted to get into management eventually some day, so I figured that would be a great way to go. So I tried out for both, got both, had to pick one, so I chose the university leadership. It was on Saturdays, so one day there, four days at the front desk. Actually, it was great.

SW: Were you a Disney fan before you worked for Disney?

DM: I was not. It’s so funny, I remember when I was a kid my parents brought my brother and I here and we were like, “Okay. Where are the roller coasters? No, really, where are the roller coasters?” and we were only here for two or three hours. I’d rather go to Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, or anything, and so my parents were kind of upset because they paid to go in here and we really didn’t go that much as a kid. Then, I went to Walt Disney World with a group of my friends who obviously worked here and I thought, “Oh, this is cool. This is big, so this is kind of excellent.” That was in August of ’96 and I got my job here in November of ’96. So it was like, “Oh, let me see what’s going on there, let me work at the hotel,” because I love the hospitality. Then, I was here for 6 years. It was great.

SW: What made you decide you want to become Ambassador? How did you hear about it?

DM: Well, when I started in November of ’96, they were going through the whole Ambassador process with Christina (McGeorge) from 1997. So it was like, “Oh, Christina’s going out for it,” and then she ended up getting it so it was like, “Oh, okay, great.” Honestly, I didn’t know what the Ambassador was or what they did, so it was like, “Okay, whatever.” Then, the following information session in November ’97 for the ’98 term, Dorothy (Stratton) went out for it and eventually got it, so it was like, “Oh, okay.”

Jennifer Gray, the coordinator of the program, saw me at the hotel and was like, “Oh, you should try out for it.” I’m all, “Sorry, I’ve only been here 10 months, you have to be here for a year, from what I understand, so, I can’t.” And she’s like, “Okay, well, maybe next year.” I’m all, “Okay,” and didn’t think anything of it.

Just by understanding what Dorothy was doing and what they were showing I knew the interview process was a good experience to go through and it ended up being a three week interview process. So I’m normally in management, so it was like, “Just let me build on my skills and let me go ahead and see about going after it.”

In September of ’98, Jennifer Gray (pictured, right) saw me again, remembered me from the year before, saying, “You’ve been here long enough, so you can go after it this time.” So I’m like, “Okay... yes, yes I can.” So I went to the information session and that really turned me around to see what Dorothy and Oscar did during the course of their Ambassadorship and so now it’s like, “Okay, let me go after it.”

Honestly, I did not think I was going to get it because I heard it was obviously a very difficult thing to do. They look for certain things and all that. It was like, “Okay, I’ve been here almost two years, so I’m not going to have a shot.” But after each of the interviews, I kept moving forward and along and along, and I eventually got it.

SW: Where was the ceremony at?

DM: It was at Animazement: The Musical at the Fantasyland Theater.

SW: Before or after the show or something?

DM: No, it was in the Fantasyland Theater, but they tweaked our show to almost be like Animazement. They changed the lyrics and created an Ambassador show around that. So all the characters were there: Pocahontas, Hercules, all the characters. Do you remember all the little turning boxes (in the show, that had characters painted on the)? Our faces were on the boxes. They did a caricature of all the eight finalists. It was really kind of cool.

SW: How many finalists were there?

DM: There were eight finalists during my term. From what I understood, there were about 86 people that were interested in the program that met the criteria for the program, and then they narrowed it down to 22 semifinalists, then they narrowed it down to eight finalists, then they narrowed it down to two Ambassadors… myself and Jennifer (Simis). It was a great experience!

SW: Who announced that you were the Ambassador?

DM: Paul Pressler (pictured, right). It was two months before he left to go to Burbank, and then Cynthia took over. He was just a great guy.

SW: By the ceremony, did you think you may have a chance?

DM: Out of the eight of us that were finalists, I knew five of them. So there were just only three that I didn’t know, and before the ceremony we had two weeks of doing activities where we really get to know each other because they knew they were going to carry you out. And Jennifer was a nurse. I didn’t know her. I only met her two weeks before.

SW: She was a nurse for the company, for the park?

DM: Yeah, she was first aid. Well, she’s a nurse in real life, but she worked here as a nurse in first aid. So, I’m all thinking, “Alright, if they pick three, because in the past they had three, I didn’t know exactly how they were going to do it, but if they pick three I think I have a chance, but I’m going up against some great cast members that had been here longer and so forth. I just went, “You know what? I made it as a finalist, I’m so happy about that.” Truly, I was happy about that. Paul said, “We’re choosing two people this year,” I’m like, “Alright, well, it’s not going to be me, which is okay,” and I was the first name he called out.

Now if you had seen the reaction on my face, you would know that I was shocked. Everybody talks about that reaction because, literally, I was just mouth dropped, was in total shock. It was great because all my fellow front desk people were there, my university leader friends were there, then also my other friends around the resort. So it was excellent.

Then, they called Jennifer’s name and we did our thing, and literally our lives have changed from that moment. It really did. Talk about seeing all the pictures, and photographers and everything! Literally, it was, here, bam, over the course of the weekend because this was November 19th of ’98 when we had our ceremony, and then I started that Monday, and that was a Thursday. I went back to the front desk Friday, did my last orientation on Saturday, had Sunday off, then I started training on Monday.

SW: Did you know then that it was going to be an 18 month term?

DM: Yes, they told us that the Millennium Ambassador team was going to be an 18 month assignment.

SW: That was the first time it ever extended past one year, right?

DM: Yeah, so we were the first 18 monthers. It was great, and it kind of made sense because in this role where you’re learning so many different things and you’re meeting so many different people and there’s a lot of responsibility when you’re doing media stuff that when our term ended, Doina (Roman-Osborn) and Heri (Garcia) had to be in the role for at least six months before they opened Disney’s California Adventure, because you don’t want to be new and say, “Okay, here’s the media bus, do what you need to do.” You have to go through the training and all that, so that’s why the resort did that for 18 months, and then 18 months for them and then they went back to the one year.

SW: Were you working on New Year’s Eve, 1999? The big Millennium year.

DM: We were because we were the Millennium Ambassadors.

We wanted to figure out, what can we do to contribute our term to the resort. So, we actually created a Millennium video that we shared with the cast members during that night. So, we worked until New Year’s Eve, we created a video called, The Ambassador Millennium Video and it really just documented everything that we saw that day. I got here at 9:00 in the morning, and it was raining and it was overcast when it stopped... I’m not a fan of the rain. But it was really great, and we actually spent it with the future Ambassador Matt Ebeling, he was working there at the time, obviously, so we were like, “Hey! Let’s celebrate!” Who knew two or three years later he was going to be the Ambassador, too.

We taped everything, we had cast member events going on, we got people coming into the park, we got different parties that were happening around the resort.

SW: Like what?

DM: In Festival of Fools (arena) there was a party that they had for cast members that were working, so there was food, entertainment, so we just went and taped that. We taped the fireworks show, and we really just taped everything that was going on at the resort on New Year’s. We weren’t afraid of the whole Y2K, like “everything’s going to go down.” We were like, “Let’s just tape everything that we could,” so we had literally about 18 hours of footage, we had so much stuff and then we narrowed it down, Jennifer and I did the editing with our edit bay folks, and created like about a seven or eight minute video for the cast members. They get shuttled into work, and it was playing on the shuttle so they could see if they didn’t work New Year’s. We played it for the first two weeks after that. It was really our contribution to our term.

It was such a great night. Our term was great, filled with so many different events that we got to do.

SW: What types of events?

DM: Well, our term, it was 18 months, technically January 1999 through June of 2000, so the 45th anniversary of Disneyland was happening for us, we were doing that in February... and it rained that day, too. The opening of (the updated) Autopia, we had that and we had Kathy Ireland out, and that was my presentation that I did. The opening of Tarzan’s Treehouse, that was a great event for us.

SW: What was done for that?

DM: It was just a big media event they did over at the treehouse and we had Tarzan come out on an Elephant.

SW: A real elephant?

DM: A real elephant. 2000 pounds, an actual elephant. Tarzan came out and opened it, so it was a great event. We had our moments, but our real key thing was the Millennium for us.

SW: Did you get to travel during your term?

DM: Traveled a little bit, we actually didn’t travel that much. I went to Portland for the Portland Rose Festival, and then I went to San Francisco for a couple of our media markets up there. I went twice because it was an 18-month assignment so it kind of looped over. Jennifer got to go to Japan and Vancouver, and that was it. Most of the stuff was all about the community.

One of my favorite things was the Disney Crew. It was a program that Disneyland did for the third and fourth graders in the community, in Burbank because of the studios and Anaheim, to teach kids to say no to drugs. It was a puppet show.

SW: Did that continue after your term?

DM: Yeah they continued after us. It was a show that they kept on doing. I don’t think Disney does it anymore, but they did it for a couple of years. And it was such a great show, just teaches kids to say no to drugs. And then we had the Disneyland band concert series for second graders to learn about music in the school. So Disneyland was part of that and they brought the Disneyland band to go play for it.

SW: The whole band?

DM: Yeah, (bandleader) Art (Dragon) and his people came out. He came there and the Ambassador introduced the world famous Disneyland band. That was a great experience, too. Obviously the hospital visits, bringing characters to the hospitals, CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County) because we have a great relationship with them.

We did so many different events around the resort. I got to give a tour for the prince of Ethiopia. The funny thing about that, he treated me like I was royalty. I was like, “Okay, come on, let’s get into the boat,” and he’s all “Okay, you first, you first.” I’m all, “Okay, you’re the prince.” He was the 228th descendent of Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. His name was Solomon. He was so nice.

Do you know Martha Blanding? Love her. She’s my “Disney Mom” as I like to call her. We did so many great events with her, merchandise special events. I got to meet a lot of the animators, back in the day, and all of her different events that she just does here, so working with her was great.

During my term, the U.S. Women’s soccer team won their championship, so they came to Disneyland and we got host them.

SW: Your term was full time, right? You were not doing your previous job at all?

DM: Yes. I’m glad it was fulltime because it’s kind of difficult when you have a 5am call time to be somewhere to present something or you’re going on the TV recording for New York at six and you’re staying until noon to get to the 9am show for Hawaii, and then you’re staying here for 11:00 news. It was good. We had some long days, but it was worth it.

All the cast member events were really great. That’s where we got to cross train different areas, which I never would have done.

SW: Did you have a favorite part of that? Of the cross training?

DM: We worked at Yamabuki, which is no longer here, which is my favorite. And then, we got to work at Fantasmic! We got to go out and put the fireworks out there wearing those pants that don’t make you get wet. Of course, mine had a hole in it, believe it or not! (laughs) Whatever. Here I’m in the River’s of America, and I was like, “Ah, there’s a hole in my jumpsuit.” Whatever. It was great and the crew was great. Worked in custodial, that was great. It is hard work, especially when it’s hot. You’ve got to give it up for them for that. I really didn’t cross train at the hotel, just for the fact that I’ve already been there.

It was great. It was a good 18 months for us.

SW: Do you have any particular favorite memory that stands out when you think of the whole experience?

DM: Well, we got to meet Bob Hope and that was really great.

SW: What was that for?

DM: Christmas tree lighting. He came here and hit the golf ball to light the Christmas tree one year, so that was really great to be able to meet with him.

You get to meet so many different people. There’s nothing like being the face of Disneyland, the representative of the cast members. During my time, it was like 14,000 people. A lot of people really kind of know who you are. You can be at Red Lobster and someone might recognize you, or you can be at the airport and someone would say, “Hey! You were just in the parade yesterday!”

And it’s great to have fellow sisters and brothers, not only from Disneyland, but from other parks. So obviously meeting our counterparts at Disney World and Paris and Tokyo… it was great.

And working with Jennifer, my partner, we’re still friends to this day. Just last weekend I became Godfather of her fourth child. So we’re still close and we still talk and it’s been ten years. I can’t believe it’s been ten years. Time really does fly by. Being able to really experience that whole process with her has really been great.

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