Mousekingdom Blog

Guest Blogger; Ricky Brigante

I’ve always considered dropping everything to get a job at Walt Disney World. While the pay may not be great, it truly is an experience of a lifetime. Whenever I have thought of getting a job with the Mouse, the first thought that comes to mind is, “I want to work at the Haunted Mansion!” This classic, spooky attraction, is, of course, my all-time favorite. I’ve often thought I would live there if I could. I’d never get tired of wandering its endless hallways.

Unfortunately, this attraction is also one of the top requested positions when applying for a position in Operations at the Magic Kingdom. Generally, you either have to get really lucky or work your way onto it, as most Cast Members who work there never want to leave.

When I moved to the Orlando area a few years ago, I decided that visiting the parks regularly would have to be enough for me, as I just couldn’t quit my current job to fulfill my fantasy.However, all of that recently changed when Disney and CareerBuilder.com announced their Disney Dream Job contest. This contest allows 25 total lucky winners to finally experience their dreams of embracing a role inside the original Disneyland park. The “jobs” that you could win a chance to work for a day are Jungle Cruise Skipper, Princess-in-Waiting, Parade Performer, Disney Pirate, and… Haunted Mansion Butler. I immediately knew that I HAD to enter this contest.

To enter, a video “audition” was to be submitted to CareerBuilder.com via YouTube. It had to be 45 seconds or less and show/describe why I was the perfect candidate to become an honorary Haunted Mansion Butler.

The entry deadline was a couple of weeks away, so I had plenty of time to prepare. Of course, like anything else in life, my entry ended up getting put off until the last minute. I finally sat down to decide what I would include in my video. I knew that the judging would be based on originality, creativity, entertainment, and comedy, so I had to find a way to include all of those elements. Fortunately, I had recently completed the Haunted Mansion room in my house. That is, I transformed an ordinary upstairs bedroom into a tribute to the Haunted Mansion attraction, complete with creepy furniture, flashing lightning in the windows, and wall-to-wall collectibles and artwork. This was an obvious place to shoot my video.

With the help of my wife, we nailed down a script and shot the video. I quickly edited it together and sent it away to CareerBuilder.com, hoping for the best. A few days later, the news I had been hoping for come: I had become a finalist. All of the videos were judged the top 20 videos for each “job” were chosen to be displayed on CareerBuilder.com until March 30th, where viewers could vote for their favorites. The combination of these votes along with the initial judging scores will now decide who wins a trip to Disneyland to get the once-in-a-lifetime experience of finally living their Disney Dream Job.

My finalist video can be found here.

Now, I spend all of my spare time voting for my video, American Idol-style. There is no limit to the number of votes you can cast, so it’s non-stop voting for me, my wife, and anyone else I can get to help out! It would mean the world to me to have a chance to wander those endless halls of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, greeting guests in an ever-so-ghoulish way.

The journey so far in the quest for my Disney Dream Job has been incredible. It has taken me from dying to have this job for over a decade to having it within my grasp. The only thing left is to wait and ask everyone reading this to watch and vote for my video as many times as you can between now and March 30th to help me fulfill my dream in becoming a Haunted Mansion Butler.

Ricky Brigante
Host of Inside the Magic
The Internet’s FirstOrlando-Based Disney Podcast

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Disney Theme Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.