Disney Tradition an Oar-Deal for Workers

The sun hadn’t even crested the Matterhorn yet wheJ. Guibord stood at a dock on Disneyland’s big river and took in the scene. Several dozen other Disney employees already were on the water in canoes, paddling furiously around Tom Sawyer’s Island.

Only several hours earlier, at 1:15 a.m., Guibord had ended his shift as a Monorail operator and gone home for a few hours of sleep. But now he was lined up at the dock with several other Tomorrowland employees, psyching himself out of the fact that it was 6 a.m.

What possessed him to crawl from a warm bed before dawn to show up at work and paddle his arms off, on his own time ?

“Why do I get up? To win.”

Guibord, with nine teammates, is trying to win what has become in 25 years one of Disneyland’s most popular behind-the-scenes institutions: the park’s annual employee canoe races.

Now stretching six weeks through the summer and involving more than 1,000 employees, the races are sort of Disney’s twist on the company softball tournament. Despite the awkward hours--the park and river are filled with tourists at more convenient times--the races are highly popular, a chance for employees to enjoy the park by themselves while finding escape from their sometimes stressful jobs.

“It’s a good release,” said Cathy Campbell, a park tour guide. “It helps you see other cast members (park employees), who go through the same things you do.”

Said Dave Randall, who oversees

the races: “Even at 3 o’clock in the morning, we’d have the same turnout. Some employees say they don’t think of it as summer until they do the canoes.”

The canoe races motivate 90 or so Disney workers to car-pool from Burbank headquarters to Anaheim at 4:30 a.m. And the tournament inspires Campbell to rise four times a week at 3:30 a.m. to help officiate at the races before working a 9-to-5 shift.

Three-thirty a.m.?

“My mother always asks, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” Campbell said. “But it’s so much fun. . . . You get here in the morning because it’s such a strong park tradition. How many people have a river that they can row around in the morning?”

The tradition began in 1963, when several dozen employees began a tournament with three 10-man canoe teams. According to park lore, the men were inspired by a letter from a guest who had raved about the Davy Crockett canoe ride.

Disney Tradition

By the next summer, there were 10 teams. The tournament has grown steadily since.

In 1965, a women’s team was formed. Five years later, the first mixed men’s-and-women’s team appeared. The number of teams peaked at 144 in 1982. This year, there are 104--with Disneyland Hotel employees fielding 10 teams and Walt Disney Imagineering, a Disney subsidiary in Burbank, fielding nine.

“The people who work here have a unique opportunity to see the park when no one else is in it,” park spokesman Bob Roth said. “There’s a feeling that ‘the park is really ours.’ ”

Intense company loyalty, said Randall, is what makes it happen.

“What makes people show up at 6 a.m.? The same thing that makes people come and work here,” Randall said. “You have people working here for very minimum wage-- teachers, college students--who would never work for this kind of money anywhere else.” But this is Disneyland, he said, “and the pride factor comes in.”

Joe McGuire, a professor of management at UC Irvine, called the park’s canoe races “a wonderful device” for motivating employees.

“The thing that impresses me is that there is no reward other than a trophy,” McGuire said. “It is an unusual thing.” This year’s tournament will conclude Aug. 11 at an early-morning finals event hosted by Mickey and Minnie. As in previous years, the winning teams will be presented souvenir wooden paddles as trophies.

Teams began practicing for the tournament earlier this month, with some employees going straight to work from their morning canoe outings.

Park to Themselves

“It’s early,” admitted Gail Brown, who used to coordinate the races, “but once you get up, it’s one of the most fun events you could be involved with. And being on the river so early in the morning when the sun is coming up is beautiful.”

A recent morning at the riverfront seemed more like a typical afternoon at the park. Oblivious to the hour, Randall scrambled about the dock coordinating the activities of scores of racers and dozens of volunteers. Several volunteers wielding walkie-talkies ushered racers into canoes. They communicated by radio with a group of volunteers on Tom Sawyer’s Island who kept time and watch over teams practicing on the river.

Alighting from one of the 1,500-pound canoes after a trip around the island one morning, Judy McLaughlin, a Fantasyland secretary, complained that her “arms feel like they’re going to fall off.”

Most often, teams are formed by employees of a particular ride, restaurant or area of the park. The names they assume can be offbeat and witty (but they must be approved, Disney being Disney): Oar Mongers, Rowing Stones, Death Row, Rows Royce, Shake Paddle & Row, Either Oar.

Some teams compete year after year with virtually the same members. Dynasties have arisen as one team wins the tournament several seasons in a row. Until Disneyland Hotel employees stopped participating in 1980 (they are back for the first time this year), a team of lifeguards from the hotel pool dominated the event in the 1970s.

For the past several years, D. C. Express has dominated. Not surprisingly, the team is made up of tanned and beefy young men who work as guides on the canoe ride.

“That’s the team to beat this year,” noted Guibord, whose team, Death Row, nonetheless competes in a different division than the all-men’s Express and placed first last year in the co-ed division with a time of 4 minutes, 36 seconds.

Thrill of Victory

During canoe season, this competitive spirit permeates the Disneyland of the employees. “The canoe races,” said Sheila Herd, a Death Row team member, “are a topic of conversation every day all over the park.”

The races become a matter of turf pride.

Sean Leonard, part of the Burbank contingent that car-pools to Anaheim, said the canoe tournament gives him and his colleagues “a chance to go down to the park and represent the people up here.”

On a recent morning, which happened to be a qualifying day for the quarter-finals, Death Row was trying to better its previous week’s time of 4 minutes, 56 seconds. This day, the team only came in two seconds faster.

But if Herd was disappointed, she didn’t show it.

“We’re going to be like the Lakers,” she said. “We’re going to win back-to-back titles. I don’t get up early in the morning to lose.”