Aside from costuming, Pat was also on “ride-crew” duty, which included laundering dirty or oily animatronics’ costumes. Pat often had to crawl and crouch on many of the rides housing scores of robotic dolls and animals to clean the costumes. One nightly hassle: Leonardo DaVinci, lying flat on his back in a ruby waistcoat while painting the Sistine Chapel. But the most notorious ride: it's a small world.
“We’d be in there late at night, and the engineers wanted us to get out of there, so they would play the song louder and louder and louder,” Pat says, smiling. “That was torture.”
On the American Adventure, an animatronic tale of great presidents and American leaders, Susan B. Anthony’s arm partially exploded, spurting clear oil all over the ride.
“Her clothes were soaked,” she remembers.
Since these ritual cleanings began at 3:45 a.m.-after the park’s closing-her job took a toll on the family, too.
“It was hard to handle with a family,” Pat says.
“She’d be at work at 3 a.m.,” Michelle says. “We didn’t get to see her much then.”
As a Disney dressmaker, Pat was a slave to designers’ schematics and patterns for all the outfits she created.
“Everyone has to look the same on any day, on any cast member,” she explains.
Now, Pat and the other buyers routinely work with the designers to update and freshen costumes for the operation employees. In five-year intervals, each costume gets a make-over, and Pat must search for all the right pieces to finish the complete costuming puzzle. The details make each cast member a walking piece of art.
Backstage Magic
A short walk from the MGM employee-only parking lot, and we are plunged “backstage,” behind the building facades that create “Main Street, U.S.A.” A sliver of a faux-vintage billboard hawking Kodak film is visible.
Cast members puff at their mid-day cigarettes, snacking in the employee cafeteria and chatting, wearing brown newsboy caps, suspenders and knee socks inspired by the 1930s. Only a handful of inconspicuous gates and doorways separate the tourists from this world.
We dip into the air-conditioned office building and ride the elevator up to the buyers’ offices. A dry-erase board outside Pat’s office proclaims, “Have a Mickey Day!” Inside, a two-tiered rack of blouses hangs on her left wall. Some tops have small rips and bleach spots from routine “laundry tests” performed on different fabrics.