Shortly after the release of Pirates of the Caribbean and the massive film success it became,
Disneyland introduced the film's main character, Captain Jack Sparrow, as a character in the park. He would chat with the park's guests, take photos, sign autographs and all of the other usual stuff characters do. You'd think that getting paid to be Captain Jack would be a lot of fun, right? Well, it also had a lot of downsides to it apparently, including having to deal with molesting park guests and almost Nazi-ish Disney corporate policies.
While he doesn't give his real name,
LAmag.com has an excellent interview up with one of Disneyland's original Jack Sparrow's. You can read the whole thing
here. No longer an employee of the company, he is now free to tell all about his time working for Mickey Mouse, and some of the details he has about how guests treated him, and how the company works are incredibly interesting.
First there's the women. Captain Jack Sparrow is a very popular character with the ladies, and Disneyland's corporate employees knew that. Before he even began his job, the man playing Jack was warned to be careful around women.
Disney warned us we were going to have a lot of horny women coming on to us. They were also worried about girls. I heard Disneyland had an Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was very flirtatious, and they finally pulled her because men found her too sexually arousing and were acting out.
The male character they had pulled was Tarzan. He moved around the tree house dressed in just a butt flap. Disney had hired these good-looking, muscular guys—even airbrushing abs on—and apparently there was excessive pinching of Tarzan’s ass by the park’s female visitors. Knowing all this, and also knowing what women were like around Jack at the Renaissance Faire, I told the other guys, “Don’t complain if girls flirt with you too much. If you do, they’ll pull the character from the park.”
It looks like Disney had good cause to be concerned though. Some of the women who stopped to get photos with Captain Jack would pinch his butt or grab his ass whole handedly, others would . . . well . . . let's just say they got a lot more friendly.
I'll be honest: I didn’t follow all the Disney rules. I played Jack like he was real, and if a woman flirted, I would flirt back. Women loved it. But there were also women who would have too many beers at California Adventure or smuggle in alcohol you could smell on their breath, women who were clearly sloshed.
Here’s a napkin someone wrote on for me: “I will give you a blow job on your break, so sexy! Kim—714-XXX-XXXX.” I would also get offers from women in my ear: “Anything you want, just find me.” I had a girl who had turned 18 the day before. She was with a high school group, and she wrote down her room number at the Downtown Disney hotel. I had a lady hump my leg one day in the park.
But that's just the flirts and the drunks. There were also the slightly creepy women to be concerned about.
Annual pass holders—eventually you would become the favorite of certain ones. Most characters were weirded out by the pass holders. Weird was a mother having her kids ditch school so she could come see me. Or coming to every set I did and walking the line over and over again just to talk to me. But I didn’t mind them. I built up about eight solid regulars that came for me. My biggest fans were a mother-daughter team that would talk a little, walk to the end of the line, and then come around again. I could see them twice a week, every week, every set.
And if the constant barrage of women didn't get to Captain Jack Sparrow, the corporate Disney folks did. Some of their policies were extremely limiting, and really didn't make any sense.
Disney wanted us to tone Jack down, so they put us through an acting class to discover reasons why Jack walks and talks the way he does. Obviously he is based on Keith Richards, who’s always messed up, which is why they came up with the class. “Don’t be flirtatious,” they told us. “See women as trouble.” And they said as far as alcohol goes, don’t even mention drinking. But the Pirates of the Caribbean song is all about drinking, and they’re drinking all along the ride. So I eventually broke that rule, because it would have taken me out of character. When parents took pictures, I’d say, “Everyone say ‘rum,’?” and the parents loved it. The kids would just ask, “What’s rum?”
There's also a strict no dating policy at Disneyland, which got our Captain Jack into trouble when he and a certain red headed mermaid started seeing each other. Add to that problems with management and a ridiculous point system that got people suspended or fired, and Jack's days at the park were certainly numbered. Not only was this particular Jack Sparrow fired, but eventually Disneyland had to permanently remove the character from the park. He was just causing too much trouble.
But, really, what did you expect a pirate to do?
