Working at Universal City Development Partners Ltd

I started in rides/attractions, but got "safetied" out. You start with a certain amount of safeties, if you get too many, you're pretty much done. Honestly it wasn't anything terrible, just a few misjudgments of sending empty cars through and forgetting to set the lapbars down(which is easy to.forget to do because no *** people are in the car' but still Universal believes "it's the principle' so stupid stuff that got me kicked out, but they gave me a month to find a new location to go to(can't promise that happens to everyone but they liked my work ethic aside from the safeties adding up) So I took whatever I could get to keep the job, landing me into one of the in-park cafeterias. This was the worst, I was "busser" which was take out garbage, wash dishes, clean tables and trays, etc. Figured I'd keep that until I could get to a new location, the parking lot and toll booths. I had to leave because I moved, tried to make the commute work but it just wasn't because the pay wasn't worth the commute. Favorite part was being able to bring some friends out and have a good time with our free passes. I definitely wanted to be a Halloween horror night scareactor, auditioned but just never made it passed the initial audition, so I don't think I got to find something that made me say "wow, I really love this place" but Harry Potter was a cool place to go through. Least favorite thing would definitely be working at the cafe during the high school graduate nights. We'd be there til 4am, it was constantly busy, you take one trash bag out, turn around that same trash can is full. Never really felt appreciate in that position. Doing the parking lot was better, but it sucked during Halloween Horror Nights. We'd offer free parking after dark for Florida Residents almost year round, but not during Halloween Horror Night season, this would lead to irate people used to getting their free parking.

You get paid for the time spent walking from the employee parking lot to Walter's Gate

Fun experience, you meet a lot of really nice people. Downside is not getting enough hours. You start off as seasonal (usually, at least I did) and get offered a "part-time" position. You get full weeks of work when in peak season i (ie. summer, HHN, Grinchmas) but when we had slow months, there were times I would get scheduled once every 2-3 weeks. So the seniority kinda *** you over.

When I got hired it was a breeze but from what I've been hearing lately, they're more selective now. The day I got hired was the same day I went in to apply and to interview. Got the job on the spot.

Minimum wage for ride ops, 12.75 for lead. There's a hierarchy of power within the park that any person can climb, each level pays more.

So the way the ride is set up, there are 5 funhouses on the second level. This requires two ride ops since it's impossible for anyone to load 5 vehicles in under 2 minutes. Martin Lawrence walks into room 6 (the best room in the dome) and I ask my coworker if I can spiel him. She denied and said she wanted to spiel a celebrity so she was gonna do it. She walks out after giving the safety speech and asks me who Martin Lawrence is -_- safe to say I was pretty peeved. So I tell her that he is the voice of Donkey from Shrek. She flips out and exclaims that Donkey is her favorite character ever. I tell her to tell him that she loves his performance in the Shrek series when she goes to load him. 5 minutes go by and when the ride unloads, I see Mr. Lawrence looking pissed as hell. So that's a thing that happened.

The very last night of training I had to do before I was officially an Employee. I was with a group of 8 new hires and we all had to complete 3 days of paid training before we could get scheduled. So on my last day, I had to do a closing shift. This was when HHN was in full swing so we were getting a lot of intoxicated people. I'm shadowing this guy who's been working there since the ride was still Back to the Future. These two really rowdy drunk girls walk into one of the fun houses. Now they were supposed to go with a larger group to a different holding room but they didn't listen and ended up together at the very last room in the underground level of the ride. I'm spieling these two, giving them the safety speech and the drunker of the two says "Hold on, let me fix my shirt" (she was wearing a tube top) and she pulls it down to her belly button. Her *** are out and I'm trying my hardest to not break eye contact. I look over at the guy I was shadowing, trying to get help with the situation and he just shrugs. So the less drunk of the two tries to "help" her now bare-chested friend by pulling her shirt down even more. I eventually just closed the door and let them figure it out. By the time the ride doors opened and I had to lock them in, she was wearing her shirt properly.

Every BTS tour is different. There's one for Simpsons, Transoformers, and a few other rides. The people who give those tours are regular ride ops that get trained by the older staff. So usually they're pretty good about it. The BTS tour guides for the entertainment department are different however. They get paid specifically for that and so I believe they're trained separately. To answer your second question, yes. Every employee talks badly about all sorts of guests. We have codes we use when we have to describe a large guest or a disabled guest, and sometimes we would modify those codes to make fun of guests. It makes the job more enjoyable when you get to crack jokes. Usually we keep to ourselves if you don't stand out or do anything to try and stand out. Bottom line: act normally and we won't have anything bad to say.

The benefits were pretty great, we got discounts on food and merchandise in the park and on citywalk. We also got a page (front and back) filled with discounts to many different places and things, ranging from buss passes, movie tickets, sixflags and disney tickets. We never got to go after hours to the park to enjoy rides, mainly because all the rides close at the same time so there isn't anyone to operate them. However, when we got closing shifts, all the employees would stay to clean the ride for about an hour after closing. So a lot of the time there would be a group of about 5-7 people walking through the empty *** park at midnight on our way to the changing room.

I quit in February so that I could focus on school. It's pretty hard to get fired so long as you don't have any Major *** ups. Most people lose their jobs because they have too many points against themselves and they got those from being late of missing work.

The owner of Loews, the Tischs, would frequent the Portofino like it was their second home..they'd always publish an itinerary of where'd theyd be and when..guess some employees had the bright idea of trying to grab the youngest son and daughter and hold them for ransom? Never happened cause I guess someone ended up snitching but it was a big thing at our resort. Also Ellen Degeneres also goes to Portofino a lot and always uses the name "Sandy Beaches" The twin Weasley brothers are gay, obviously not with each other but I've seen them there with their boyfriends. It's not really a rumor but if you look at pictures of the real Portofino Bay in Italy, it looks like a shot for shot image of the resort..Steven Spielberg was the one who inspired it when he was scouting locations for a movie...people would always ask us "why are there planters and windows painted onto the building, why not make it look as real as possible?" And as a matter of fact, the real Portofino town was so poor, that they themselves painted window sills and planters on the buildings because of how poor the town is.

The boat was on a track at jaws. So not very. ;) but I did pilot the resort yachts at CityWalk for a few months. Every day there was a joke about how those were not on a track from my coworkers.

If it happened, hit the emergency stop, call it in, throw a life ring and retrieve them with a Shepard crook. They will not do another jaws ride. That rumor is a very unbelievable one. I did not work on the last day. My last show was in 2008.

Best part? Saving a boat full of people every 5 minutes, working with a great team of people. Seriously, work hard/play hard never was more true than on Amity Island. A real team of pros. I never saw the old shark bite scene with the turntable in person. I saw a video. It wasn't great. I don't know what Gordon says when he screams. I always thought he said "in show scene 5", hence my username. The kill shark broke so much because it had the hardest job. It had the biggest motor and constantly shot at the bot with lightning speed. I think the attack shark broke as often, but was missed less often because of the explosion in that scene.

Ultimately it was getting married and moving to Wisconsin. If Jaws was still around, I would be working there seasonally (I moved back to Orlando). The reason I don't work there now is because of the money. Theme parks don't pay well whether your work in ride and show ops or IT (my adult trade). If they brought back a spieling ride, I would not discount working there again for fun and perks.

Every show is a new show. Every guest a new guest. It was their first time. I watched them for queues. I knew that how i reacted gave them queues on how they should react. I bridged the gap into believably. And if I did a bad show, that 50 million that was spent on the ride and the thousands the guests spent to get here were wasted. I also tried to improve my show. look for things that need to be fixed. Sometimes I thought about different things, but made sure my auto-pilot show was top notch.

NIGHT SHOWS. duh. :)

boathouse somewhere. But they started removed them. :(

Nope. I don't have game. Did you see my picture? I'm a nerd. Hence why I'm on reddit ;)

I worked in other places as well. When one ride is overstaffed and another understaffed they send you to work in the undertaffed location. Sometimes by choice other times not. Also when Jaws was closed in part of 05 because of gas prices post-katrina we were all exhiled. And when the ride is closed for refurbishment we go someplace else. Lastly you can pick up shifts if you're missing hours or overtime is approved. (at least back then) As a skipper, you are pretty much qualified to work almost any position at any ride except for control rooms because they are different at every ride. I worked at Earthquake when it was a spieling attraction. I also spent some time at Jurrasic Park river adventure. I enjoyed being frozen at the spillway position all day. That's the room right before the big drop. your only job is to push the red button if someone tries to climb out or the T-rex starts leaking hydraulic fluid. I would get bored, and I got tired of people waving at me because I thought it ruined the climax of the ride. So true to my performing background, I pretended to freak out trying to warn them about the trex and drop and be powerless to help them. Sometimes I'd pretend to be eaten and dragged off. Never had to push the button. I filled in at Men in Black as well and would have fun engaging the guests at the elevator door and doing a whole act. Also did some time at Mummy, Spiderman, Shrek, Simpsons, Twister, worked a shows lead, and captained the real boats at citywalk. Also did seasonal work for halloween horror nights, mardi gras, and the holiday parade.

No, because the reality is that most universal employees have been or will someday be Disney employees.

Guests have. And skippers have as well. It used to be a tradition for skippers to jump in on their last day (at the dock), but when GE bought Universal, that ended. Stupid OSHA regulations.

Howdy, I did some time spieling at Earthquake in 2005 when Jaws closed. It was fun for a awhile, but no sunlight, and lots of downtime. Gosh, it would depend on who the Jaws lead, studio west, and Tech manager were. We went 11-1 (down due to technical difficulties) often due to a combination of show elements being out. In theory, they each had a point value and any value above a 4, meant we would close until we could fix them. For instance a shark was 2 points. So 2 sharks was 4 - closed. a fin was 1 point, so 1 shark and 2 fins - closed flames were 3 points I think. so flames plus anything was a closure. everything else was a half a point. The other closures would be because the track "was blown" which meant that the computer thought, or there actually were 2 ride vehicles in the same zone at the same time. It's kind alike a BSOD on your computer and you need to reset the whole system if it happens. This was more likely when you had 6 boats online (the max) in the summer. If one boat was fast and it was behind a boat that was slow, the fast boat could overtake the slow boat into a show scene and cause the track to blow. The other commons issues were hydraulic leaks. The sharks ran on hydraulic (vegetable oil). If a hose broke, it would leak. If they could shut-off that effect it would be ok. But if a hose broke on one of the big sharks and bleed the entire hydraulic system, then it was big trouble. The reason I said it depends on who is in charge is because the ride, much like earthquake (now Disaster), the ride was a combination of different effects and systems. So there were multiple points of failure. And despite the point system it was ultimately the call of management. Sometimes the Jaws lead would do it and then have to defend it to the manager when they arrived. But I always erred on the side of show quality. But sometimes we'd do shows with major parts not working. But usually it was a boat breaking. So I'd day at least once a day. The longest stretch I can remember was like a week in september, when the park was empty. It was a very mechanical ride, so when it broke, it broke good.

The performance of the guide/performer/skipper can truly make or break the attraction. Because the whole resort is based on entertainment by suspending your disbelief. If your performer is not enthusiastic or making you believe what you are seeing is real, it will blow the entire experience. This is unacceptable, especially with all the resources devoted to the attractions, and in particular the entire Jaws franchise. We'd always say that not matter how many times you have done a show, it will be someones first time every time. So don't ruin for them. I was a show quality nazi. It was understood that you will not mock the ride, or the outstanding job of the rest of the team and ruin someone's experience because you're bored with your job. There were days when skippers, including myself, would request to not be on boat because were were not emotionally up to providing the top quality show guests deserved. And if a skipper was not self-aware enough to know when they were "phoning it in", I'd pull em from boat for the day. I made it my goal that even my worse show would be a good show. So my auto-pilot show was still a super show. The only times I've ever been disappointing in my performance as after working in the rain for 3 days straight. I was miserable and my feet were wet. We received some good training in acting. Over at Poseidon, those people are paid as legit "performers". We were merely classified as "spielers". But most of the staff were theater students, or otherwise involved in the entertainment industry. Some others, including myself were just schmoes who wandered somehow into the coolest job ever.

Severence? hahahaha. *ahem* sorry. No. The health benefits were great because of the large number of employees on the plan and the fact that we were owned by GE.The pay is low. Even as a lead on the ride, the most I made was 8.50. For 8.50/hr I was in charge of a 50million dollar attraction. But I would have paid them to work there. No lifetime passes to Universal, much less Disney (who is the main competitor of Universal). I had free passes while I worked there. Sometimes I'd show up at 2am to get a bite to eat at the commissary and just walk around peaking in buildings. My friends were nice to me when I left. Management was indifferent more or less. It's a large corporate entity. Although, those of us working in Amity managed to buck the corporate culture more often than not. I don't know what country you're from, but in the USA, severance pay is not standard unless you are a salaried professional and let go without cause. It is unheard of for an hourly theme park worker.

You're welcome! Most of us loved that attraction dearly and felt privileged to bring Jaws to life for millions of guests every year. My favorite was this large African American woman who was sitting closest to where the shark came up. She FLIPPED OUT. She was easily pushing 300lbs but did this backward craw/flail across the laps of her entire family to get to the other side of the boat while screaming "Oooo Jesus!!! Awww lawdy!!" I had to turn my mic off I was laughing so hard.

It was an amazing Job. The pay was very low, just a bit over minimum wage, but I may have paid THEM for the job if I had to. It is hard to label one of the stories I have as the "best" or MOST embarrassing. I've had/seen a lot of awesome/embarrassing things. One story that sticks out to me is this: I was working as the Team Lead one particular day and was not on boat. Basically my job was to make sure everything was running well, plan rotations and breaks, and help out everywhere. I get a call to the unload dock as a boat comes around the corner. Strangely, I didn't hear the usual "Call off the Marine, we're coming hooooome!!!". The boat was full of guests, but the skipper was missing. Just as I was about to hit the E-stop, I see the skipper rise from the floor with a bloody face. Apparently during the final scene (show scene 5) where the skipper vanquishes the great white with a combination of electrocution and grenades shot from a 50mm grenade launcher, she managed to hit herself in the head with the barrel of the weapon and knock herself silly and bloody her face. These grenade launchers were, of course, props. They were made of wood and metal. The barrel as heavy and hard as any real weapon. Comparable to a shotgun. The grenade launcher is used throughout the ride as we timed our shots with pre-timed water mortars that shoot water in the air. The trick to making it look really good is in how you mimic the recoil of an actual weapon. I had done some training with her and a few other recently hired skippers on how a real firearm reacts when fired. Well, apparently she took this training to heart and over-acted the last shot, popped the barrel of the launcher into her head, and knocked herself nearly unconscious. The look of terror on the faces of both the skipper and her audience was priceless. She was ok, but was off-boat for a day or two to recover. I don't think she required stitches. She kept her bloody uniform as a souvenir, and if she ever does an AMA, I'm sure it'll be her proof. I don't have the traditional "dun-un dun-un" Jaws sound in my head. It's mostly the unload music that stays with me. Fortunately, It's happier music.