As if Disney Cast Members already didn’t have hard enough jobs, these Disney employees also apparently have to worry about being too good at carrying out their tasks! A former Disney Cast Member and current Disney Travel Agent recently spoke up about the negative impact that a particularly successful performer can have on their own employment with the Walt Disney Company — and revealed that one Peter Pan performer had to leave Disney after he became known for his excellent work as the Peter Pan character.
Jill Beignet, the aforementioned former Cast Member and current Disney Travel Agent, spoke about the Peter Pan Cast Member in a TikTok video (shown below) in which she was also encouraging Disney Guests to stop sharing footage of Cast Members or characters online (since it can indeed cost them their jobs). According to her, “character performers at Disney World have been fired because they went viral for doing an amazing job”!
Apparently, a few years back, one Cast Member was doing such a wonderful job playing the Peter Pan character in Disneyland that his performances went viral and Disneyland Guests would flock to see him.
“So if someone else was Peter Pan that day, they would get upset and complain,” Jill explained in the video. “It became enough of an operational problem that he was either fired or Disney insisted that he quit or be fired. It’s not entirely clear.” Jill emphasized in the video that the firing or forced quitting of this Peter Pan performer was just one example, and that it is very common for Disney to end performers’ employment if they stand out for their excellence.
@disney_beignet Replying to @glitterpinkparks Disney cast members are human beings #disneyworld #disneyland #disneyadult #disney #familyvacation
In order to help keep Cast Members and character performers from becoming too well-known (for their own good), Jill advises that Disney Guests do the following: “If your family has an amazing meet-and-greet with Mickey or Cinderella, you can post it on social media. But make sure the privacy setting limits it to be seen by your friends. Because at the end of the day, all Disney Cast Members are people. They have lives and families, and these jobs are how they provide for them.”
Jill was “friends with” several Disney characters, specifically fur characters, and she said that she did enjoy her job with Disney but experienced “constant anxiety and fear that [she] was going to lose [her] job because of one interaction.”