Disney Manager Hangs Up His Broom

LAKE BUENA VISTA (Orlando Sentinel) – True story, insisted Wayne Culver: The day before the brand-new Haunted Mansion opened at Walt Disney World in 1971, the first custodial crew cleaned out all the cobwebs. "The Imagineers had to go back in and reapply all the cobwebs," recalled Culver, one of Disney World's original custodial managers, who just retired after 39 years in Orlando and Anaheim, Calif. In 1971, at age 21, he was one of two custodians brought east to train Florida custodians in the Disney ways. Since then Culver has mostly been in or helped manage Disney's armies of workers – the ones who sweep up cigarette butts, ascend scaffolding to wax monorails and rappel down Spaceship Earth to wash the 18-story-tall dome. Notwithstanding the mistake of the first Haunted Mansion crew, Culver said he leaves convinced that Disney World custodians upheld the squeaky-clean image set by company founder Walt Disney. In recent years critics have charged otherwise, including Walt's nephew, former Disney board member Roy E. Disney, who complained two years ago about maintenance standards slipping. Culver strongly disagreed, saying standards have gotten more stringent, adding that if people look for blemishes, they'll find them, but they're "clearly the exception, rather than the rule." These days, though, Disney custodians may be a little harder to find. In recent years, the company increasingly hired outside cleaning contractors, particularly for hotels. "Part of it is due to the fact that with this very, very tight labor market it always has been and remains difficult to attract and retain enough workers," Culver said. In one effort to address that, Culver recently helped develop new shifts for overnight cleaning crews who do most of the deep cleaning. He also created overnight training programs for third-shift custodial managers, bringing in top executives such as Lee Cockerell, Disney World's executive vice president for operations, to lecture at 2 a.m. "It's the only time I had to set my clock to get up," said Cockerell, famous for his dedication to time management. It was also, Cockerell said, a wake-up call in another way, and he credited Culver. "We don't get up very often at 1 o'clock in the morning to meet with them," Cockerell said. "It was: Why haven't we? It's now something we do pay attention to."