Ingmar at The Great Movie Ride June 2nd, 2007

[MainStreet, USA]

I scribbled down his information on a Disney napkin when I got off the ride back on June 2nd, and had lost it somewhere in my luggage until just now, which is why I'm just getting around to writing this now. But this guy deserves his moment of recognition.

My girlfriend and I were on The Great Movie Ride at MGM on Saturday June 2nd, when things started to go a little out of whack. The first major problem actually occurred after we had gone through 'the Underworld' and picked up our gangster, who played her part fairly well. We progressed on past John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and had just survived being in the middle of that wild west shootout at the bank when things started to go wrong, and the next thing you know... we're stuck. We ended up sitting there for almost 10 minutes it seemed, and all the while our gangster did a pretty good job of keeping in character, even though it wasn't too hard to tell that she was almost ready to call it quits a couple of times. Without a script for this, she was making it up as she went along, trying to talk casually to us while staying in character and making weak jokes about the cow mooing in the background sound effects, etc., but you could hear her accent slipping from time to time, and a few times she caught herself about to say something she shouldn't. I felt sorry for her, because I knew this was definitely not an easy task.

Eventually we got moving again, and I could see a huge look of relief on her face once she was able to return to her memorized script. But even once we were moving, the ride was slightly out of sync with itself, and the spacing between the vehicles was off so much that we ended up having to stop several more times throughout the rest of the scenes, usually for only a moment or so, just to try to realign the spacing between the cars, but you could see she was not happy with the additional delays. She did her best to hide her frustration, and I do applaud her efforts, but let's just say that when we got to the scene where our Tour Guide rejoins thanks to the cursed jewel, she was surely glad to be out of that car.

Now here's the guy I want to really acknowledge. Our Tour Guide, Ingmar, was a cheery young fellow who took the reigns back as if there was hardly a glitch at all. Despite the fact that we were stopping in nearly every scene, ranging from a few seconds at a time to a couple minutes, he simply apologized and explained why we were being held up (the vehicle spacing), and filled the stops with interesting, on-topic conversation and trivia (Lou would have loved this guy!) regarding the movies and the ride, stuff that you don't get in the normal script. He seemed to know just about anything there was to know about The Great Movie Ride, and about all the movies contained within, and all the actors and actresses in each of them! He knew the history of the building and its themeing and the props, and all about the Chinese guardian statues outside the main entrance and how to tell the male guardian from the female one, and all sorts of cool information that he just kind of kept tossing out every time we got delayed and he had to go off the scripted spiel. When the gangster was in charge, you could sense her discomfort and her difficulty at coming up with things to say and do while remaining in charcter, and you really kind of felt bad for her. But once Ingmar took back over, he made it feel almost like part of the tour, like he didn't mind the delays at all and used them as a way to enhance the ride, and I really almost didn't want to get going again once he got on a roll.

Way to go, Ingmar! Thanks for all your hard work and sharing so much of your interesting knowledge! I hope to see you around TGMR again!

[mini-V]

Thanks for sharing that. We often forget how difficult it can be to fill in when things go wrong. It takes someone a cut above to know more than "the average bear" and make a special experience for a guest. I'll keep my eyes pealed for Ingmar.

[disneydreamer98]

It's always nice when a CM add's that little something extra and makes a moment even more magical! Thanks for sharing Don!