Disneyland Embarks on ‘Unisex’ Policy : Employment: Jungle Cruise, Storybook Land rides open to both genders, as will other attractions.

ANAHEIM —  Disneyland, where for 40 years the Jungle Cruise operators have resembled rugged outdoorsmen and the Snow White character has looked like, well, Snow White, has begun tearing down sex barriers for many jobs.

In the past month, women have begun taking guests on the circuitous Jungle Cruise past water-squirting elephants and stalking tigers, where only male guides had ventured before. And next month, men will begin relating the same fables as their female counterparts on the Storybook Land ride.

Park officials say they are looking at inviting women to work in some of the Magic Kingdom’s other male bastions--train locomotives, Main Street omnibus and the steamboat. It may take as long as a year, but they say it will happen.

“The whole park will be unisex,” predicted attractions supervisor Bruce Kimbrell. “There will be no barriers.”

The change represents a major turnabout for America’s most famous theme park, which credits much of its success to a system of “casting,” rather than simply hiring, its peak seasonal work force of 12,000.

The system implicitly dictates that employees from popcorn sellers to sweepers are “cast members” who act out their roles any time they are before the public, or “on stage” in Disney-speak. Their collective performances have made the theme park the nationwide standard for courtesy and bolstered its reputation, but casting may also have given rise to sexual stereotyping.

Only men have been hired to play the parts of wisecracking boat jockeys on the Jungle Cruise. Only women have staffed the sedate Storybook Land ride, a children’s fantasy attraction in which they point out the miniature homes of fairy tale characters. Curiously, men originally ran the Storybook ride when it opened with the park in 1955, but were replaced entirely by women within a few years.

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Gender roles started breaking down throughout society for both men and women two decades ago, spurred by the civil rights and women’s movements. Disneyland, however, stayed largely bound to tradition.

And it might have stayed that way had Suzanne Barnaby not gone on vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida in March.

Barnaby, an Adventureland ride operator with 15 years’ experience, saw women working as boat operators on the Jungle Cruise at the Orlando attraction, a duplicate of Disneyland’s original ride.

As soon as she returned to Anaheim, she asked a supervisor if she could start working the ride here.

It was no wonder. The Jungle Cruise has a special allure for employees, since it is the only ride where the rollicking, pun-loving operators are given some latitude in their spiel.

The job doesn’t pay any more than other rides or leads to faster promotions, park officials say, but it is an experience few forget: Ron Ziegler, press secretary to President Richard M. Nixon who had worked at Disneyland in the 1950s, used to entertain White House reporters with Jungle Cruise jokes.

Four days later, the request was granted and she was handed two pages of well-worn jokes to memorize.

Disneyland had experimented with the notion of female jungle guides before. Some worked during the summer of 1974, but Kimbrell said “the public was not ready to accept women daredevils.”

The park tried again in 1987, recalled attractions Director Craig Smith, but “it was too hard from a female perspective.” They had difficulty loading guests and pushing boats around between trips, he explained.

This time, there is no turning back. Kimbrell points out that audiences have grown to expect female adventurers from movies like the Indiana Jones trilogy. Barnaby and 11 other women were trained for the Jungle Cruise. They join a ride staff of about 100, of which 38 may be working on any given day.

The women are expected to give the same corny routine as the men up to 30 times a shift as they maneuver their boats past various jungle scenes. (“The only way to stop a charging hippo is to take away his credit card,” or “When you’ve been in the jungle as long as I have, you begin to smell--danger, that is.”)

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Guest reaction to female guides is good, though Barnaby and the others have worked out a few snappy retorts to the occasional snide comment:

“A kid will say, ‘I don’t want a girl skipper.’ I say, ‘At least if we get lost, I’ll pull over and ask for directions.’ ”

The men have generally been accepting, too, though there are occasional grumbles. One male Jungle Cruise operator said: “The only gripes are by the old-timers who hate to see the fraternity disappear.”

The operator, who asked not to be named, conceded that he had a few reservations of his own because “women don’t fit into the scheme of things” leading macho rides like the Jungle Cruise. Those kinds of moves “just makes Disneyland one more generic theme park.”

Men assigned to the Storybook Land ride may encounter similar attitudes. The voyage that starts at the gape-toothed mouth of Monstro the Whale is considered sissy stuff, a meandering cruise meant only for the youngest of children and oldest of grandparents.

“I’m sure there will be people who say, ‘Oh, we got a male,’ but as long as you are telling the stories, I don’t see a problem,” Kimbrell said.

When the ride reopens June 17, one of the new storytellers will be Phil Griego, a 10-year Disneyland worker, who said he was attracted by the chance to serve as a narrator for the seven-minute voyages.

“It’s great,” he said. “It’s one of the rides where you interact more with guests. On most rides, you push a button and away they go.”

Kimbrell said he had his doubts, so one day before the maintenance period began on the Storybook ride, he donned a uniform and worked as a ride operator for a day to judge guest reaction.

“It’s not what I expected,” he said of the response. “I was expecting some resistance, (but) I think the time is right.”

Smith said the public may be surprised to see a female engineer on a 19th-Century steam train or driving an antique fire engine down Main Street USA, but attitudes have changed.

“We can take a little liberty with what would be historical perspective . . . and still try to keep the integrity of the story we are trying to sell without anyone saying, “Gee, this isn’t the way it was,’ ” Smith said.

The initial move on the two most sexually segregated rides will be followed by others. About the only ride that Smith said he is not sure will be integrated are the canoes that depend on paddling passengers for power. Smith said that workers need a lot of upper body strength, making them a challenge for many well-developed employees and potentially even harder for women.

So does this mean we can expect men to play Snow White or Tinkerbell?

“Trust me,” says a park spokesman, “there is never going to be any male Snow Whites.”