Walt Disney World's costume shop runs 900 designs and 746 hat styles, and prints Cruella's car on the parking crew
Walt Disney World's costuming operation, which Disney calls the largest working wardrobe in the world, keeps about 900 operational costume designs and 746 hat styles in rotation with a team of more than 1,500 cast members. Fox 35 Orlando's look inside on September 18 surfaced the hidden details: parking attendants wear a print of Cruella De Vil's car, a Kilimanjaro Safaris truck and a TRON Lightcycle, and Main Street merchandise costumes carry the state flowers of Florida, California and Missouri.
Walt Disney World's costuming department keeps about 900 operational costume designs and 746 hat styles in rotation for the cast members who run the resort, and it hides a few jokes in the fabric. Parking attendants wear a print of Cruella De Vil's car, a Kilimanjaro Safaris truck and a TRON Lightcycle. The merchandise cast on Main Street, U.S.A. wear a floral pattern built from three state flowers, one of them a nod to Walt Disney's Missouri boyhood. Disney walked FOX 35 Orlando through the operation this week, two days after it opened Disney University to Orlando television crews.
The largest working wardrobe in the world
Disney calls its costuming department the largest wardrobe operation anywhere, and it gave Fox 35 the figures behind that claim: about 900 unique operational costume designs, 746 hat styles, and more than 1,500 costuming cast members who design, produce and maintain everything worn onstage. When Disney gave the same tour to other Orlando crews on September 16, it put those 1,500 costumers across 46 costuming locations, the backstage windows where a cast member checks out a clean costume at the start of a shift and returns it at the end.
Every one of the 900 designs is tied to a role and a place. From parking attendants and attraction operators to restaurant cast and performers, each costume is built for a specific job in a specific setting, and the design team starts with the setting rather than the garment. That is why a Jungle Cruise skipper, a Haunted Mansion butler and a resort front-desk host look nothing alike.
"Everything starts with a story," said Michael Sendek, senior manager of Costume Design & Development. "We always go back to, 'What's the story we're trying to tell? What's the location this cast member works at, and who are they supposed to be in the storyline?'"
Cruella's car, a safari truck and a Lightcycle on the parking crew
The detail Fox 35 led with is the pattern on the parking attendants' costume. Look closely and the print is a fleet of Disney vehicles: Cruella De Vil's long roadster from 101 Dalmatians, one of the open-sided trucks that carry guests through Kilimanjaro Safaris at Disney's Animal Kingdom, and a Lightcycle from TRON Lightcycle / Run, the Tomorrowland coaster that opened at Magic Kingdom in April 2023. The joke works because parking attendants are the cast members who deal in vehicles all day: they are the first people a driving guest meets at the toll plaza and the last ones waving from the lot.
The Fox 35 frame above shows the print on a lime-green shirt with a Tony name tag. Fox 35 does not say which parking role the shirt belongs to, and the two costumes hanging beside it, a white-and-teal uniform with a cap and a khaki shirt, go unidentified in the report.
Three state flowers on Main Street, U.S.A.
The merchandise cast along Main Street, U.S.A. at Magic Kingdom wear a floral pattern, and the flowers were chosen on purpose. Two are the state flowers of Florida and California, the orange blossom and the California poppy, standing in for Disney's two U.S. resorts. The third is Missouri's hawthorn blossom, for Marceline, the small town where Walt Disney spent part of his boyhood and the model for Main Street itself. Disneyland's Main Street opened in 1955 with Marceline in mind, and Magic Kingdom's version has carried the same small-town premise since October 1971.
Kylee Withers, one of the current Walt Disney World Ambassadors, told Fox 35 those touches are the point.
"It's all those little details... helping to create that experience that activates all five senses," Withers said, adding that a park day is about what guests smell, hear and taste as much as what they see.
Withers made the same point about the 1,500 costumers guests never meet.
Why Disney says costume, and where the name tag comes from
Disney has called its uniforms costumes since Disneyland opened in 1955, part of a vocabulary that treats the parks as a show: cast members rather than employees, onstage and backstage, guests rather than customers. Every new hire at Walt Disney World learns that vocabulary at Disney University, in the Traditions orientation class, and that is where the oval name tag with a first name and hometown is handed over. In Fox 35's footage, a pink ruffled blouse on a mannequin carries a name tag with a hometown in Puerto Rico and a pin beneath it marking Spanish as a language the cast member speaks.
With 80,000 cast members, Walt Disney World is Central Florida's largest employer, and the costuming tour is the second leg of a media push that began on September 16, when Disney opened Disney University to cameras and said it plans to add more than 5,000 jobs over the next five years. Fox 35 notes its report was built on information shared by Walt Disney World Resort, so the numbers are Disney's own.
Key Details
- Costume designs: About 900 unique operational designs
- Hat styles: 746
- Costuming cast members: More than 1,500, across 46 costuming locations
- Resort workforce: 80,000 cast members
- Hidden details: Cruella De Vil's car, a Kilimanjaro Safaris truck and a TRON Lightcycle on parking attendants; the Florida, California and Missouri state flowers on Main Street merchandise costumes
- Source of the figures: Walt Disney World Resort, via Fox 35 Orlando's September 18 report
Where to spot the details on your next park day
Three of the details are visible from a guest's side of the rope. The vehicle print is on the parking cast at the toll plazas and lots, so check the shirt of whoever waves you into a row at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney's Hollywood Studios or Disney's Animal Kingdom. The state flowers are on the merchandise cast in the Main Street, U.S.A. shops, from the Emporium down to the Confectionery. The name tag is on everyone: first name, hometown, and a pin for each additional language.
Nothing in the tour pointed to either print being sold as merchandise. They are cast costumes, checked out at a costuming window at the start of a shift and returned at the end, which is the part of the 900-design wardrobe a guest never sees.