We recently sat down with a Disneyland employee working on the less glamorous side of the Magic Kingdom, and we learned that working at the Happiest Place on Earth is a lot like being in high school, that there is such a thing as Disney Jail, and that geese are freaking assholes.

Earlier this year, Cracked took you behind the scenes of Disney World with a firsthand account from a costumed cast member . Our source talked about drunken escapades at Epcot and the trials of being Mickey Mouse, but they didn't speak for the huge mass of Disney park employees who are stuck sweeping up drink lids and selling T-shirts without the self-esteem boost of being dressed up like a beloved cartoon character.

6 The Streets Are Built to Hack Your Brain

[img:brain header.jpg]

After a few weeks working at Disneyland, I started to realize these parks were built by actual wizards. Or at least street magicians, considering the whole thing is built on misdirection. For example, a big part of the old imagineer's jobs were to make a relatively small park seem like a whole world, and they did that by subtly tweaking your perspective, like the world's biggest Magic Eye.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Here's Main Street, which is designed to appear long and winding, so that when you first enter Disneyland, the park seems impossibly massive with tons to explore:

[img:brain 1.jpg]

"Help, I've been trapped here since 1984, and I can't find my way out!"

Note how distant the castle seems from the entrance to Main Street? Look at how tiny it is, all the way down there! That seems like a pretty healthy walk, doesn't it? Now here's the exact same stretch of Main Street, viewed from the opposite direction -- the building at the center of the picture is the entrance to the park:

[img:brain 2.jpg]

"Oh, there it is."

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Well shit, it's right there! We'll be home in no time! The street is the same length in both pictures, but thanks to the magic of forced perspective, it sure doesn't look that way. Basically when you walk in, the buildings down the street aren't smaller due to distance; they're physically smaller so as to appear farther away (the second and third floors of the shops aren't actually tall enough for a person to stand up in).

The pathways for visitors also pull the same trick -- when you're out and about as a visitor, it can take more than 15 minutes to walk from Frontierland to Fantasyland. But for us employees moving around backstage, that same long journey is maybe 10 steps, and it isn't because we're wearing magic boots.

[img:brain 3.jpg]

You can try pixie dust, but you never know when the next random drug test will be.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

We also have a huge group of cast members called Guest Control, which are professional people herders who are trained to move crowds from point A to point B without the people even realizing that they're being directed. Their tricks are incredibly simple yet amazingly effective -- they do things like set up vending carts to create ersatz avenues to guide people where we want them after a show ends. It's like a trail of bread crumbs, leading guests away from the show to make room for a new group.

For example, at the end of "Fantasmic!" (a special nighttime-only light show), we set up a trail of glow carts (moveable stores that sell glow-in-the-dark toys) and every kid leaving that show wants Mickey's light-up sword or whatever. The carts are carefully spaced out, so that when one cart starts to get crowded, there's always another cart slightly farther away with no wait at all, full of pretty glowy things that are impossible to miss. This string of carts gradually guides visitors out towards one of the exits, both to help us empty the park out for closing time and to ensure that Disney makes as much money as possible in the process.