I don’t have the numbers, but for sake of approximation, there are around two hundred daytime custodians. I arrived at this figure from the time that I worked there and I’m sure it fluctuates quite often if you figure in part time, seasonal, college program, etc. This workforce is divided up into the seven lands of the Magic Kingdom. Each custodian receives a two week work schedule in military time that is figured up and printed by a computer and posted in the office. The reason behind keeping military time is that the park operates on a twenty-four hour basis and knowing whether your schedule falls in the morning or night will make a big difference with your presenteeism. If you are not sure how to convert regular time to military time, there is a chart to help aid you in making the right conversion.

Schedules seem random, but there is a system to the madness. A typical schedule for each custodian never lacks for surprises. One day you may be scheduled to open in Adventureland and the very next day you may be scheduled to close Fantasyland. It is impossible to predict where and when you will wind up next, but a two week advanced notice helps you to make personal plans at home. Despite this seemingly randomness of scheduling, each area of the park is covered with an adequate number of custodians. Depending on park hours, a crew for one land may vary from six to twelve custodians. The longer the operating hours, the more shifts and custodians working for any one land.

This brings us to shifts. There are typically three shifts. Opening, mid, and closing, (excluding third shift). Openers start at seven in the morning and work for eight hours, while mid and closers overlap by coming in later in the afternoon to work their eight and finish the job for the evening.

Now that we have established the workforce and schedule, how would one begin to use this workforce effectively? The answers are found in the needs of the park itself. The Magic Kingdom like all of the other Disney parks is open 365 days a year. With this sort of operating schedule, maintenance needs make themselves manifest in all sorts of ways and knowing what those needs are will help the Custodial department make better use of it’s crew.

The most prominent one which I will cover here would be the guest traffic. With lots of visitors, there comes lots of debris from food, drinks, merchandise, and personal items. To alleviate this influx of litter, trash cans themed to the land that they sit in are widely available throughout the park encouraging visitors to dispose anything unwanted in a can rather than on the ground. For those who don’t care about their surroundings or those who have an accident with their popcorn box, custodians patrol designated areas for debris as well as keep the trash cans from overflowing. To accomplish this, each custodian receives a list of duties related to the area or land that they are assigned to. First would be the area to patrol. Working in Fantasyland, “Jack” may have been assigned to cover from Teacups to Castle, while “Jill” covers Castle to Skyway (which is no longer there). The Carousel in the center would be an overlap area while the Skyway and Teacups would be considered gray areas where custodians from other lands might overlap with Fantasyland. Add a few more roaming custodians and the area receives a great deal of coverage by the sweepers. Repeat this for the other lands and you have coverage parkwide.

Other duties may include a trash round which is usually scheduled every two hours throughout the day until closing. Spill rounds are conducted with mops and mop buckets to handle ice cream and drink spills. Utilities (scheduled for opening shift) come in all forms from scrubbing building fronts to trash cans and removing gum from the streets. Last would be a list of two fifteen minute breaks and a forty-five minute lunch. This list of breaks and duties have been filled out by leads who were a step below the supervisor, but in recent years, lead status has been dissolved in favor of more roaming supervisors who now fill out the daily area schedules.

Park guests get hungry and where there’s food, there’s bound to be a mess. Up until recent years, it was the Custodial department’s job to supply labor for the fast food restaurants. Working in these locations (in the past) required custodians to exchange their white costumes for costumes that are worn by Foods department and in theme for that location. Custodians there would bus tables, sweep floors, and pull trash on a more regular basis. Breaks are also scheduled and utilities are common. Now, this job is covered by the Foods department.

Restroom duty falls to other custodians who do nothing but monitor restrooms. Restrooms are divided into areas much like the lands, but with less clarity. A restroom round may contain six restrooms located in one or two lands and are covered by a male and female. The areas are very flexible and grow or shrink to the amount of custodians present to work that shift. The more custodians there are to cover restrooms, the smaller and more managable the areas become. Fewer available custodians makes for bigger areas and more restrooms for each area.

Throughout the day, parades and shows cause a great deal of litter. To deal with that problem, Custodial will draw up a parade schedule that includes borrowed help from the other lands to convene at the castle forecourt or the car barn in town square on Main street to carry out a simple plan to clean up the parade route. After the completion of a parade, Custodial will swing into action with power vacs and push broom teams to quickly remove the litter. Many guests have complained about this noisy affair saying that the vacs are loud and smelly. It is true and unfortunate, but without the current system of parade cleanup, it would take Main Street several hours to bounce back from being heavily littered to looking halfway presentable not to mention safe. A clean, safe, and sanitary area takes top priority, so the teams and vacs are used.