The big one! Every year we would rehab the center. This was a scheduled event and the center would be shut down as repairs proceeded. The pool closed at 10pm normally, from 10 to 2 I would pretty much screw around. One such night I returned to the pool to do the readings, and it was eerily silent. There was always the deep growl of the massive motors running the pumps. Not this night! I’m pretty sure me and Darrin were messing around somewhere and were supposed to have been watching and cleaning the pool. Our hearts sank as we looked out to the pool quite and still as a sheet of glass. I don’t remember who I called, probably the head pin mechanic, but word came down that rehab would start now! I got instructions on how to drain the pool and started on that. I remember Darrin going up on the high dive and lied down on the board. I don’t know why as he fell asleep and almost fell in the half drained pool. Over the next few days we set out to gussy up the pool. I think it was strictly voluntary who worked, as it was not in our job descriptions to fix stuff.

One big thing I spearheaded was the regrouting of the lanes. Everyone took a lane and with little plastic hammers we crawled along tapping on the tiles to see if any needed to be reset. Once all the tiles were good, it was grouting, a lot of grouting! It really looked sweet when we were done, but…. As I explained to them, the package says let dry for 3 days before submerging in water. They didn’t want to wait, and started the fill after a day or so drying. Guess what all washed out, yea, score one for management. Dumbasses!

While we regrouted, there were other teams painting. Some were working on replacing the burned out motor. Stuff like that. I remember a lot of misbehaving! There were no guests around to see us! It was fun to do something different to break up the monotony of day to day stuff at the pool.
One freaky moment, I was on the deck cleaning and I watched this happen. I was standing right next to this guard and a girl I think dove in the shallow end and stopped. You knew right away this was fucked up, the guard I was next to didn’t see it, she wasn’t a good one. Someone blew the whistle, I forgot the code but it was the bad one, 3 I think. (There was a whistle code for pool actions every one had to know) I think Joan was the one who came out of the office and saved her. If not for her quick action, this girl would have been dead, right there, right in front of me and the guard who wasn’t paying attention. I had no life saving training, I could save cars but not people. Anyway, Joan held here head and kept her in the pool still till Glendale FD arrived. They were right behind the center so it was quick. They jumped in the pool and stabilized her and took her off to the hospital.

This was the reason we were the only ones in all of Disney’s empire allowed to yell at guests. Other things were people always wanting to go down the slides head first. The slides were awesome btw! Guards hated them! I could go down the one in the deep end and splash the guard on the chair down that side! The pool was also a reluctant day care. The crack whores of the day would drop off their urchins and disappear. It was not allowed, but it happened all the time. There also used to be pervs who would whack off in the pool, it was really gross. You couldn’t prove it, but we were pretty sure.

One night we rented the pool out to some kayakers, they wanted to practice, and the pool was a perfect place in winter to do so. I was cleaning and watching and I see this tard climbing up the high dive with his boat. I ran and got Quinn, said "hey Quinn look out the window"! She’s like OMG! She ran out to stop them, he claimed it was practice for the rapids. He pushed it off the board like he wanted to do, it went in the water came right back out and landed upside down on the deck!
The night owl parties, My god they were awful! The one that sticks out was the Baptist church one. Girls and Boys, WILL NOT SWIM together! I couldn’t believe it! How much fun! The girls were horny as hell, could it be that they were deprived of any real fun? The parties really didn’t look like much fun from our point of view. But what the hell, we weren’t doing anything all night anyway. At this time in Denver, about everything shut down at 10 pm. (cough*dennys*cough)
Used to rent rafts, just blocks of styrofoam, but you had to give up a cash deposit that was usually never returned. It was kept in a coffee cup by the blackboard! That was my tip jar, not that the guards weren’t welcome to it, but they would forget and I was there all night! They hated the rafts too! There was a lot of stuff in the pool that made it difficult to work there! They rotated position every 15 to 20 minutes and took a lot of breaks, it was pretty stressful when it was busy there.
Indy 800! I remember the day we got one! I played it a few times, I thought it sucked. It was timed and no response what so ever! It had 2 players per side, 8 = 800. So 25 cents per play every 90 seconds, X 8. It was non stop every night all night, do the math, $2 EVERY 90 SECONDS!

There was the peppy the clown machine right across from the fun center counter, my god, did they want to kill peppy!

The fun center prizes were pretty lame and on the whole no one redeemed much more that a few at a time. The tickets were counted by dial indicator and wrapped in stacks of 100. The popular 1 ticket prize, vinyl stick-ons, I think a rabbits foot was 2 tickets. I remember the night Darrin had a guest that wanted a rabbits foot. There were only like 2 colors left, kid asked the colors. Red and yellow, Kid, ok I’ll have blue. No kid there is no blue, only yellow and red. This went on for a while till he couldn’t take it and pawned him off on someone else. I don’t remember what he finally picked.
Fun center closing announcements! Ever entertaining for us! The fun center closed around 11 or 12 depending. Progressive announcements had to go out to warn people to wrap it up, never worked but it was policy. There were no taped dealies here! Nope had to be done by a real person. Our goal, since it was done in our domain, make them laugh. Most people were a push over, but then there was Ann (I don’t laugh) Karlsburg! A king soopers shoping cart and the lost and found would come into play here. I was in the cart “rowing” with something strange. Darrin was pushing, wearing swim fins and snorkel mask, I think warren or eric was doing some sound effect. Anyway, as we sped at high speed towards her, mission accomplished! That was a fine moment.

Poor Cindy! We used to disconnect the mic and she would try to do the announcement but nothing. Of course when we did it, it worked fine! One time we taped a phone receiver to it and swore that was the new mic.

We stole Cindy’s keys on her last day too. We moved her car and returned the keys to her purse that was locked in the office, very sneaky. I’ll never forget that image of her bewildered in the parking lot with all her stuff looking for her car. We wouldn’t have teased these people if we didn’t love them so much!
The regatta’s I never knew the origins of this, but I seem to remember it having to tie in with the hobbies being pretty new at the time. They set up exhaust fans from the Glendale FD around the pool. It didn’t create a killer wind but enough to send the little crafts around the pool. I remember working it, don’t remember what my job was, but I did get in some quality time talking to Lynn S. The races were pretty dull, now if they were jet skis!
Down the street was the house of pie. Looks like that is gone too, it was pie restaurant, damn fine pie too. They also sold pies for throwing, for like fifty cents or something. I remember getting some for a birthday party, maybe for Mary? That was a fun night! After the pool closed of course!
Bowling rehab! When they redid the lanes, the whole place was shut down. I worked that too. During the day time, they sanded the lanes down with a cool rotary planing sander. It used the gutters as guides and I guess it was leveled by gravity. I never saw it in action. My job was wiping down the lanes with denatured alcohol and towels on a push broom. They would then tack them off and revarnish. It was a pretty sight when done! The center did host the PBA tours and was on TV.

An aside project to the rehab, Warren was in charge of redoing the communications. He had aluminum plates with all the switches for each lane so the counter could speak to the lane. He was working on that as we got the lanes prepped. We all signed the bottom of the plates, have to wonder if they were still there when the place got demolished
Pool audio night! Warren made the mistake of telling us that the old cast turntable under the counter where Pat Riley is standing was hooked up and worked! And, that it had inputs! That meant we could play records and hook up a portable cassette deck and rock out at night! The only thing I remember playing is Darrin’s kiss records, he’s from Michigan and all. I don’t think I’ve played a kiss record since. Uh, anyway, it’s likely that I put on some Zappa, or Todd Rundgren. I distinctly remember people from the 44 counter coming down to complain, that the people in the pool hall, were complaining it was too loud. This was in a bowling alley, Too LOUD! Light weights! I should disclose now that I have noise notch hearing loss, but that is after years of working rock and roll concerts, and being in industrial environments. Fun was had by all, well all of us anyway!

I don’t think we ever got the mirror ball to work, but I was up in the ceiling grid to replace lights or something. You can see all of this stuff in the pool pics. If I remember right, the way into the ceiling was at the top of the back staircase.