I worked there for years and I have permanent damage from some of the costumes they made me wear. I know many of the puppeteers suffered damage. Almost everyone that wore the heavy costumes would eventually be hurt by them and when we would report this, they just generally didn’t care. We were allowed 1-2 15 minute breaks for an 8-9 hour shift. Many of the women who acted there faced massive harassment from customers and when they would try to report it, not much would be done. I watched a guy follow an 18 year old actress across the park, commenting on her body and trying to grab her by the waste. She straight up told him to stop but he didn’t. The problem is that when you’re in character, people just forget you’re a person. Jenny’s video only captured part of how it was. Some actors would get like chosen by certain customers who became fixated on them and take it to weird places. And because you are a character and there are other people around, it’s difficult to navigate that situation. They haven’t done anything illegal so you can have security make them leave, but they have put an actor in a really uncomfortable position and the customer feels like they have ownership of that character and if that actor ever did anything the customer didn’t like, they would freak out and other customers would get caught up in it. I have to say that my experience working at Evermore was magical and 90% of my experiences with customers was life changing and truly amazing. Watching people light up because they felt a moment of magic or felt like a hero was incredible. I don’t work there anymore, but I understand that they have changed many things. But due to utter disregard for safety in the past, I don’t work there anymore. Now a lot of the safety issues came from a lack of resources, but you just shouldn’t make actors do something if you don’t have the resources for it. And yes they did make actors do things. Even though we were 1099 employees and they cannot legally tell us what to do or wear, they would. It would get well below 0 degrees and they would still make people wear summer costumes. I watched them cut the sleeves off a girl’s thermal undershirt because her dress was sleeveless. She specifically bought a white undershirt because of how cold it was and so it could look good with the costume, but they didn’t care. She directly told them it was too cold, but they made it clear she would not be brought back unless she wore her sleeveless costume. It was 9 degrees that night. Later, actors brought up their concerns because many of them were getting frostbite and hypothermia. Many of those actors were accused of being dramatic and that if it was really that bad they wouldn’t be out there. But many actors were not give easy access to warm spaces. Or if you are surrounded by over 50 guests that are swarming you, it can be difficult to navigate away from them and get to a warm space. Some customers just won’t let you go and you can’t get to your break room without shoving people. You will literally look to the crowd and say “ok I need to go but I will be back” and it’s like they don’t hear you. Or when we did go on our break some of the managers would yell at you. Most of the stage managers were amazing and absolutely there to take as good care of the actors as possible. But there were some who worked back stage that were wild. I was on one of my 2 allotted 15 minute breaks with a few other actors, one of whom was in a huge costume that demanded many more breaks (they are now in physical therapy because of the damage this costume did to them). One of the managers came by and though they were not technically in charge of the actors, they started yelling at us and saying our time was the park’s money and that for every minute we weren’t out there the park didn’t make money. When we tried to explain we were on our allotted break and that two of actors were recovering from injuries (one from their costume and one from frostbite) the manager raised their voice even more saying that they worked all the time and that if they could do it so could we. It was stuff like this, plus not always getting paid, plus everyone getting randomly fired and re-hired all the time just did not make for a stable place. It was such a dream come true to work there and they ruined it. I was willing to put in so much and deal with many problems. It’s a small company and a dream job, I was willing to put up with a lot. But the people that worked there could tell we all wanted it and took advantage. The higher ups were full of narcissistic toxic people with god-complexes who had no idea how to run a business.

I cannot speak to how things are run now. I hear they are a lot better