Matthew Walker and his famous friends

I was flipping channels on TV the other day and caught a glimpse of ESPN’s "Two-Minute Drill" program. I was truly in awe of how much sports information the contestants knew. I have long been a fan of sports and of trivia but I didn’t nearly have the breadth of knowledge that these contestants displayed. Offer me Disney trivia though and it’s a different story all together.

I am intrigued by the pixie dust of Disney and have tried to absorb as much as I could about the films, characters and theme parks of the Mouse House. I remember finding "The Official Disney Trivia Book" at my local K-mart and asking my mom to buy it for me. Written by two guys who simply liked Disney, the book asked questions from every realm of the Magic Kingdom. At Knott’s Berry Farm, I found Golden’s Disney Trivia game with a ton of great questions. A Disney version of Trivial Pursuit would later follow but since only a couple of questions per card were geared to Disney, I preferred the Golden Version.

I was lucky enough to live close enough to Disneyland growing up that I was able to visit with at least some regularity. I was lucky enough to be able to subscribe to the Disney Channel, where I would watch great programming like classic movies and behind-the-scenes looks at the theme parks. Each month’s Disney Channel programming guide came with a column by Dave Smith, head of the Walt Disney Archives, featuring insight into the history of Disney by answering viewers’ questions.

I was also lucky enough to be hired to work at the Disney Store in Northridge, California shortly after graduating from high school in 1991. I always wanted to work for Disney and here was my big chance. On the first day of work, I took part in Traditions - a brief training program that highlights the Disney way of doing things. One part of the program was answering trivia questions in our Traditions manual. Mine had actually been filled in by someone else but there were some wrong answers, which I corrected. The other two new hires were amazed that I knew all the answers to the questions.

And if it wasn’t enough that I now received checks with Mickey Mouse in the corner each week, I found out that there was a Disney trivia contest that the cast members participated in. It was something that I would be involved with for the next five years - from the store level to the national finals at Disneyland.

  
(l) The trivia pin given to all trivia competitors at the district competitions. (r) The trivia pin given to the Disey Store National Finalists beginning in 1994. Probably one of the rarest service pins out there because only 8 (one year 9) people a year were presented with these.

I could bore you with the details and rules of the contest (and I tried to), but after I wrote three pages on how the contest worked, even I wasn't interested enough to read it. So let me try to explain how this worked without putting you to sleep. Twelve questions would come into each Disney Store on the first of the month from January until July. Cast members would work together to answer them and if a store scored a certain percentage right at the end of July, they qualified for the district contest. Winners of an in-store contest would represent their store in the district contest and the top eight finishers from these district contests from across the U.S. and Canada would get to go to Disneyland for the finals. After a bunch of questions, one person would be crowned champion and get to take home the trivia trophy to display at his or her store. That's the Disney Store National Trivia Competition in a nutshell.

My store had already missed qualifying for the district competition by the time I hired on in July of 1991. It would be a year before I would get the chance to take the test to represent my store at the district competition. I did alright on the in-store quiz, scoring 18 out of 25 questions to beat out another cast member by 2 or 3 points. I had no idea of what I would be getting myself into by participating in the district competition but it would form the basis of a madness that drove me for the next five years.

Our district competition was held at a nice hotel in Pasadena, California. I think there were eight of us competing that year. Three of the contestants had previously appeared in the Nationals at Disneyland. Did I stand a chance against them? Nah. I finished fourth but gained a lot of confidence by sticking with the pack. The winner of our district's competition would go on to win the whole enchilada that year. I was able to see the National competition at Disneyland that year and knew that's where I wanted to wind up.

I really became obsessed with Disney trivia and read up as much as I could. I would make sure that the monthly contests we had to answer were completed 100 percent correctly. And when the next district competition rolled around, I was ready to win. Unlike the year before where only two of my co-workers were there to root me on (one girl was working the event, the other was my girlfriend), I had the entire store's support, which felt so good. They were so loud in cheering for me that all of the pictures of the district competitions that would appear in the "Scoop" (the Disney Store cast member newsletter) featured contestants except for our district. It showed these clowns yelling and screaming and holding up signs. The contest was really close between me and another cast member ... literally down to the wire. I can't describe the feeling that came over me when leading by a few points the final question was asked. I didn't need to get it right to win but I did anyway. I actually scored higher than the highest score the year before so I thought I was moving on to the finals for sure. I wasn't even close. Everybody did much better than the year before and the bar was set higher than I could jump.

The following year started with a bit of tragedy, as our store was devastated by the Northridge Earthquake. We were all split up and sent to different stores. I would find myself working at the Company's first store in Glendale. I had to prove myself all over again. But I did, winning the in-store contest and moving on to represent my new store that year. I was a bit stiffer this year, really wanting to take the contest and move on to the next level. I won another hard-fought battle, this time against a cast member from Hawaii who had to compete in California because there were not enough stores in the islands to create a district competition. I didn't win by too much and actually hurt my chances for advancing more after I blew answering a question that had been inadvertently omitted during the contest. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because once again, despite another rise in my score, I was shut out of advancing to Disneyland.

After leading the store to another perfect score on the monthly contests and winning the in-store contest again, I was set for the district competition. The "Gary Pyle Clause" had been put into effect the year before, which limited the number of times a contestant could participate in the finals to two times. I really wanted to compete against the best but always felt that the perennial powerhouses would shut me out once again. This year's district contest was held in the center court of our mall after hours instead of in the hotel where we had it the previous three years. The sound in this empty mall was horrible and the speakers to the microphone that the moderator used to read the questions faced the crowd instead of the contestants. I suffer from a hearing loss and had so much trouble hearing the questions. I really was putting pressure on myself to win and was really getting hot under the collar because of the poor conditions. I missed a question because I didn't properly hear it and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I figured that I was out of it at that point and just started answering questions without worrying about getting them wrong and having points deducted. I finished the competition without missing another question and won again. I didn't think I was close to making the finals. But to my surprise, I scored the second-highest score in the nation.

I was going to Disneyland.

Continued

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