Ten Citizens of Hollywood losing jobs

From the Orlando Sentinel
Sandra Pedicini
Feb 29

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Ten "Citizens of Hollywood," the actors who portray old-time Tinseltown characters at Walt Disney World, will lose their jobs in April.

The cuts mean the group that performs at Disney's Hollywood Studios will shrink by a third.

A spokeswoman for the Actors' Equity Association, which represents the performers, confirmed Monday 10 of the 29 will not have their contracts renewed.

Nine of the performers who will lose their jobs currently work at Disney full-time, union spokeswoman Maria Somma said. One works part-time.

Disney gave the actors notice last week. They will stop working at the end of their contract in mid-April.

A Disney spokeswoman said other entertainment will be coming to the park.

Other cuts have gone into effect as well at Disney World.

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Very sad news. Some of my favourite memories of the Studios include them. ��

So many live acts gone! Such a shame. These acts are a large part of what sets WDW apart from a normal amusement park. No vision by management!

The street performers are one of my favorite things about Hollywood Studios! I love relaxing in the stores and coming out to watch the performances. This is very disappointing.

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Originally Posted by Jeff

So many live acts gone! Such a shame. These acts are a large part of what sets WDW apart from a normal amusement park.

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I agree they were a part of the old MGM studios, when it was or at least still pretended to be a working studio. I never felt they fit as well once the studio stopped production, and the story line of a working studio became less pronounced.

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Originally Posted by Jeff

No vision by management!

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Actually, I think this is a time that management does have vision. The citizens of Hollywood are not exactly going to fit to well with the new Star Wars or Toy Story lands. Now if you want to quibble about timing that is a different story, I mean it seems like we are little far out from either of those lands being opened to start closing old shows and laying off actors. Particularly the ones that do not need a stage.

What Speedy1998 said. I, too, love the "Streetmosphere" actors. I also loved Mulch, Sweat, and Shears. But with the redirection of the park, they no longer fit? So what do you do? When they said that they were going to re-theme the park, how can anyone complain when they actually go about re-theming the park?

No surprise here. They killed the World Showcase Players over at Epcot, and now some of those people who went over to DHS will probably be cut again. I guess they're just too entertaining. We can't have that at Disney.

This is a real shame...anyone know which players are being eliminated?

On the one hand: If they're genuinely changing the park and have a vision for such, then that's acceptable.

On the other, this just looks like one more removal of unpredictable non-utlra-controlled live entertainment by skilled performers. I dearly hope that it will be replaced by an equivalent but I will certainly not hold my breath.