The Anandapur Haunt (you're a wizard, Corinne!)

So, as you may have seen from my status update Wednesday, I participated in the Anandapur Haunt, which was a Halloween event for Animal Kingdom cast members. The park closed at 6, and afterward all of the carnival games and a couple of the rides in Dinoland were kept open for the CMs. There were snacks and some candy trails, but what I helped with was turning the queue line for Kali River Rapids into a haunted trail. Well, not really, actually...some people from Kilimanjaro did, but not me. Let me explain.

For this haunted house, different attractions were given different sections of the queue to decorate as they wished. Kilimanjaro got the very first section, which is entirely outdoors and weaves among rocks, bamboo, etc., so our theme was that the plant life had come alive and was possessing anyone who dared to venture in. However, Kilimanjaro has the largest amount of CMs out of any other attraction (more than 200), and we had way more volunteers than would fit into just the queue  scare zone. Only eight Kilimanjaro CMs worked in the actual queue, and the rest of us were given an entirely different zone in Asia...an unannounced scare zone that was spaced in between Dinoland and the entrance to Kali. Our theme for the area was 'Execution Everest'; some people were the 'horde' that was being controlled by the Yeti, and some were frostbitten mountain climbers whose ropes had snapped and had been reanimated by the creature, and (of course) the Yeti himself.

I was one of the frostbitten climbers, and unfortunately I didn't take a picture until after we were done and I was sweaty and exhausted, and had already taken off my costume since it was a snowsuit and insanely hot. But at least you can see my makeup! Super fun...

Edit: I stole a super-unflattering photo from my coworker Ryan; unfortunately, I don't have the makeup on, this is just an in-progress shot of my costume being torn up.

 

You'll notice how puffy the front of my jacket looks...they just bought some cheap tracksuits, and stuffed the fronts of the jackets so they looked like puffy snow jackets. And then the costumes were torn up, which made it awkward when we were chasing after people in the scare zone and stuffing was leaking out of our clothes. 

I'd never really had experience scaring anyone before, but it was awesome! Not to brag....but I was pretty good. I think it's because I myself hate being scared that it's so easy to know what will creep out other people. My voice wasn't too hot by the end of the night (lots of screaming at  people), luckily I had no trouble today spieling. I mentioned my costume was a snowsuit, and we had it all torn up and a rope tangled around my shoulders with a carabiner at the end that I could drag behind me or strike it on the ground in front of people.

Anyway, we were stationed in the walking path just past Expedition Everest and Kali, and it was pretty well lit (kind of a scary-mood killer), but there were a few places we  could hide in the shadows so it worked. For a while I would act as the distraction, spinning the carabiner around so it made this whirring noise so two other scarers could sneak up behind people to freak them out, but after a while there was just too many people walking around, so we all kinda did our own thing. My best moment was when a girl was walking with her friends and saying loudly, "Oh, I went to Halloween Horror Nights, this is going to be nothing". I let them pass by me without doing anything, then I followed behind until I got right behind her and screamed, making her scream and jump in terror. Her friends definitely gave her a hard time after that :)

Those of us working in the Yeti section later went on a brief break to see what the haunted queue looked like. It was pretty cool, but a little disjointed since all of the different attractions went with different themes for their sections. 

Afterwards our manager treated us to some food, and by the time I got home it was about 10:30, but I'd had a pretty long day because I went to Universal Studios that morning/afternoon. Hence the reason for this weird blog title; the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is in Universal Studios, after all!

I went with my coworker Kirsten and her friend Darryl, and we didn't stay for too long, since Kirsten and I had to be at Animal Kingdom at five. Still, we had a ton of fun, and I'll definitely be going again. It's interesting to go to another theme park knowing what I now know about Disney. I look more closely at the costumes of the workers there, and there were several times (particularly in WWOHP) where Kirsten and I would groan and complain about how their costumes looked way cuter/more comfortable/more interesting than ours. Disney has Fastpass; Universal has a system called ExpressPass that you have to pay for.

Something else that was weird...their nametags are nearly identical to ours at Disney. They are definitely more lenient in terms of how their workers appear, I couldn't help but notice the multiple piercings/ hairstyles that Disney definitely would not have allowed. There really is more of an 'adult' air to the place; sure, there are certain sections that are catered towards kids, but the general sense is that of a more mature audience. This was helped by the tons of posters we saw for Halloween Horror Nights, the evening event held at Universal during September and October. Basically, a bunch of haunted houses/ scare zones are set up all around the park after six, and there are 'scarectors' placed around the streets (and in the haunted houses) to terrify people. There's actually quite a few people from Kilimanjaro who work at Halloween Horror Nights as scareactors; my own trainer Echo acts (along with several other girls) as a deranged, chainsaw wielding prison escapee.

Universal was definitely wise to give JK full control over how the WWOHP was designed...Disney offered to do just one ride, while Universal offered an entire land for Harry Potter. And seriously....it's doing so well they're already working on expanding the land so it extends into Universal Studios (the main park) as well.

Anyway, nothing especially exciting on the horizon, at least until Dad and Julie come to visit...

Oh! I almost forgot; new animals have been added to Kilimanajro! We got some sable antelopes back into the savannah (we had them a few months ago, but they were taken off so the females could have their babies, and now they're all back on the ride permanently), and a couple days ago we got zebras! Zebras used to be in the ride from the beginning, but they've been in "time out" for a few years because they actually chased down  a baby antelope until it died. Yeah. Zebras are vicious.

I don't know if any of you guys remember that Kilimanjaro used to have that storyline where our truck was supposed to be chasing down poachers because they stole a baby elephant? That storyline has been gone for almost a year now, and in the place of the big finale scene (where the trucks would drive through the poacher's camp to rescue the elephant), it's been renovated into a new habitat for the zebras. So now they've finally been put back in there, and so far they haven't gotten in the way too much.

That's about it!
Kwa herini!

Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party!

Last night I went to MNSSHP with a few of my friends, and it was a blast! Tickets are cheaper for cast members in September, so as weird as it was celebrating Halloween so early, it was definitely worth it. One of the nice things about being here so long is that rides weren't really a focus that night (because we have plenty of time for the next few months to ride them), even though most were open, so we were able to focus on watching the special events and meeting characters.

   I dressed up as Velma once again, since it's a pretty easy costume to throw together from Goodwill finds.

 

Together we solve mysteries!

I went with my Jungle Cruise friend Andrew, since Bernice was still at work when the party first started. He went as Andy from Toy Story, and then while on the bus he started talking to the girl sitting in the row ahead of us, and we found out she's from Mesa and attended MCC! Her name was Chelsey, and we hadn't ever met at MCC, but since she was going to the party alone she ended up hanging out with us for the rest of the night.

So earlier just last week, my roommates and I had gone around one night and determined which Disney character we were most like. We said it would be awesome if we could take pictures with "our" character by the end of our program, but mine was Jane from Tarzan, and I had never heard of her being around the parks before. So, that night Andrew, Chelsey, and I are walking towards Adventureland, and who do we see?

 

Jane and Terk! 

So of course I flip out and we immediately get in line and I talked to her for a little bit and she was just freaking adorable. We had been at the party for maybe fifteen minutes and already it was totally awesome. I hadn't ever taken the time to meet characters at the parks before, and I had always been a little worried that the magic would be ruined a bit, since I had seen characters backstage at Animal Kingdom quite a bit before, but earlier in the day Andrew and I had gone to Magic Kingdom to buy our tickets, and I mentioned I hadn't ever met Mickey yet, so we did that and as soon as he and Minnie came into view I felt like I was five years old again.

 So much fun! Anyway, at the party, after we met Jane and Terk, we went to grab some candy, and then to watch the parade. I tried to take a lot of pictures, but they turned out pretty bad...

 

These guys were really freaking cool, even though the picture is terrible; they were gravediggers from the Haunted Mansion!

Immediately after the parade was the Villains' Mix and Mingle show, which was basically just a little dance show for all the villains in front of the castle, and then afterwards you could meet them and take pictures.

 

Dr. Facilier from Princess and the Frog was featured the most, but quite a few villains made cameo appearances.

 

Bernice (aka Lilo) had met up with us just before the Villains show, so the three of us got a picture with Captain Hook immediately after.

 

Again, almost immediately after the show were the special fireworks, so we stayed in the same spot and enjoyed those, and met up with my friend/another Jungle Skipper, Marcie. We got briefly separated from Andrew, so us four girls went on Space Mountain.

 I think this is the best ride photo I've ever seen.

As I mentioned before, rides weren't really a priority, so we only went on three or four...not too shabby. After Space Mountain, we wandered around to find more candy and characters...

 

Andy found all his toys, and Lilo met Stitch! We were getting pretty exhausted at this point (almost midnight), so we left as the park closed and headed home. Overall, a totally awesome event, and I'm tempted to go again, but it's far more expensive in October, so it probably won't happen.

Tomorrow's the cast preview for EPCOT's Food and Wine Festival, which is when  a bunch of extra countries set up booths in the World Showcase and people can "eat around the world", so Bernice, our coworker Ryan, and I are going after work. Should be a ton of fun!

Kwa herini!

A Day in the Life: Kilimanjaro Driver Edition

   So after my last post, Nicole commented and said she wanted to know more about my day-to-day life. I have no idea why; my day-to-day life is really boring and repetitive. However, I aim to please, so I decided to keep a record of what I did all day today. The following is everything I wrote down during the course of the day; enjoy!


 8:23; Wake up way before my alarm because apparently I can't sleep in long after 8:00 anymore.

8:30; Get informed by Bernice (roommate and other Kilimanjaro driver) that someone decided to take a bath last night, and now our shower head isn't working. She has work at 10:00, so she lets me know she left a bucket in there for me to use as a shower and leaves to catch a bus. Excellent start to the morning.

8:58; Think about having some cereal, then realize I haven't had a chance to buy milk yet and the roommate who promised to buy two gallons for everyone has yet to do so. Settle for oatmeal instead.

9:05- 9:25; I shower with a bucket. Verdict: it isn't nearly as adventurous and charmingly rustic as it sounds. It's a pain in the butt. Two stars.

10:05; Leave to catch the bus for work. My shift doesn't start until 11:30, but our CP bus system is awful and you have to take a bus that is at least an hour ahead of your shift in case the bus is late/breaks down (both happen frequently).

11:30- 12:05; I clock in and wait in the break room for a little while. Most attractions have an automatic assignment system, but since our trucks don't run on an exact schedule and there are often unexpected  animal stops, coordinators manipulate our system to give assignments. I am put on a truck first thing that day.

12:06- 1:35; I'm on a truck for about 3 rounds; the first two are uneventful, while on the third round there's a foreign man with a camera who refuses to sit. We're required to tell them to sit at least three times, and then of they stand after the third time, it's at their own risk and we're not liable. So about halfway through the safari he had already stood two other times, and I tell everyone to remain seated at the beginning of my spiel, so he was pas

1:35- 1:50; fifteen minute break. Nothing eventful occurs.

1:55; I am sent out on another truck. People obey the rules pretty well, so I zone out for a bit. Baby white rhino is spotted and there is a giant chorus of 'AWWWW'. Baby white rhino owns everybody and he knows it. When he runs it's like he doesn't know how his legs work. Adorable.

3:25; Time for my 45 minute lunch. There is a news story about Kate Middleton on the tv, so I get into a discussion of her style with a bunch of other female CPs. This somehow develops into a conversation about the Olympics and we spend the rest of break Googling the most attractive male gymnasts.  Break well spent.

4:00; I am assigned a land position as my last spot of the day, loading people into rows before they get on the truck. This is easily my least favorite position, but as the park closes at six I won't be here too long. I try to start an enthusiastic conversation with a little blond girl, but I find out she only speaks French and so I end up feeling like a moron.

6:00; Last safari loads, so I am free to hop on the next truck to get a ride back to base. I contemplate taking a picture of the triceratops painted to resemble a bongo (the animal on our safari, not the instrument) that sits on the side of the road backstage, but decide I'd rather not be fired. No Bongosaurus for my blog.

The majestic bongo.

6:05-6:33; I'm off at 6:45, but there's nothing else to do around base so I get an early release to catch the CP bus.

6:35; My fellow safari driver Brooke and I have just started walking for the bus when it starts pouring. Both of us have no raingear, so we're forced to keep walking and make sure we make the bus, rather than wait it out. Obviously we end up getting soaked, and we enjoy a freezing cold bus ride home.

7:27; I arrive home, change out of my costume, and make some frozen chicken alfredo. Remember that I had planned to do this blog, and get on the internet. Make vague plans with roommate Bri and friend Andrew for my day off tomorrow. Eat more things. Eventually sleep.

See, this is why I didn't talk about my day-to-day stuff...it's boring! Tomorrow is my day off though...maybe I'll do a Day in the Life; No Work Edition. Oh! And I forgot to mention the Safari Stampede! Tomorrow pretty much everyone who works at KSR is participating in this thing called the Safari Stampede, which is a 'Great Race' type event with physical and mental challenges. There's a bunch of teams of four, so Bernice and I and our friends Christian and Franki are the Bangin' Bongos, and it's going to be awesome! It's taking place at Fort Wilderness at about 6, and there's going to be food and then afterwards we get to stay over at the Fort. Pretty cool stuff; I'll make sure to take lots of pictures!

Kwa herini!

In which I am terrible at updating (and almost die by white rhino)

     Can you blame me, though? For me it's just the same job, day in and out. Working at Disney has lost most of the glamor (although I still really love my job, it doesn't seem noteworthy anymore so I forget to write about it). Of course, plenty of exciting things still happen; no surprise, considering the animals I work with.
        We have a baby white rhino that's a few months old that's been on show for about a month now, and the mother is very, very protective of her baby, and safari drivers are under strict instructions to not get between mother and the calf. So today I am driving normally past two other white rhinos, when mom and baby suddenly come barreling out of the bushes on one side of the path. I stop immediately, not only because they're obviously in the way, but images of being gored to death by this white rhino flash into my head and mother rhino is staring me down like a hawk. They actually have really terrible eyesight, but I momentarily forgot this, considering I was too busy being terrified. After a few moments (during which the guests were completely enraptured with baby rhino and were chattering nonstop and I tried to pretend like I hadn't just almost peed my pants. Our trucks can withstand a rhino ramming it, but I'd rather not test that), the pair moved calmly off the path and I was able to continue on my way.
          So, yes, I guess exciting things are happening (did I tell you about the time I accidentally rammed the unloading dock? Yeah. Let's not talk about it. Before you ask, the truck wasn't even damaged. The unloading dock....minimally so), but that sort of thing happens to everyone on Kilimanjaro, so people are always topping each other's stories and you forget that it's not a normal occurrence for everyone else. Although, I have to admit I feel a tiny bit smug when my roommates come home and their biggest complaint is that the condiment machine stopped working. I get to watch baby elephants play in the rain and giraffes chase antelope...the bad moments tend to get overshadowed by all the awesome things I am fortunate enough to see.
     For example, I got off my lunch break today and bumped someone off a truck to do a few rounds. I do one safari, and as we're nearing the end it starts sprinkling a little bit. Not a big deal; it looked like it would clear up in a few minutes. Not so; literally about a minute after I dropped off my first round of guests, rain started pouring down. And I mean like pre-hurricane level rain....rain so hard you actually couldn't see clearly. It was absolutely nuts. We have certain parts along the path where we go through water, but nearly every part of that path that wasn't on a downward slope was flooded. Luckily for us (safari drivers, anyway), we have clear plastic windows that roll down and protect our radio/audio equipment and keep us dry, but guests have no such luck: it's a completely open-air truck, minus a canvas canopy overhead. For the most part, the animals don't mind normal rain (unless it's a steady, rain-all-day type thing; then they hate it), especially after it's been hot during the day (which it has), but I don't think anyone expected the amount of rain we got. The elephants usually love it though, and they were playing in the water for quite a bit.
    My days off are still primarily spent at the parks; last week (two weeks ago? I don't even know anymore) I went to the two water parks for the very first time with Jordan, my friend Andrew, and his friend Marcie. We first went to Blizzard Beach, which is known for the Summit Plummet, one of those pretty much vertical slides that shoots you down and give you a major wedgie now matter how minor  the drop. Well, the drop on Summit is hardly minor; I'm pretty sure it's the tallest slide of its kind at 120 feet. I counted how long the entire ride took at one point...it's about 10 seconds, but I swear it almost feels much longer. You slide down so fast I almost lost one of my contacts at one point! It's the tallest point in the park, obviously, and as you climb the stairs to the top you can actually look out and see all the landmarks in all the other parks (Expedition Everest and the Tree of Life in AK; Tower of Terror and the Sorcerer's Hat in HS; Spaceship Earth in Epcot, and you can just  barely see Space Mountain and the castle out in Magic Kingdom) what makes it even freakier is that from your perspective it looks like the slide is actually taller than all of these (it's definitely not, I know at least Everest is 199 feet).
        Blizzard Beach is definitely the place to go for slides, but Typhoon Lagoon has a cool atmosphere as well. They have a little saltwater pool where you can snorkel among sharks, and their wave pool is terrifying. You can tell when a wave is coming because it makes a giant, roaring WHOOMPF noise and everybody around you will start screaming. The water parks closed at five, and we had gone right at the park's opening, so we were pretty exhausted by this point and Jordan had left before we went to Typhoon to get ready for a party the housing committee was throwing. So the three of us decided to go to the Polynesian resort to have some Dole whip (the Polynesian is really awesome because they have a beach right by their little man-made lagoon with hammocks and beach chairs and it's just really nice) and lie out on the hammocks. At this point we were all kind of dead and the weather was really nice so we ended up staying on the beach for a few hours just napping, and it was pretty fantastic.

    I took a solo trip to Magic Kingdom the next day, which wasn't nearly as fun as I had planned, but I was able to get some birthday/Christmas shopping done. Halloween's already started up in full swing at the Magic Kingdom, so the roommates and I are planning to go to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party around the end of September (when tickets are cheaper, ha). Two of the girls and I had planned on being the ballroom dancers from the Haunted Mansion, but Kelsea and I, on our quest to find Goodwill dresses, ended up empty handed. So we fell back on our second options, which was awesome female detectives; Kelsea's going as Nancy Drew and I'm going to be Velma from Scooby Doo once again. We've all been talking about going to Islands of Adventure at some point to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but that'll probably happen in October.
   Not much going on beyond that, but I'm thinking about doing a video soon focusing on a day in the life of a Kilimanjaro driver ;P
Until then,
Kwa herini!

My two days off!

  So since I'm an official Cast Member now, my days off are a bit more regular, and it looks like Tuesdays and Wednesdays are now my weekend. Kind of nice that they're in the middle of the week, but kind of a bummer at the same time (although, Animal Kingdom starts closing at 5 soon, so it's not like I'll ever get off super late, so the regular weekends will still be ok). And, instead of being responsible and running a couple errands during my free days, I went a little overboard on park-hopping.

  On Tuesday, my friend Andrew and I decided to hit up three different parks: Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and Magic Kingdom.

                                                       Looking kind of silly at all of them

I had never been to more than one park in a day, but luckily Andrew is kind of a meticulous planner so I was just able to go along for the ride. I should mention that he's a Jungle Cruise skipper, and Dad, I thought I would never meet anyone with cheesier jokes than you, but you have some stiff competition here. It was seriously never-ending.


Most of the day was spent at Hollywood, because it has two of the best rides around...

                                                                   Rockin' Rollercoaster

                                                               Aaand Tower of Terror

                                                    As well as the new Star Tours! Still a very awesome ride, and one of the few where it's actually really cool that 3D was used. We later headed out to Animal Kingdom since Bernice was working and we wanted to ride her safari...

 

And to make dumb faces on Everest...

As I mentioned, we ended our day with the Magic Kingdom, but rain started coming down pretty soon after we got there, so we just got on the little Space Ranger Spin ride/game, and then as we were walking through that queue, a cast member handed us some re-ride tickets (they're basically Fastpasses good for any attraction, and they're usually handed out when a ride breaks down. So we used those to ride Space Mountain, and unlike every other park, Magic Kingdom frowns upon people taking pictures of their pictures...

Ah well...

Day 2: Both I and my roommate Hannah had the day off, and she had never been to Animal Kingdom before, so I decided I could show her around (which also meant this week that I will have spent every single day at AK -_-). Still a very cool park, and I took a short video of Africa!

 

Our friend Sam was working as well, so we rode his Safari (wherein we got stopped...by a bird. What.)

We also enjoyed some cultural art!

But then we said goodbye and headed over to Epcot!

The only time EPCOT is really ok is if you love eating foreign food (sorta).

                                                                                                 

In Mexico, enjoying the massive hats.

 

Getting eaten by a shark, nbd.

Moral of the story: park-hopping is super fun! And although I usually like to wing it, when park-hopping it's definitely nice to have a plan. It's also exhausting.

Kwa herini!

First Week on the Job

    Time here seems to both fly by and drag on at the same time sometimes....but, I've officially been a Cast Member at Walt Disney World for a week now! Pretty nuts. I had DAKlimation last Saturday, which was similar to Traditions in that everyone who was going to be working at Animal Kingdom went, and it was just sort of a basic introduction to the park and each of the different lands. I have to admit, I used to be pretty indifferent to Animal Kingdom; the one time we had gone here for vacation, it had started storming pretty heavily and we didn't stick around long.

     However, after hearing about the backgrounds of each of the lands, seeing the level of detail and care that went into the park....Animal Kingdom might be my favorite now (Biased? Nahhh.....:] ). As a Cast Member working Kilimanjaro Safaris, I work in the land of Africa....and holy crap, the amount of backstory put into that land is nuts. Specifically, Africa is focused on the village of Harambe, formerly a British fort that regained their independence peacefully, and now put their efforts towards the conservation of the endangered wildlife around them. Kilimanjaro Safaris (the best safaris in east Africa!) take place in the Harambe Wildlife Reserve, and it is Kilimanjaro that is the main attraction to tourists visiting Harambe.

   Seriously, I don't want to give all the little details away, but if you ever happen to visit Animal Kingdom someday, feel free to ask a Cast Member the story behind each section, and they will be happy to point out everything to you.

   My first day of Kilimanjaro training was Monday, and it definitely makes you realize that, although I'm working in Disney World, it's still very similar to any other job (lots and lots of filling out paperwork; really dull e-learning about fire safety....). I was prepared for this anyway, but it really hit home that it has to be taken seriously as a job, not just as a fun thing to do for a semester.  Of course, I can't forget that I am still working at Disney World, so I'd still say it's head and shoulders (fun-wise) above any other job. I mean, come on, how many people can say they're going to spend five months driving a safari truck amongst giraffes, elephants, okapi, and Nile crocodiles (ugh, don't even get me started on them)? Few can say they've been stuck in a truck while a rhino decides to block the road for a little while.

   I always like to compare Kilimanjaro to the Jungle Cruise to people who have never been to Disney World, but of course there are some major differences; we don't have such terrible jokes, and the animals on Kilimanjaro are very, very real. So real that they might decide to poke their heads into the truck if you get too close (those pesky giraffes). A lot of my training has been focused on this; the fact that they're still very unpredictable, how to react in a situation where their behavior might be a little less-than-peaceful, things like that. Though this can be a little scary, it's also super fun; no matter when you ride it, the safari is always going to be different every time you ride it, simply because the animals do whatever they want, whenever they want. Rhino decides it wants to lie in the ride path for a little bit? It can (and they do).

    So, of course, another major part of the training is learning how to drive that massive truck (30 feet long, can seat around 40 passengers) around a very bumpy, twisty path. Surprisingly, it's pretty easy! You never have to worry about other cars behind you, anything cutting you off (other than, say, a wildebeest), or whether you'll miss your exit. It's just one path, and once you've done it a couple times and learned where you need to be careful on the turns, it's pretty simple. We do practice on the path without guests for a couple days and practice our spiel and finding animals (all while driving), and on Thursday I took guests for the first time! It was a little nerve-wracking (especially since I actually had a group of people who were from Africa!), but my trainers rode with me and it's actually easier to do the spiel when you have guests on board. I only had a few slip-ups spiel-wise, and once it was done, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders! Unfortunately, since I did so well with guests, my trainers told me from now on every time I'm in the truck, I'm taking guests with me.

  I'm really excited though; I have my assessment Wednesday, and my trainers said if I do as well as I did on Thursday, I'll have no problem passing!


As we say in Harambe....kwa herini!




 

   

DAKlimation and my costume!

Traditions!

  So as you can probably guess by the title, today was our Traditions day (Traditions being the first day of general training that everybody who gets hired goes through, regardless of your role or where you're working). It's held in Disney University nearby the Magic Kingdom, and holy wow was it long. 8 AM until about 1:30 PM....lots and lots of watching tedious videos. Of course, this is Disney we're talking about, so there were a few surprises, including a quick trip to a pretty magical place :)
  
     And, of course, today was the day I received my Cast member ID and nametag, so now I'm official!

 Super freaking exciting....and the more I hear about Kilimanjaro, the more excited I get! Everyone who works there/has worked there says they love it. I don't want to give a lot of the secrets of Traditions away, so I'll have to end the description there :]

There were two different Traditions sessions, and myself and two of my roommates (Hannah and Bernice) had the earlier one that began at 8, while the rest of my roomies had  the later session at 1:00. Of course, this meant that Hannah, Bernice and I had more free time to go to the parks, so we rushed home after Traditions to change and have some lunch, then we were off to the Magic Kingdom! This was the first time we'd ever had to try and get to the main gate of the park, so we had a little bus trouble, but we ended up at the Grand Floridian Resort, and from there took a monorail to the park (didn't take a picture this time, but I'll have to do so soon; the Grand Floridian is gorgeous and probably my favorite resort, architecture-wise).

We got to the Magic Kingdom right as the end of the three o' clock parade was passing by the train station at the front of the park, so people were tightly packed along the edges of the sidewalk and we had to duck into a store to avoid the heat and make our way up Main Street. I felt bad rushing Hannah to the rides since it was her first time in a Disney park ever, but we did pause for some shots of the castle.

  

Aaand that was, sadly, the only photo I got of my Magic Kingdom adventure the entire day....
I know, I know, I gotta make sure I capture all the moments!

Anyway, Hannah said Bernice and I should just lead her to all of our favorite rides, so we decided to go on Pirates of the Caribbean first. We passed the Enchanted Tiki Room, and since we were all pretty sweaty from the bus (and then from fighting through the crowds on Main Street), we decided to watch a show (it is a Disney classic, after all...)

Afterwards we went on Pirates, Big Thunder Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, It's A Small World, and Splash Mountain in a pretty quick succession. We actually rode Mansion twice in a row, as it started raining pretty heavily just as we got out of our first ride-through, and of course afterwards figured it'd be a great idea to ride a water ride right after a rainstorm.

Wasn't too bad, though...rain doesn't really cool anything down; just makes it muggier. Blergh humidity.

We had dinner afterwards, with plans to go to Tomorrowland for Space Mountain, but met up with Bernice's friend Andrew and his friend Sam (both of them have been working in Disney for a couple months already; Sam's actually a Kilimanjaro person too, so he was able to tell us a lot of helpful stuff about our first day of training!), who advised us not to go on Space Mountain. Sure enough, as we passed by it on our way to another ride, it turns out Space Mountain had been shut down for a little bit. Instead, we rode the PeopleMover, a pretty slow ride that goes on a track above Tomorrowland through some out-of-date "scenes of the future" and the interior of Space Mountain. I had never been on the PeopleMover before, and it was actually pretty cool...since Space Mountain was shut down, the lights were on in the building, and we were given a sort of accidental backstage look at the workings of the ride. Definitely very cool.

Bernice and I had agreed during the day to try and get home earlier so we could get plenty of sleep for our Animal Kingdom training on Sunday, so we decided to forgo fireworks and headed to the Polynesian Resort to get some of the famous Dole Whip (basically pineapple soft-serve ice cream) and ride home.

Tomorrow (well, today, now) is Animal Kingdom training...and we get to ride Kilimanjaro! 

I apologize for the dull, list-type of writing I'm doing...all my blog posts seem to be done at one in the morning and my brain refuses to write creatively. Ah well. Hopefully it'll get better once I have a more regular schedule!

Check-in and an Apartment Tour

Whew! These past couple of days have simultaneously felt like the shortest and longest days of my life. I had check-in on Wednesday bright and early; I had a rough time falling asleep the previous night (I think I finally passed out at about 1:00) and then was woken up at 4:00 and couldn't get to sleep again. We had planned to be at check-in at 5:45 anyways, so I started packing up my stuff and hopped in the shower.

While waiting for Jordan and Bernice to get ready, I checked the Facebook group for the people checking in on the 8th and saw that some people had started waiting in line at midnight. If you're thinking about doing the program and think this is a brilliant idea...don't. Security wouldn't allow them on the grounds that early, so they were forced to hang out in the Walgreens parking lot across the street, until about 5:45, which is when we got there. Since they were still in the process of trying to get across to the apartments, we actually got ahead of many of them in line.

If you're thinking that Disney is nuts for having check-in at 5:45, you're right: it wasn't supposed to start until 9 am. So why were we arriving so freaking early? Apartments are pretty much given on a first come, first serve basis, and since you can't officially have a designated group of roommates (unless you decide to pair up with just one person, then it's fine; but I had six other people I wanted to room with), the only way to make sure you get an apartment with all the people you want is to stand in line together. And since Chatham Square (our apartment complex) is pretty high in demand, we decided to go early.

I had filmed some of the wait/going to Casting on my camera, but the video is in a weird format so I can't edit it and put it on here. Ah well. Wasn't that exciting, I promise.  Here are some pictures!

 

Role assignment!

  

Room inside the Casting building.

Anyway, we finally got through the line, filled out all the paperwork, and got a four bedroom in Chatham Square! Unfortunately,  we didn't have time to celebrate/unpack our stuff, because we had to jump straight on to a bus for Casting! And once again, we had to stand in a line for a stupidly long time, then wind through the building filling out more paperwork. Luckily, however, this is where we found out where we were working! Bernice and I found out we're in the same location, Kilimanjaro Safari at Animal Kingdom! Pretty exciting (and a weird coincidence)! For those who are too lazy to look up what that ride is, let me tell you!

For those of you who frequent Disneyland, the most similar thing I can compare Kilimanjaro to is the Jungle Cruise (even though they have that here in the Magic Kingdom too), in the sense that I'll be  navigating a vehicle and have a little spiel along the way. The major difference, of course, is that Kilimanjaro has real animals, and the ride is taken along a huge enclosure with hundreds of different animals that you might see on an African safari (lions, hippos, giraffes, etc.). The vehicle we drive (yep, we drive and talk) isn't on a track, so animals are free to cross back and forth on the path.

 I'll have to try and not crash into any hippos.

Anyway, we all have Traditions (our first day of general training in the Magic Kingdom) on Saturday, but Bernice and I have Animal Kingdom training starting Sunday....not sure what exactly we'll be doing, since we're supposed to be in business casual attire. 

Today was really casual....we had a housing meeting at about 11, then have just been going to the grocery store and sitting around the apartment on our laptops since we finally got a router. I also filmed an apartment tour after the housing meeting!

Tonight we're planning to check out the Wilderness Lodge Resort (Jordan and Kelsea's work location) and the Yacht & Beach Club Resort (our newest, 8th roommate Jorden's going to work as a lifeguard there) to go to Beaches N' Cream to try and eat the Kitchen Sink!

(Edit: Here's my shot of the Kitchen Sink before we consumed it....and a video of the aftermath)

 

 

That's all for tonight...tomorrow's another day off, so we'll probably check out the rest of the resorts.

Have a magical day!

Downtown Disney and roommate fun!

Guys, if you're ever worried that I might get homesick, don't worry....I got adopted by a very lovely Lego family with an absurd number of dogs.

Anyway, my day started off pretty mellow...I woke up right at nine o' clock and couldn't go back to sleep, so I showered and got some breakfast while Bernice stayed in bed for a while. Another one of our roommates, Jordan, arrived at about two o'clock, so she got her stuff in and we all got ready to head to Downtown Disney for the rest of the day.

None of us had had any lunch that day, so as soon as we were in Downtown Disney we saw a churro cart and had to have one! Most of our time was spent moving from air-conditioned store to air-conditioned store; according to the weather report, it was about 94% humidity. Ugh.

Since everything in Florida is bigger, of course they would have the world's largest Disney store, featuring my most favorite character:

We met up with the rest of our roommates as the day went on, and just as almost all of us had gotten together, a massive storm started! We had managed to avoid the rain pretty well for most of the day, but this was nuts. I was the only one who had brought an umbrella, so we tried to stay huddled under it as we walked (which failed), and we ended up taking cover in a little restaurant for about ten minutes. There had been a huge Facebook meet-up planned for everyone checking in on the 8th, but with the storm we decided to just get food for ourselves. We braved the rain to walk to the T-Rex, a restaurant similar to the Rainforest Cafe (animatronic animals, themed decor, etc), except dinosaur/ prehistoric animals themed.

After that we wandered around a little more, then headed back to our hotel for the night. Check-in is tomorrow, which means getting into the apartment, settling in, and, most importantly, FINDING OUT WHERE I WORK!

See ya real soon!