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!

First Day in Orlando!

  My day started off painfully early: 4 AM, to be exact. Not the best way to start a long day of travel, especially after only falling asleep at 11 or so. I showered, packed my last-minute stuff, and was on my way! Dad drove me to the airport, where we checked the boards and found out my first flight (Phoenix to Charlotte, NC) was delayed by an hour! Cue panic mode. My second flight (Charlotte to Orlando) was originally supposed to take off only an hour after my first flight had landed, and now I'd be arriving in Charlotte about forty minutes later than originally planned, not to mention that I was flying standby and my seat wasn't guaranteed

 I tried the phone number Jay gave me for US Airways' employee help line, and after being put on hold and calling back a few times, I finally just decided to get on my first flight and hope that I'd be able to make the second. The first flight was uneventful; there were plenty of seats open for standby, so I got on without a problem. Once we started our descent into Charlotte, it was almost 2:00, and my flight to Orlando was supposed to start boarding at 2:10, and this flight had only a few standby seats open. I rushed straight off my first flight and to the connecting one, and to my relief, was informed my name had just been called for a standby seat. I got on my second flight with no problem, and though the landing was a little delayed over Orlando because of a rainstorm, I met up with two of my roommates and got my luggage.

Kelsea (one of my roommates) and her friend had driven down from Virginia, and they offered to pick Bernice and I up from the airport and drop us off at our hotel. We had a little trouble finding the car, and I realized just how exhausted humidity makes you! Weirdly enough, Orlando's parking garage has a ton of palm trees, ferns, and little waterfalls intersected throughout the cement structure, so that combined with the humidity made me think we had stumbled onto an unused set from Jurassic Park. Pretty weird looking; I wish I had got a picture!

We got to the hotel after a little circling, and settled in. After a slew of Facebook updates and video chatting, Bernice and I decided to explore the area a little bit.  We had wanted to go to Downtown Disney, but the hotel doesn't provide a shuttle there (just to the parks) so we  decided to save that for tomorrow.

We finally decided to walk down to the apartment complex where we'll be checking in on Wednesday, as it's just a couple of minutes from the hotel, then wandered over to Wendy's for dinner. We've been watching the Olympics for about 3 hours now....I don't feel too tired (darn time difference!).

Tomorrow I'll be meeting the rest of my roommates, and hanging out in Downtown Disney!