Ok I suppose I've waited long enough...

Allright it's been a week I suppose it's time for another update finally.

July 20th Continued.

Ok so when I finished updating my pictures and blog I went to work which was fine I had a short 6 hour shift on the Imagination Beverage cart (ie I was selling drinks by the Imagination building... shocking). While it was a short 6 hour shift it was an extra magic hours shift so it was from 6:30 to 12:30 so it was a late one. It was a pretty easy night with it being dead for most of the time except for when Honey I shrunk the audience got out giving me a large rush of people wanting pretzels and drinks. Otherwise it was not very memerable.

July 21st 2006.

So today was the first of 4 days off in a row. Since I was planning on seeing Yellowcard at the house of blues on Monday, still needed my ticket, and had never explored Downtown Disney I decided that this would be a good day to get my ticket and see what DTD had to offer. Christine was in pretty much the same situation (although she had been there before) but she came along anyway. We started off by heading in the direction of Virigin Records and the House of Blues (HoB). I went into Virign because I wanted to buy some new speakers for my iPod. The cheapest good quality ones I could find were $60 so I left them for one of the last things to do while we were there. We then got our tickets at the House of Blues and I found out that what I thought was a much longer "street" ended right about there, so we headed back out and aroud PI to the marketplace where most of the Disney shops are located. We then took our time exploring a lot of the stores in that area of DTD. While exploring this area of DTD I decided to buy The Magic Kingdom board game (No I did not pay the price listed on that site, in fact I paid less than half of it). I also bought a Root Beer Float at one point before deciding that I wanted to buy those iPod speakers so we rushed back to Virgin Records so I'd have time to buy them and then catch the bus. While there I noticed Billy Talents new Cd (Billy Talent II) had been released and picked up a copy of that as well. At this point we went back to catch the bus and came back to chatham and did not much of anything for the rest of the night. I thought we might play the board game but that never happened so we did a lot of sitting around and such with roomates.

July 22nd 2006

Well I slept in a bit for this morning and went to Wal Mart for fod in the afternoon. In the evening Watkins had an idea to go to the Magic Kingdom which I was more than fine with since I needed to get out and do something. We started off in the Emporium looking for a Stitch hat for Watkins which they did not have in his size. While moving through we noticed they were having a jersey sale and unfortuantly the only hockey jersey I was interested in was not part of the sale, but Watkins bought one anyway. We then headed off to try to get a Splash Mountain fast pass which at this time were all gone, so we got Big Thunder Mountain ones for something like 9:45 or so (late at night just before close thats all I remember about the time). So anyway we then headed off to tomorrow land, but on the way stopped to see Louisa briefly in Liberty Square where she was working doing parade activities. We were heading to Tomorrowland to do the Astro Orbiter but that didn't happen either as we did the Tomorrowland Tranist Authority, noticing while on the ride that the line for Space Mountain was too long to wait in.

After riding the TTA, we went to Cosmic Rays and saw Josh who was not enjoying his work on the drinks, and I had a half chicken which wasn't bad but definatly not comparable to Swiss Chalet or Tony Romas. We then made our way to Snow White's scary adventures which Watkins insisted he had to ride as it apparently scarred him as a child, upon exiting he could not fathom why. At this point it was almost time for Whishes which Watkins oringially wanted to watch but had changed his mind about, thus we planned on seeing Mickey's Philharmagic since everyone else would be watching the fireworks, however when we got there we had just missed a show and the CM working inside advised us to watch the fireworks as we'd have to wait 15 minutes anyway.

Watching Wishes from Fantasy land is a different experience, you have fireworks launching from both sides of you and literally right above your head. We left shortly before it ended to catch Philharmagic. It was then approaching the end of our fast pass time and the closing of the park so we started towards Big Thunder Mountain, deciding to ride the Haunted Mansion as it had a 5 minute wait. We then continued onto Big Thunder Mountain using our fast passes (which got us right into the regular line anyway for some odd reason). After Thunder Mountain (which we rode from the front of the train which I am NOT a fan of... just not nearly as fun), we rushed to Splash Mountain to see if we could get on and lo and behold we were the LAST people alloud in the line, they literally put the rope up behind us. We then headed out of the park seeing most of Spectromagic in the process. We also met up with Lousia again very briefly after the parade.

We had to wait a bit for the bus, and when we got to West Clock Lousia came on and sat beside me. She then mentiond to me about how in between the parades she noticed that someone had stolen her iPod, and other peoples money! She also mentioned that someone had stolen her Skipperhat from the Jungle Cruise. So needless to say it was a pretty rough night, and we had a good long visit all the way back to Chatham.

July 23 2006

Well this was the day off I had planned to do my laundry and clean up a bit in my room. The laundry happened but the room stuff didn't so much. I was working on it when I suddenly remembered to check my schedule for next week which is when I got a good shock. Instead of saying ODF support, or Hot Dog, or Turkey or something I was quite surprised to see "Epcot - Training Space ATTR" especially when I had learned a week or so prior that I was not getting a transfer. I realised this could be one of two attractions Mission Space (YAY) or Spaceship Earth (BORING). So I decided to head off to Epcot and do some reasearch and save the cleaning for later. I started in the ODF base where the managers knew of my transfer (so before I did apparently), but unfortunatly they didn't have any details. SO I went to both Mission Space (where I grabbed a Fast Pass) and Spaceship Earth to check out the costumes and try to see what the CM's schedules said (which attraction is refered to as "Space").

I never got a 100% sure answer from them, but the general concensious was that I would be working Mission Space (GREAT!). So I started taking pictures of all of the different carts I've worked in Epcot. When I got to Show Pop, the girl there mentioned that the girl working at Show nut was also going to be transfering to Mission Space. I talked to her and we have the same training schedule making me more sure I was going to Mission Space. When I finished up the carts, it still wasn't my MS Fast Pass time yet but I was headed back there anyway. It was there that I noticed that I had recieved a call from Christine but has missed it, so I called her back and she was at the Cast Services building so I went off there to meet her, and we looked at our schedules on CDS (from what I can tell you can only access this on DIsney property) which confirmed I would be training on Mission Space!

After printing off the scheduels we went to ride Mission Space, and stood in the stand by line while I took many pictures of the interior of the attraction. Neither of us really wanted to spend much more time in the park so we headed back to Chatham with me grabbing my ODF costumes on the way so I could get pictures of myself in them). I'm not too sure what I did that night but being as I had no cash and can't remember being out so I'm assuming whatever I did it was in my apartment and was very uneventful.

July 24th 2006

For my 4th day off in a row me and Christine were going to the Disney/MGM studios, before heading to Downtown Disney for House of Blues/Concert. John wasn't working anymore and decided to join us as well. We immediatly went to get Rockin Rollercoaster fast passes and even about 90 minutes after the park opened they were giving out passes for between 2 and 3 PM! We still got them and headed back to watch the Lights Motors Action stunt show (which I think started at 11:50). Went to Pizza Planet for food, and I noticed a Dance Dance Revolution machine and issued an open challange, John answered and as he'd never played before had a little trouble. Just before we played I noticed Mario Kart Arcade GP right beside DDR so I decided I HAD to play that game as well.

Mario Kart Arcade was fun however I didn't get to play long, even though I won my race I was done since it costs $1.00 for each race. It was maybe 10:55 at this point and they wern't officially opened until 11 so we had a few minutes to kill in line before we got in to buy Pizza. We ate our breakfast/lunch/brunch or whatever and continued onto Lights Motors Action. LMA is a great show, man those drivers are good at what they do! We thought about going to the Indiana Jones stunt show afterwards but it was hot and Indy has a canvas roof, so instead we went on to The Voyage of the Little Mermaid (Chirstine wanted to and I want to do everything here once). While we were in line I realised that there was going to be a Who Wants to be a Millionare Play It show/game in a few minutes and since it's closing Aug 19 I pushed hard for us to go and we left the Little Mermaid to see WWTBAMPI. I thought it was worth it, and it was fun to be in the "studio audience". My only problem with the show was it's length as it was actually less than 3o minutes long. When we walked out we noticed it was raining... pooring... sideways... literally! So we dashed quickly to the nearby Walt Disney documentary, the name of which is escaping me at the moment and watched that movie hoping to wait out the rain, thankfully it was mostly done when we exited the theatre. It was then time to use our rockin' rollercoaster passes. Oh yeah and in the morning while at Pizza Planet Jei called to set up a time to meet at House of Blues for our pre-concert meal. We decided we'd try for 4 o'clock.

Anyway we left the park shortly after 3 planning to take a guest buss to DTD. Unfortunatly the guest busses seem to run everwhere EXCEPT DTD, so we rushed onto the friendship boat that goes from MGM to the nearby hotels such as the swan, dolphin, and boardwalk. We got off at one of the hotels and headed for the guest bus stop, within 15 minutes we were on a bus to DTD. Unfotunatly we didn't get to HOB until about 4:15. The food there was good but my hamburger was a little on the pink side. However since we all got entrees we were able to get "front of the line"ish access to the concert (ie we were alloud in first, but there was a line of people with the same passes allready). Anyway Jei and Brynna (who met us at HoB) rushed the stage for Hedly while me and Christine grabed stools off to the side where we sat for most of the night. After the 2nd band (Rock Kills Kid) I surrendered my stool to Jei as it was literally the worlds most uncomfortable stool (but she didn't seem to mind it at all). The girls all wanted to catch a 11:51 bus back to the complexes but I really wanted to see Yellowcard (or at least hear 3 songs). By the time 11:30 rolled around (out designated time to leave) Yellowcard had only played one song I knew and I was REALLY enjoying their show. I didn't want to leave and thankfully neither did Brynna so we stayed and Jei and Christine left. It was a great show and I was glad I stayed for it. We rushed off to catch our 12:42 bus back to the complexes.

July 25th

Well back to work this day so less excitment and things to talk about. When I got to work my manager (upon finding out they'd have to close a very well placed cart at 9 PM on an Extra Magic Hours night) told me that I would HAVE to extend until midnight, which I thought was fine, I had given up a shift on Monday to attend the Yellowcard concert (I had booked it off, had it approved and then was booked to work), and I was also trying to loose a few hours on Friday for a Bowling for Soup concert. Plus these two extra hours were total overtime as I was getting extended from 8 to 10 hours. Unfortunatly for me it was on a nut cart which I really hadn't worked for months. Thankfully I had help closing it down so that I didn't end up having to figure out how to clean everything by myself.

July 26th

Well when I arrived the same manager that had extended me previously was working and sent me straight to Refreshment Part, a.k.a. McDonalds to our guests. It wasn't so bad for the most part, I spent my night (until 9) on cash, which ment I only had to pour my drinks and make my McFlurries (although for a few moments throughout my shift I had help where other people were making my drinks and McFlurries for me). At 9 my shift started to suck because they had me do the dishes. This was literally everything in the "store" that needed to be washed that could be moved. It sucked and most of it was greasy. I was glad to be done and that also ended my shift. I ended up talking to Amanda on MSN until late about Florida.

July 27th

Well wasn't looking forward to this day at first, it was an Ice Cream cart shift which at times can be brutal. Up until my break I was set I was managing to keep everything clean and my stock up and boxes open and everything... however when I went on break it must've been busy or my breaker didn't care enough to keep it as clean/organised as I had it and I had trouble getting it cleaned up again when I got back. Either way I only was working it until 6:30 when someone else was coming in to close it for Extra Magic Hours. I was still happy to leave the park and while I planned on making this update last night I was far to tired (mostly because of how late I was up the night before) but still ended up sitting around all night on my computer anyway.

July 28th

Today was pretty good as I got to sleep a little more than I did the day before and headed off to Epcot for my final support shift which I found out was on Hot Dog (which was fine as I'm working it tomorrow as well). It was a pretty boring and uneventful shift. However on my break I did return all of my ODF costumes (except for the one I was wearing) and signed out 3 Mission Space costumes since I'll need to be in one on MOnday. When I got home from work I intended on going to Wal Mart to get new shoes and socks (because I now need black ones), however I forgot that Fridays is the day the bus goes to the Florida Mall and not Wal Mart, thus I'll be getting up early tomorrow to go to Wal Mart (no bus on Sundays).

Anyway as I'm sure you could tell as I was moving along I was getting pretty tired so I'm calling it here.

The last four days...

Allright my "Support shifts" turned into Stocker shifts so far which has been fun.

Sunday July 16 2006

When I arrived today and went to check to see what costume I was going to need, Patrick (one of my managers) asked how long I was going to be working at ODF. I told him my program is until November but I was waiting to find out if I got a transfer to attractions. After a quick look at something on the e-mail he informed me that I was currently not on the list for the transfer and asked me if I'd rather be trained on Stocker or at Cool Post (African outpost ice cream shop). I took the choice that was easiest and more fun for me, stocker. I allready had the costume for it and it was something I had wanted to try.

When I arrived back at base, I was paired with Sean, who is a college participant who'll be leaving soon. He was just preparing an order so he showed me how to fill out the paperwork (whcih I had allready pretty much figured out from working at the carts anyway) and we ran out an order and checked the carts stock. When I got back to base I was informed that I needed to go out and cover an Ice Cream cart so the guy out there could do some HazMat training or something.

When I got out to the cart there was two guys there, I sent the one back for his training but within a half hour the other guys shift ended. So here I was on a busy Ice Cream cart by myself, and thats when everything else started to go wrong. First I ran out of Itzakadoozies which are basically multiflavored popsicles, at that moment I happened to notice that Ice Cream carts stocker and mentioned it to him, but I was so busy with guests that I didn't know if I was running low on anything else. About 45 minutes - 1 hour later he brought me out the Itzakadoozies along with some bottled water and Coca Cola. So at this point I luckily still had cold water but I had warm coke and warm Itzakadoozies (wanted to keep those in the freezer for a while before serving them). But while he was gone I started running out of everything else for the ice cream, in many cases I was on my last box of various items, and most of those I had to chizle out of dry ice, meaning the ice creams were frozen solid. Oh and also while he was gone my Matra (I think that's what it's called, my touch screen PDA thing that I use to ring through the guests) stopped working.

So here I was on an ice cream cart, selling out of items, and the ones I do have are far to frozen to really eat, having to ring everyone through using pen and paper (to keep track of what I sold). It was really the most stressful hour and a half of work I've had down here.

When I got back to base, Sean was on his break, and I was asked to cover the break of the person who was covering his break. Essentially I was covering the last half of seans break and then the last half of the other persons. When Sean came back he sent me for mine. When I got back from my break I continued working on stocking carts, until about 8:30-9:00 ish which is when Seans carts started to shut down. We first shut down his Ice Cream cart, which involved us cutting off the line, counting how many full cases they had of Ice Cream and wheeling their drinks and partially full cases of ice cream back to base. Immediatly after that we went off to the World Showcase Nut cart to do the same thing. After counting the invintory in those carts and cleaning things up a bit I was sent out to do a reload which basically involves taking full cases of ice cream, and full/partial cases of pop out to the carts so they're fully stocked for the morning (some stock stays out in the park overnight but is locked up. Most carts have to push their drinks out in the morning).

It was about 10:15 at this point and I heard a distant explosion, and looked in that direction and I could see a little bit of the ending of wishes off in the distance. I was working somewhat slowly and methodically on the carts rotating the stock where I could (FIFO First in First out so this stuff I was putting on the bottom), about 10:30 Sean came out to see where I was since we were supposted to be off then. It was perfect timing as he showed me the barge burnoff. Essentially the ignite one of the Illuminations barges every night to burnoff something left over from the fireworks... massive flames and heat.

Anyway that about sums up my training on Stocker. Pretty simple (and fun) stuff.

Monday July 17 2006

So today I worked a similar shift as the day before, I came in a half hour earlier but I was also off a half hour earlier. When I arrived I found out that the person who was supposted to be covering the stockers breaks didn't show up, and since I now had stocker training I was thrust into that position. Basically every hour I covered a different stocker (and thus had a different 3-4 carts). The stockers had a rough idea their breaks are coming and tend to overstock their carts a bit to make the breakers time a little easier, and it worked out well I didn't have to do a whole lot all day but I had no problems filling orders where needed, I had 5 breaks to cover but since I came in 90 min- 2 hours after the original breaker was scheduled for everyones got pushed back a bit. Thus creating a conflict with my break and me having to close down the Land cart, Sean said he'd break himself and that fixed all problems.

So I had 4 stockers to cover and just rotated from one to the other stocking carts until about 6:15ish when I went for my own break. After my break I was supposted to close the land cart but when I got there Patrick had allready sent someone out to do it so I did the one part of it that none of us really knew how to do and that was drain the waste water. For this I had to go get a machine, hook it up to the back of the cart, let it pump out the water and take it to drain it. I had been shown how to do it once on my training and luckily it was fairly easy to do.

After that I helped count the carts and consolodate drinks (make all the trays of drinks that are going into the cooler = 24 of the same drinks) before being sent out on another reload to close out my shift.

Tuesday July 18 2006

This day of work was definatly not as fun as the previous two. I was scheduled for a popcorn cart by Mission Space. It wasn't bad it was kind of fun but I had a bad stocker. Apparently it was his first time doing it, and well he didn't bring me much of anything all day. I called in early on when I started running low on water and a few hours later I was brought water, coke and either sprite or diet coke. Probably was he didn't bring me any ice... he also didn't rotate my drinks, so I had 24-48 warm bottles of drinks above my cold ones, so I had to dig. For popcorn we have two sizes, a box and a bucket. When I had about 15 buckets left I called him to tell him I needed more (52 to a box). I also had brought out 4 bags of seed with me in the morning so when I opened the last bag (figured it'd last 60-90 minutes) I called in that I needed more. When I ran out of buckets, got sick of digging out cold drinks and was running down to one more batch of seed I called my coorodinator (basically the person who goes out into the park for the managers).

I told him all of what I needed, and before long they were bringing out a large shipment of everything, except for ice and seed! At that moment a co-worker of mine who was working a nearby cart that had two people came by to ask the stocker a question so I asked him if he could get me ice from a nearby room sice I hadn't had any fresh ice for about 6 hours at that point! This was all about a half hour before I was getting off so I wanted to make sure everything was good for the girl who was coming in after me. I managed to get everything ready for her except for her seed which I heard her call a manager for as I was carding out.

I also had an interesting development that was a little disgusting that day as well. A few days prior I had accidnetly slammed a metal door on my finger cutting it (guess where I'm going here). Well today I closed another metal door on it (not slammed again thankfully) basically removing the scab, so I had a small cut on my figure while selling popcorn. Immediatly I called the hot dog/turkey leg carts to see if they could spare someone, they were close by and each had two people working. After a little wait and no relief my stocker showed up and so I asked him to help me out or get me someone. I then got busy so about 15-20 min later (after I wrapped paper towel around my finger and stoped the bleeding) I called base to ask for someone so I could go put some bactine on it and get a band-aid. A few minutes later my manager showed up on a segway to check it out and said he'd get someone, and at that moment the person covering my break showed up... it took 45 minutes to get someone to relieve me and they weren't even there because of my wounded finger. I was a little disturbed that they couldn't get someone to relieve me from selling popcorn with an open bleeding wound on my hand. You'ld think it would have been a priority.

Anyway that about sums up that day, I got off at 6:30 but sat around home all night, watched ECW (wrestling we don't get in Canada) and made some Pizza.

Wednesday July 19 2006

I showed up again today for a float shift and it turns out another person who was supposted to be a stocker breaker didn't show up, so I started covering stocker breaks. Halfway into my second break Ed showed up and regained control of his breaking duties. I went to ask what needed to be done and I was told to bag ice... 20-25 bags... by myself. Now keep in mind that this is basically shoveling ice cubes into a garbage bag and is also usually a two person job (one to hold the bag, one to shovel). I was told I could steal the kitchen runners if they wern't busy but keep in mind those are the people that take pretzels and turkey legs out to the carts. So I did have to do a few by myself (and got the same ammount if not more ice on the floor than I got in the bag). I did 20 bags and figured I was done for now. I had forgotten my mug in the kitchen so I went back to get it running into Jei and John in the cafeteria.

While I talked to them for a minute Ed showed up with Birttany (someone else from my program who actually got a transfer to Test Track). She had been pulled off the hot dog cart (which had 3 people) to go and bag 10-20 bags of ice! So I decided I'd help her, we got 10 bags done and that filled the ice fridge thing. I then decided after 2 hours of bagging ice I was going onto my break. Since I was floating today, I didn't need a breaker so it worked out well. When I got back I kept myself kinda busy for a while helping out where I could until about 8:30 where Sean had me help him close his carts, we actually got out about a half hour early and our manager was very impressed with how fast and well done everything was that night.

July 20 2006 (so far...)

Well I got up this morning got my paycheque FINALLY rode Test Track, cashed said paycheque, and decided I wasn't going to "play" in the Disney/MGM studios, and instead came here to update my blog! Next up is my random mishmash of pictures!

My computer lives!

Ok so apparently all I had to do was blow on the contacts between the battery and the computer and volia my computer lives.

I can't remember blow by blow what happened the last 5 days since I've updated but I haven't done a whole lot outside of work. I've done some laundry (it started pooring rain in the middle of that), and Steve gave me a ride to the SALSA sale on Thursday because it was the pin day (got a few pins I wanted and two grab bags with nothing exciting). Outside of that I spent 4 days on a Turkey Leg cart and one on a Hot Dog cart.

The only real eventful thing that occoured for me at work was on Friday, as it was probably my worst day of work. I almost got heat stroke from standing outside in the sun all day, and it was 6.5 hours before I got my break. I also had to close the Turkey leg cart by myself, which required a lot of cleaning, along with the usual work of bringing back stock for counting, as well as sorting my cash. I ended up calling for help and still putting in an extra hour of work. Thankfully on Saturday when I worked the same shift the girl who was with me offered to extend which kept me from closing myself, I also bought a neck cooler which also seemed to help.

Oh and Hot Dogs was an extra magic hours night so I was booked until 12:30 AM... thankfully I got out just before midnight. When I got home from that shift it was then I discovered that my computer wouldn't turn on. Since there wasn't much I could do after midnight I had to wait until Friday night to call Tech Support, and their oh so helpful solution was to send me a new power cord. When I got home from work on Saturday Josh took off my battery, blew on the contacts and volia it worked. I got 5 more strait days of work ahead of me, then 3 days off in a row. Apparently my "accepted" request for the 24th off for the Yellowcard concert at the House of Blues didn't really go through as I'm working late that night, we'll see if I can get that fixed today. Some of these shifts should be interesting (or have the potential to) as they're support shifts meaning I won't know what I'm doing until I show up. I could be covering breaks, stocking carts, running pretzels/turkey legs from teh kitchen, or just covering for someone who called in sick. In fact 7/10 of my next shifts are support (with one shift that starts support and ends on Ice Cream... joy) so I potentially have a lot to talk about.

Still no new pictures for my pictures site (jordenclarke.smugmug.com) but I do have a few random mishmash of pictures from the past week or so to put up at some point, I'm just waiting to be e-mailed a few that were taken with Jei's camera before I put those up.

My computer is broken.

Hey just to update everyone my computer is broken and thus I am stuck using computers at work (before/after/on break) or at the clubhouse if I'm around in business hours. Hopefully when it gets working again (or gets replaced) I'll remember everything important to update this.

July 9th & 10th.

Ok so I had two days off before a long long schedule (show you later) and manged to accomplish a lot in little time it seems.

July 9th 2006

So I got a bit of sleep in the morning and relaxed in front of the TV for a bit. Watkins apparently is also a fan of Big Brother, and since theres an All Stars season going on we're both a little interested. Somehow he discovered that you can watch the shows on cbs.com so we watched the only one thats aired so far. After that ended me Watkins and Steve decided to head over to the studios for the day. Watkins and Steve had not seen the new Pirates of the Carabbean movie and they planed to go this night, but since I mentioned they'd probably want to buy tickets ahead of time we made a stopover at Downtown Disney first.

When we arrived at the AMC 24, we all decided to see a Matanee and thus I was going to the movie again. We bought a tickets for a showtime that was two hours away and went to Planet Hollywood for lunch. After lunch we went to Virgin Megastore to kill some time and I bought a wall charger for my iPod (my computers been having trouble wanting to charge it). It was then time to go to the movie and the theatre was literally the biggest one I'd ever been in. It had two balconeys!

After the show we headed over to the Studios, where our first attraction was the Rockin Rollercoaster. From there we walked onto the Great Movie Ride, and then into Muppets 3D, and onto the last ride of the night for Star Tours. From there we went over to catch the 10:30 showing of Fantasmic (happens 30 min after everything in the park closes). Matt was working the concession so we went and got snacks and grabbed our seats. So in just a few short hours at the park we managed to hit 5 attractions!

July 10 2006

Much like Sunday I had little idea as to what I was going to do on this day. I felt like I was going to go to the Magic Kingdom but since we have an inspection on Wednesday I did some cleanup in the afternoon and booked hotels for my mom and brother for September. When that was done I did a little sitting around to see if anyone else was interested in the Magic Kingdom, which no one seemed to be so I headed off there alone, with my Pal Mickey to see what he did.

When I got there I knew Louisa was working the Jungle Cruise so I got a fast pass, and progressed to see if Shanan was working the Haunted Mansion, and she was out on the greeter position. I briefly talked to her and continued on my tour around the park. While I was partway through Fantasyland my cellphone rang and Jei was calling to see if I wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom. I informed her I was there allready so she mentioned that she'd come and meet me. I did a short walk through toontown and into tomorrowland as I was looking for a Tollhouse ice cream sandwhich (which I could not find in the Magic Kingdom at all) and got a root beer float.

At this time it was time for me to use my Jungle Cruise fast pass so I headed over to Adventureland. I went to the fast pass line and asked the girl outside if Louisa was working a boat, and the response I got (after a few seconds delay) was she was working at Pirates of the Caribbean because it was now open... I still went on the ride anyway knowing full well she wasn't working pirates. The next girl I encoutered (the one that actually physically took the fast pass) was pretty sure she was on a boat. Finally the guy on the loading dock knew she was on a boat and let me stand aside and wait for her boat to come around. It was time for her lunch but she made one more trip since I was there waiting. Honestly even though she pretty much floored it all the way through the curise she was the best skipper I've had since I got here.

When I got off the boat my phone rang, Jei was at the TTC and was about to board a monorail so I told her I'd meet her on Main street, and I went to see why my Pal Mickey wasn't working. While I was trying to make it work Jei arrived and "stole" my Pal Mickey for the rest of the day (and it seemed to work fine for her). We went to Casey's so she could grab some food, then went to see how long the line was for Pirates of the Carabbean since Jei hadn't ridden it yet. It was too long in our opinion and on our way back we got on Aladdian's Magic Carpets since neither of us had ridden it yet. While we were on there we spied Aladdian, Jasmine and the Genie signing autographs, and since I need to get princess autographs and pictures for Alisa we went to main street to get a princess autograph and photo album, with Jei getting a Dole Whip on the way by (basically pineapple flavouried soft ice cream). We got back and got in line, getting our pictures and autographs. And then we headed over and rode Pirates of the Caribbean. From there we headed over to Tomorrowland to ride the TTA and Stitch's Great Escape. But both of us were getting a little hungry so we at at Cosmic Rays, then went on the TTA (People Mover), and finally into Stitch's Great Escape (That we got fast passes for before we ate at Cosmic Rays). Stitch wasn't bad but I can see why the origional Extra TERRORestrial Alien encounter would have freaked out some kids.

After this we headed over to toontown and rode Goofy's Barnstormer, and then into Mickey's Philharmagic. At this point Spectro Magic was still on so it would be tough to get out of the park so we went to The Haunted Mansion, and rode it hoping to get Shanan in the stretch room or something. We didn't see her and on our way out we found that she was now greeting outside of the mansion. We proceded to ask her some stupid questions (can I see the fireworks from here? Is this the haunted mansion? other things like that). When the fireworks started we began to fight our way out and on Main Street Jei was craving a snack so we went into the bakery and at this point the fireworks were ending so we sat in there for a little while to let the crowds dissapate a little, and then went out through the merchendise stores.

When we left the park we had one of two choices for long lines to stand in to get back to the TTC, the Monorail or the boat. We went to the boat before deciding to go back to the monorail. I noticed the resort monorail had a MUCH shorter line so we got in that one instead (still stops at the TTC just isn't an express). We only had to wait for 2 monorails before ours pulled up and there was only one stop before the TTC. Anyway from there we went home where I pretty much crashed.

Now today is the first of 10 days of work in a row so I doubt I'll have a lot of exciting things to share, but I'll still try to keep this updated.

July 7th and 8th.

Allrigt I woulda done this last night but I pretty much spent the whole day/night sleeping so here's the update.

Friday July 7th

Today started off early with a 9-3 shift once again on The Land cart. It wasn't bad to open and just getting everything setup took a good hour off my shift. It started raining about 2:15 and of course carried on utnil 4 getting me good and wet. Once I got off work I changed and headed back into the park to get a Pirates of the Carabbean Dead Mans Chest opening day pin (LE of 3000). I then found out from the guy at Pin Central that the Magic Kingdom had allready sold out of all of their special PotC pins that were released that day, saving me a trip to the Magic Kingdom to unsuccessfully get a commerative pin for the re-opening of the ride. When I got back through cast services I ended up having to wait about 30 minutes for the bus (meaning one was late or brke down or just didn't show up or something since they are every 10 or 20 minutes at epcot depending on the time).

When I got home my lousy afternoon was still going pretty lousy. I couldn't open the door to my aparatment. I tried turning my keys in both locks every which way and nothing, so I went to the clubhosue to make sure my locks didn't get changed and they didn't, but the clubhouse changed my key for a new one anyway. They also told me if I still couldn't get in to go to security. So I tried this key and again couldn't get in. So I went to security and the oh so helpful security guy sent me back to try again but just pullng my key out a little bit first. At this point I was getting rather frustrated with going back and forth across the property and stomped upstairs. Mara heard me (she was cooking just inside their door) and I explained the situation to her. Guess what the security's solution didn't help either. So I went back to the front of the property for the 3rd time, and lo and behold the helpful security gaurd wasn't there (maybe it was time for him to go home). The other security gaurd told me to head back again and he'd be right behind me with one of their keys. So (including my trip from the bus) I now headed back to my apartment for the 4th time (keep in mind it was lightly raining the whole time as well). Guess what security couldn't let me in either. All of this had taken about 30-45 minutes making it just about 5:30. The security gaurd had to call a maintence person who was on call (since they left at 5). So I went back to Mara's room where she let me hang out while waiting.

Literally no more than 10 minutes later I heard footsteps upstairs, and went and checked and Watkins was home! He had just walked back from Publix and had NO TROUBLE with the door. It was almost 6 by this point, so I had 3 hours until my bus to Downtown Disney for Pirates of the Carabbean, so my plans for having a long afternoon nap were out. I made some food, had a shower and just chilled out until it was time to head to DTD.

Now I'm not going to say much about the movie here, but PotC Dead Mans Chest exceded every one of my expectations for the movie so I absolutely loved it! Since it was a 2.5 hour movie and started at 10:00, it got me home at about 2 AM and since I worked a 9-3 on Saturday morning I went straight to bed.

Saturday July 8

So once again I worked a 9-3 on the Land Cart (well really it was a 9-2:30 on the land but I'll get to that). Today I had to open by myself (had another person yesterday) so I took my time to make sure I had everything. Turns out my little PDA register thing was broken so I had to go without it (meaning mental math, and keeping track of everything I sell on paper... FUN!), and I forgot to grab more maps and time guides. I went out the cart and began to slowly set things up. I decided since I didn't have my PDA thing I was going to make sure everything was setup properly before I opened to guests.

About 10:15 the other guy who was working the cart with me showed up (he started at 10 and it's a bit of a walk from base). I was mostly setup at that point but he helped me out finishing the rest. We also decided since he worked a busy cart two days prior without the PDA thing that he'd take the money while I got everything ready for the guests. The day went pretty well but we had so many problems. Our fountain pop machine broke down, we were out of 1 type of beer, another one didn't have the lever so it was almost impossable to poor, we ran out of all bills under $20, and we ran out of Raspberry Lemonaid syrup for our slurpies.

Literally at one point if a guest wanted a drink we had bottled water, blue raspberry slurpies, hot chocolate, french vanella coffee, or irish cream coffee... I'm not sure if the guests were happy, and until we got our PDA thing at about noon we were cash only meaning guests couldn't use credit cards, or their snack plans, or even charge to their room. Needless to say I was quite happy to leave at 2:15 for my meeting in the closed Wonders of Life building.

This meeting was no big deal, it was with basically a human resources manager and was a 14 day check in. Just to get ideas of how training was going and what could be done better that kind of thing. So when it was done I went and clocked out before going to Company D, because the other guy I was working with mentioned that Company D had a pretty cool looking Dead Mans Chest opening day pin for CM's only, so to make a long story short I now have 2 opening day pins! When I got home I sat around for no more than a half hour before deciding to have a nap (my only roomate who was home was Jared and he was sleeping). I work up around 10:30, wasn't feeling very tired anymore so I drank a Neo Citron and took two gravol and was back in bed 60-90 minutes later and slept until about 9:30 this morning. I needed that much sleep I think.

Not quite sure whats on for today, Watkins wants to go to the Salsa sale and to Epcot and I may join him for that, otherwise not too sure.

July 5th and 6th

Allright last night was a late night so here's a recount of my days off.

Wednesday July 5th 2006

Today started off with me not knowing what to do since I didn't know of anyone who had the day off... I ended up on the couch listening to music and playing the new Pirates of the Carabbiean game for my Nintendo DS. Shortly after Christine showed up and she was heading to Epcot on herself to explore the World Showcase. I ended up tagging along and we met up with John on the bus since he was on his way to work. When we arrived, John headed off to get ready for work and me and Christine went to Test Track to get fast passes since it's a popular ride and it was allready the early afternoon. Luckily we only had a few hours wait before we could use the passes. At this point Jei contacted me, aparently she had the day off as well and was going to meet us at Epcot about an hour after that point.

Since we had a bit of time to kill before Jei arrived we decided to ride Mission Space. It was a relativly short line for the day/attraction and it was only about a 30 minute wait. Once we got close to getting on the ride I realised I had missed 3 calls from John and had a voice mail. Deciding to check that after the ride I ignored the message and me and Chrstine rode the ride. When we got off I looked at my phone again and I had missed a call from both Jei and John. Since John had called me 4 times at that point I called him and found out he had gotten an early release (at his request) from his shift that day and thus only worked for about 15 minutes. We arranged to meet up in the Mexico pavilion since thats where we were planning on meeting Jei shortly, and I called Jei. Turns out she was in the Canada pavilion at that point but still offered to meet us at the Mexico pavilion (after getting some kind of iced coffee beverage.)

Since Jei had never ridden Mission Space and wanted to the 4 of us then went to ride the ride, after getting both John and Jei fast passes for Test Track. Then we took a small detour through Innoventions since Jei wanted to look for an Irish fellow named Kevin. After finding him and playing the game he was running we then headed over to ride Sorin' and Living With The Land (which left me feeling like I was watching an educational film). At this point it was time for us to use our Test Track Fast Passes, so we headed back over there only to find out it was temporarly shut down for maintence. We decided to head off to the Magic Kingdom instead to ride Pirates of the Carribean and whatever else came our way. At this point however Jei split up with us to go to a movie with another one of her friends.

We arrived to the Magic Kingdom expecting a long wait for PotC, and were quite shocked to see the 10 minute wait sign. So we quickly got into the line and onto the ride at the back of the boat. It was very much the same as when I saw it on the preview but since I didn't comment then I'll comment now. The rest of this paragraph and the next detail the changes so if you don't want to know skip them. I was going to put up pictures but I decided against it in case people don't want to see it. The first change occours right at the start, you round a bend and there's a waterfall right in front of you, and suddenly the fact of Davy Jones appears, gives you a little speach and then falls with the water right as you happen to pass through it (however you don't get wet due to it being a smoke screen or something and not a real waterfall). The next change occours in the scene where the pirate ship is fighting with the canons mounted in the wall. The captain on the ship has been changed to the Black Pearl's captaian Barbossa (apparently eventually the ship will become the Black Peal). Shortly after that in the well dunking scene is the next change.

In this scene of the ride the person in the well is now being interrogated for the whereabouts of one Captain Jack Sparrow. Little to the pirates knowledge Jack himself is hiding a short distance behind them keeping an eye on the situation. A short way around the bend from that you see a drunken pirate with a key in his hand and a treasure map in his lap. He's giving a drunken ramble about how Jack Sparrow will never see the map nor gain the key. However just behind him hidden in a barrel you see Jack popping up and taking a peek at the map. Finally at the end of the ride you see Jack with all of his treasure on a chair talking to a parret and singing the classic song from the ride "Yo Ho Yo Ho a pirates life for me..."

Anyway once we got off the ride you of course exit through a gift shop and after John bought himself a pirate hat we were off to ride the ride again. This time the line time was a whoping 5 minutes. In fact we didn't even wait we walked right on! This time we took the front of a boat. After the PotC we went on the Jungle Cruise where Louisa wasn't working thus I still haven't met her yet. After our Jungle Cruise we went to the Haunted Mansion to see if Shanan was working. When we arrived she was working the wheelchair line. When we came out of the ride she wasn't there anymore (a rotation occoured) and John wanted to go on it immediatly again, this time Shanan was working Load 1 right where you enter your Doom Buggy. I snuck a picture of her before she knew what was happening and since I was at the front of the line and my flash probably got her right in the eyes. As such she kept a serious look on her face and pretty much blocked the path staring right at me for maybe 15-20 seconds, eventually backing out of my way (and I think she smirked a bit) letting us into our Doom Buggies.

After this ride we went and watched probably the best 3d movie on WDW property Mickey's Philharmagic before going to ToonTown (where I knew I could buy a poweraid and where Christine had never visited). Since there's only one ride there we went to Goofy's Barnstormer where Shayna happened to be running the ride. The Barnstormer is a rollercoaster for kids and while it is a short ride it sure gets some good speed. Anyway when we got off Shayna was about to rotate to Mickey's house so we followed her there and decided to go through and meet the mouse. When we got out John went to talk to Shayna and Christine came with me and she tried on hats while I bought my poweraid. After our maybe 5 minutes in the merch area, me and Christine headed across a road past John and into a main merch shop. I saw Pirates of the Carribean Monopoly which caught my eye but I couldn't afford it. I did splurge and get Disney TTheme Park Uno cards however (with a special EVIL card). John found us in the store and he thought we had ditched him.

Me and Christine were pretty tired at this point and I think we were both ready to leave but John wanted to ride PotC again so for the 3rd time we went back on the ride, and while it's a great ride 3 times in a night is getting to be a bit much (almost as exciting as seeing The Haunted Mansion twice in a row). We then took the boats back to the busses and headed home, John to a Pirates party (beacuse of the movie being released today) and me and Christine headed back to chatham, I went to bed pretty early and she chatted with some of my roomates for a bit.

July 6 2006

Today was an early morning, because it was the first day of the SALSA sale (Spend A Little Save Alot) and Christine, John, and I wanted to get there when it opened at 7. I didn't find much for my grandparents, dad, or me, but I did find gifts for my mom and a few little people. I also picked up my paycheques at Epcot while I was there. All of us then brought our stuff home and I kicked back and relaxed for a bit while Christine went to Animal Kingdom to go to costuming and pick up her pay cheques. When she got back we took the bus to Disney U/Property control. At Disney U we were able to cash our paycheques and then we went to Property Control/Cast Connection to look for more deals. At property control I found a mint condition Pal Mickey (special edition) and a perfect Tower of Terror movie DVD. The problems were as follows, the Pal Mickey got returned to whatever store the guest bought it and judging from the condition of it they used it for no more than a day and returned it. The Tower of Terror disc was mint condition yet it's shrinkwrap had been partially removed. Both of these factors gave me a 75% discout.

We then went over to cast connection where I was looking for more gifts for little people and the people I couldn't find gifts for. I grabbed some postcards, and some more gifts and headed out. Christine had wanted to get a cellphone so we decided we'd go to Downtown Disney in a few hours. We brought our stuff home, and we had a good hour and fifteen minute wait for the bus. After a good relaxing rest we were off for Downtown Disney and more specifically Virgin Megastore. While we were there I picked up The Amazing Race season 7 (which you can't get in Canada for some reason) and Christine got her $30 phone. Since thats all we needed to do we left Downtown Disney to go back to Chatham, since then all I've done is bought 4 movie tickets online for tomorrow nights 10:00 showing of Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Mans Chest for Jei, Matt Chan, Me and someone else I'm not quite sure who.

Tomorrow I work a 9-3 shift currently on The Land cart (a cart I worked about a week ago where I sold pretzals). and with the movie at 10 I'm not sure what i'm going to do in the afternoon, however my bus for the movie will be leaving at about 9 so I'll be home for about 5.5 hours tomorrow afternoon I think.