Jorden's time in Walt Disney World

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

2006-07-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

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...

2006-07-20T12:57:00.000-04:00

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!

2006-07-16T09:07:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-07-14T17:09:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-07-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

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.

2006-07-09T10:42:00.000-04:00

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

2006-07-06T19:53:00.000-04:00

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.

4th of July.

2006-07-04T22:35:00.000-04:00

So today being the 4th of July I was dreading work a bit. According to my schedule I had a support shift so in other words covering breaks or taking stock to carts. For a major holiday the breaks didn't sound so fun (especially if I didn't know how to run the cart) but the stock wouldn't have been too bad. Turns out I didn't have to worry much as when I got to work I found out I was working a Pizza cart.

Before I get ahead of myself though I missed the bus I originally planned to take due to some stupid mistakes on my part (luckily they didn't cause me to be late for work). I got about half way to the bus stop when I realised I forgot my mug. The mug in question is basically a thermal mug that is the only drink container I can take on stage with me. When working in the heat I can drink about 2-3 mugs of water so forgetting it wasn't an option. After retreiving it I got almost to the bus stop when I realised I forgot my nametag! That was ok to forget as I could borrow some random name if I didn't have it but I still would prefer to have my own. So in the long run rather than getting to work 40 mintues before my shift I got there 20 minutes before. So really no big deal.

The Pizza cart was allready opened so all I had to do was go out and begin working. It was pretty simple and was a completely closed cart so we had air conditining, and before I knew it 90 minutes had gone by. 2 hours into my shift one of my manages showed up to inform me there'd been a change. One of my co-workers was working a nut cart by himself. This was a problem for 2 reasons. Firstly it's a busy cart for one person (you need to basically make the nuts, while serving nuts, ice cream and bottled beverages, in other words it's a busy cart for 2 people). Secondly he hasn't worked nuts for about a month and has only been here for just over a month (thus he dosn't really remember how).

When I got to the cart it was really busy and I helped him just work and make a few batches of nuts (including ruining one) but never really got a chance to show him how to properly make them... he had a pretty good idea. about 105 minutes after I got to the cart the manager that moved me there called us on our cellphone/radio/walkie talkie thing telling me I was getting moved yet again! This time I was to report to the kitchen (where the Turkey Legs and Pretzels) are made because they needed runners. In other words my new job was to take Turkey Legs and Pretzels to carts as they needed them. Not too bad of a job if I may say so myself.

So I reported to the kitchen where I was able to basically sit for a bit while the pretzels were made and then it was off to the park. It was pretty easy work since tehre was actually only 4 carts to deliever to, and basically two sets of two (there are two sections of the park where there are two pretzel carts in close proximity, and only one turkey leg cart which is one of the pretzel carts). So the rest of my shift (From about 3-8:30) not counting breaks involved this work. I also got to make some pretzels which was pretty easy as well.

The real nice break came on my lunch break. Due to today being Independence Day there was a free BBQ at the ODF base. Completely free of charge I had 3 rolls (keeping the "bun" tradition alive, and for those of you who don't know at fancy meals I eat more than my share of buns/rolls), a cheeseburger, a BBQed chicken breast, and two cans of coke! It was great to not have to buy lunch and I'm pretty sure the food was better than the cafeteria food I've been buying.

Anyway it was one of the better days of work I've had but by the time I was done I was ready to come home and basically crash. I have the next two days off and really have no idea what I'm goign to do yet!

Discovery Day.

2006-07-03T23:39:00.000-04:00

Woo I'm back on a regualr schedule with this thing. Anyway this morning was my discovery day which is designed to be an orientation to the theme park before you start working. Since I had been working for a week allready I didn't really need the tour, or the ride on Spaceship Earth (basically a moving sidewalk boring ride). I did learn a few new things such as where I would go to get my paycheques, where I can get free popcorn, and where I can get cheap snacks.

When the discover day was over I went and bought a binder for my pins before heading to the Magic Kingdom where I bought Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest for Nintendo DS, and came home. When I got back to Chatham I joined my roomates in a trip to Publix to mail my mom's birthday present, and since I was rather hungry I bought some cookies and chicken as well as BBQ sause (I needed the sause but not the other stuff). After I ate I did the remainder of my laundry and then sat around all night. Pretty uneventful day to be honest.

Update!

2006-07-02T23:37:00.000-04:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Thursday June 29 2006

Ok so my shift on The Land Cart wasn't bad at all. There was a small change in the plans when I got to work leaving me opening the Nut cart that I had closed the previous night. We wern't there for much more than maybe 30 minutes before we were able to go to the Land Cart. When we got there we found out that there was 2 girls there who had another 2 hours of work remaining, so we went off to do some paperwork. At this point a guest asked me what was going on at the Rock-N-Rollercoaster, but being as it was in a different park I had no clue just what was going on. (Fox News story). Anyway when we were done the paperwork we got to have our lunch break. The rest of the shift was spent on the land cart. I enjoyed this cart becuase there wasn't a lot of food for sale. For food we had regular Lays potato chips, Nacho Cheese Doritos, and pretzels (with optional cheese dip). There was a lot of beverages though, we sold draft beer (Michalob), fountain pop, cappichinos/hot chocolate, bottled water and slurpies (blue raspberry, and raspberry lemonaid). Apparently the slurpie machines cause the most heat but it really wasn't all that bad. Anyway as always the shift went by quickly, yet the closing down/cleaning/counting stock took hours so I left late at midnight. I didn't mind so much because I got OT pay for it. There's not a lot to report about it otherwise, and I don't remember a whole lot more to be honest, except before the fireworks the three of us that were in training were doing the wave and we were trying to get the guests to wave and be dorks as well.

Friday June 30.

Today was a long long day, yet at the same time oh so fun! After my late night at work I had an early early morning. I had arranged to meet Shanan (from the Haunted Mansion) to go to the Animal Kingdom. When I met Shanan on the bus she had a friend with her as well who also worked in the Haunted Mansion. I believe his name was Migual and he was from Peurto Rico. Anyway it was the first time I had ever visted the park so we planned on getting there shortly after park opening meaning about an 8:30 bus for each of us. When we got there we decided to head for Expedition Everest and get a fast pass so we wouldn't have a huge line when we were ready to ride the ride. Once we had our fast passes in hand, we went to the Killimonjaro Safari, where we saw many animals from Elephants, to Giraffes, Lions, and hippos. We then went on a little walking tour thing where we saw a few more animals, Turtles, fish, Meerkats, and Gorillas. After we saw all of those animals we headed over to ride Expedition Everest. It was good but for some reason I expected a lot more. It was a little shorter than I expected and wasn't as intense (not to say that it wasn't intense) as I expected. From there we headed to the Dinoland area of the park and ate lunch at Restaurantasauras where my roomate Jared works. We didn't see him there however so we enjoyed our McDonalds (yes he came down here and got placed at what is basically a McDonalds), and headed over to a ride called Dinosaur. It was VERY similar to the Indiana Jones ride in Anaheim just with a different theme. The vehicle was basically the same and so was the ride mechanics. At this point we had done pretty much everything that we wanted to do in the park and it was barely the afternoon (maybe 1 or 2 oclock). We went to check the Kalai River Rapids but it had almost an hour line so we passed on it.

We decided to go to the Magic Kingdom, and to get there we figured we'd take a bus to the Grand Floradian and then take the monorail to the Magic Kingdom. While leaving the park I saw my first characters out in the park since I arrived, Baloo and King Louie from The Jungle Book. Once we left the park I spied some vending machines and paid my 2.50 for a Poweraid, heard the bottle drop in the machine but it never materialised. Miguel wanted a drink as well so he also tried to buy a poweraid in the hopes that we'd both end up getting our drinks. As you can probably guess neither of us got our drinks and in total we lost $5.00.

The Grand Floradian is Disney's flagship Florida hotel and I must say it is very posh/nice. We didn't spend a lot of time in it, but we walked in the lobby doors (you can see them in the top right of this picture) across the main room you see here, up some stairs and out to the Monorail (the station was above the main entrance). There was a Disney wedding going on that day as the coach was outside the hotel and the bride was getting her pictures taken to the left of this picture on the grand floor. We didn't have to wait long for the Monorail and we were off to the Magic Kingdom.

When we entered the Magic Kingdom I saw more characters! Donald Duck was by the flagpole and Chip and Dale were somewhat hidden off to the side. We then headed down mainstreet and into Adventure land. Our first stop was Pirates of the Carribean where we wanted to see if there was going to be a cast member preview or a soft opening (the ride is open but don't be mad if it's down for maintence if you want to ride it). Turns out neither was on the schedule except for a few CM previews on this upcoming Thurday (the day before the ride is set to re-open). We then headed off to get Fast Passes for Splash Mountain. Once we had those passes we went to see Mickey's Philharmagic where we got center row seats which made the show just that much better.

When the show was over Shanan had to temporarly leave to go to Vista Federal Credit Union to do some kind of banking. Me and Miguel did a little more exploring. I hadn't been to Toontown yet so we went there to do a little looking around, which didn't last long as Toon Town is small. On the way out we passed a pin cart and by browsing it I found a pin of Grumpy playing hockey and figureing I wouldn't find another hockey pin made sure to pick it up.

We then progressed onto Tomorrowland where we planned on riding Tomorrowland Transit Authority (Originally named The Peoplemover). Before we could get there though I saw one of the characters on my short list of characters to track down for Emily or Alisa (My cousions kids), Buzz Lightyear. So I grabbed a few pics of him and we headed onto the People Mover. After the ride we were surprised that Shanan hadn't arrived yet and began to head back towards Adventureland. While we were passing Cinderella Castle we noticed that Cinderellabration was starting (a show imported from Japan) so we paused to watch it as neither of us had actually seen it before. I maneged to get pictures of 5 princesses and their princes for Alisa thanks to this show! When it was over we continued on our way to Adventureland and I think I got a text message or something because we paused to sit on a bench. While I was typing my reply Shanan called and she was finally back in the park, I told her where we were and before I was done typing my text message reply she had rejoined our group.

We progressed back into Adventure land and went to Aladdin's Magic Carpets (which I've never been on). It's not a thrill ride by any stretch of the imagination but it was only a 10 minute wait. While we were standing in line someone Miguel knew went up to him and very quietly mentioned that there was currently a CM preview going on Pirates of the Carribbean. So we quite quickly left the short line for the carpets and made a beeline for PotC. When we got there we were told to head backstage where they would let us into the ride. I'm not going to say much about it since taking pictures was a terminatable offence (thus I have none), but the changes were nice. After the ride I was in a pirates mood so I ended up buying some PotC merch (including a pin showcasing one of the new parts of the ride to commemorate my CM preview). It was then time for our Splash Mountain fastpass so we went on that ride.

At this time it was getting close to the time Shanan would have to leave us to begin working in the Haunted Mansion and I had a need to ride that ride so we headed off to the Mansion. When we got there Shanan had to leave us because the wait was too long so me and Miguel went on the ride anyway. Thus I had managed to ride my 3 favorite Magic Kingdom rides in one day, even though one of them is currently under refirbishment! When we left the mansion Miguel showed me a ring embedded in the cement at the exit of the ride. This ring is apparently the ring of The Bride (a ghost in the ride). He also showed me where Mr. Toad's grave was (Mr. Toad's Wild Ride shut down in Florida to make room for a Winnie the Pooh ride thus he was immortialied in the graveyard at the HM).

Since we were pretty much done in the park at that point me and Miguel went on the Jungle Cruise (another ride I like and havn't had a chance to ride since I got here). When we were leaving Jei invited me over to her place to watch a movie (boondock saints) so I took the bus to the Commons instead of Chatham for the movie. It wasn't bad but I found it hard to follow (mostly because Mattieu and Amanda were talking at the start when the story was being established), but from what I understood it wasn't a bad show. I then headed off for Chatham where my roomate Watkins was quite depressed about his job and had allready booked a flight home...

Saturday July 1.

Well Canada day for me was somewhat uneventful. I slept in, went to Wal Mart (needed laundry soap, since I hadn't bought any yet and had hit dire times to do laundry), and did a few loads of laundry. About 3:30 I went to Epcot to see Jei who was working in the Canada pavilion for Canada Day (11-5 was the Canada day celebrations). Christine tagged along and while we were on the bus Jei called to tell us it was raining, and her popcorn cart had closed down and she was off to get a new (dry) costume. It just happened to work out that she was entering the cast services building to get her new costume as me and Christine were passing through it. Anyway to kill a bit of time and to let Jei get back to Canada me and Christine went to Mouse Gears (as far as I know it's the big merch shop in Epcot). Before we knew it, it was 4:45 so we headed off to Canada. The celebrations consisted of me getting some Candy (that was labeled product of Mexico), a bracelet (which might have been Native American/Canadian but looked like it could have come from Mexico as well) and some stickers that looked like they could have been Hot Wheels stickers (ie nothing to do with Canada).

Jei also showed me some Canada maps that they were handing out to people. Accoriding to these maps, P.E.I. dosn't exist, Halifax is spelt Halilfax, and theres Manotoba, and to really drive it home, Toronto is apparently our nations capital... In other words not much thought went into the celebrations. There was a lot of Canada flags everywhere and each provincal flag was setup. Those were probably the most positive parts of the celebration.

Well at 5 Jei was off work but she forgot to bring a change of clothes with her to Epcot, so instead of hanging around the park, we had to head back to The Commons so she could change out of her costume. This worked out well since Christine also needed to head back to Chatham to meet up with Jarad who was getting off work at 6. Me and Jei got off at the commons and she changed out of her costume and sat on her computer for a bit while I flipped between T2 Judgement Day and Blue Streak (which were both on TV, and were both brutally edited). We were mainly sitting around waiting for Christine and Jared to be ready to go back to the park. After about 2 hours we got the message from Christine that they'd be ready soon so me and Jei walked back to the commons only to watch the two of them run off to see a girl from Quebec who's apprently quitting. Me and Jei were a little frustrated but went to Epcot anyway so that we could be there in time for the fireworks (whats Canada day without fireworks).

Jei's roomate Amanda was working the popcorn cart when we arrived, and Jei asked if we could stand along the fence behind the cart. There's one person who's in a bit of authority there who came over to tell us we were ok this once, but it's for guests first cast members second. A minute or two later he came back and told the two of us to go through a small cast member section of the fence that took us behind a section of rocks but gave us a great view of the lagoon and thus the fireworks. We were also right underneith a speaker so we could hear all of the music clearly. It was a great view, but Matt Chan (who was behind us by the popcorn cart) started text messanging me trying to find us (which was impossable you couldn't see our spot from where he was). So I missed a bit of the fireworks while that was going on. We met up afterwards and went back to Mouse Gears where we guessed prices of various random items in the store for a bit. Matt and his roomate went home and me and Jei were thinking about going to Downtown Disney for some food. We jumped on the Monorail to go to the Magic Kingdom (so we could take a bus to DTD). But once we got to the MK we decided to just call it a night.

Sunday July 2
Happy Birthday mom! Today I had work from 11:00-7:30 on what I thought was a support shift (stocking carts or covering breaks). When I arrived I went to ODF Base to double check that and found out I was working an Ice Cream cart in Future World, meaning I had to go get a new costume. This one was so similar to my old one all I needed to do was get a new shirt and hat. Rather than the red shirt and white hat of my previous costime, my Future World shirt and hat were purple in colour with many random colours on them. But they're not as bad as I just made them sound (when I get my 3rd costume I'll take pics of all 3 of them). Anyway I was on my own on this cart all day, so it took me about an hour to get everything together, loaded up and pushed out to my loaction and then setup at my loaction (so about an hour before I was ready to start taking money from the guests). I then worked from about noon to 4:20 before someone came to cover me for an hour break. It also rained pretty solidly from about 3:00 until I went on my break. Honestly the rain was the worst part of my shift.

Because of the rain I had to make sure my money and touch screen PDA cash register thing were covered at all times. They were the most important items and since it was so tricky to keep them covered while I was using them. Oh well other than my troubles with keeping things dry my day alone on the cart was fun. I served 6 types of ice cream (sandwhiches and popscyle styles), bottled water, chips doritos and Cheetos. A pretty easy enough cart. Although after that long day at work my back is sore and I am pretty tired. Wattkins came home with good news he found a loophole and is transfering his job to Pleaseure Island thus he isn't leaving. Oh and did I mention HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM?

Ok I got behind again...

2006-06-29T09:27:00.002-04:00

Well I got a little behind again, I guess late nights and early mornings will do that. I'm going to do my best to sum up the last 4 days, the last two will be fairly short/easy to remember but I'm sorry Sunday and Monday will be a little off since they seem ages ago.

Saturday June 24 2006

Early morning today as mentioned at the end of my last entry. I ended up getting up at 5 AM for my Food and Beverage basic training. This wasn't very long but it was boring. THe first hour and a half was in a class room where we were introduced to Food and Beverage in general, watched a few movies, answered a few questions and watched a couple little role plays. It was a little tougher to stay awake in this class and one guy from Norway did fall asleep. When that was over we went up to a computer lab where we had to do about five online self directed classes, when we were done we could leave. About halfway though the classes (which were about things such as safety, guest interaction, food temperatures, etc.) I decided it was time to wake me up a bit and walked downstairs to a vending machine to get a snack (we were free to dictate our own breaks here). I can't remember what time I actually finished, but the longest we could have was until 11:30 and I was back in my room at that time.

I used my small window of freedom to begin catching up on my pictures (which to note are currently up to date. I will have more tomorrow and probably Saturday as well since they're both days off). After a little bit of work there I headed off to Wal Mart to get my work shoes. I did want to save this for another day but I needed them on Monday and the busses don't run on Sundays. When I got home I continued working on my pictures and got everything up to Thursday online and up to Friday ready to go. It was about this time Jei came over and me Jei, Christine and Mara went to the Disney/MGM studios again.

When we arrived at the Studios we went to try to ride the 'Rock-N-Rollercoaster but it had a huge line, and all the fastpasses were gone so we turned around and headed across the park to the backlot tour (which me and Christine has missed the last time we were at the park). It was kinda cool to see a lot of the props from a few different movies, yet at the same time I remember from my previous trip down here that it was a much longer experience then what we got on Saturday. When we left the tram we were all feeling a bit hungry but I was feeling sick (had a sore throat all day nothing too serious). We tried to go to the Sci Fi Cafe but it was basically reservation only so we then moved on to try a 50's diner (whos actual name escapes me). We still had a 20-30 minute wait for our table but that was fine.

The restaurant was pretty cool, it was designed to look like a steriotypical house in the 1950's. The servers had the house rules such as no elbows on the table, and it was a pretty cool atmosphere. Anway due to my throat I settled for a milkshake and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. We tried to rush out of the restaurant a bit because we wanted to catch the Rock-N-Rollercoaster while Fantasmic was on, we unfortunatly missed that window and had to fight our way through the crowds (that were heading out), but still didn't have too long of a wait at the ride. After the ride we all went back home, but Jei was feeling quite homesick so she came over to our place for a bit before she went back to her complex.

Sunday June 25 2006

Since I didn't have my real Epcot orientation and tour for a full week after I started work, I got John (who works in the World Showcase in Canada) to show me around Epcot today. We started off by going on the quite boring Spaceship Earth. To the uninformed this ride takes place inside of the Epcot "Ball" (or golf ball as I refer to it), and is really nothing more than one of those moving sidewalks that you have a chair for. After that we went to Test Track and grabbing a Fast Pass. Once we had those we headed over to Mission Space which is a ride a few people (with undiagnosed health problems) have died on reciently. Since I wasn't sure if I had any undiagnosed problems (and thought there was a history of heart problems in my family) I chose the new tamer version while John, Christine, and Mara went on the original version. The ride was pretty cool, the tame version is nothing more than a simulator ride, while the original version spins you around constantly to produce G forces on you. When the ride was over I realised I probably could have handled it since I used to ride the Gravatron so much and that didn't bug me. Oh well next time I'll know better.

At this point we headed across to "The Land" pavilion to ride Sorin' (Sorin' Over California for those of you who are familiar with the Anaheim attraction). It allready had an hour wait so again we grabbed Fast Passes. It was then off to the nearby Living Seas pavilion which is home to Turtle Talk with Crush (from Finding Nemo). The line for Turtle Talk was huge so we started to look at the aquariems a bit while we waited for Le Cellier (In the Canada pavilion) to open so we could go for lunch. We saw quite a few fishes, a dolphin, some rays, sharks, and a turtle. I also found out certified divers can dive in that tank.

After our walkthrough of the Living Seas we began the treck to Canada our first stop on the World Showcase. Of couse Le Cellier opens at 11:30 for lunch and it was about 11:10 at this point. We went in to see if we could put our name down (Since John works there it wouldn't have been much of a problem), however no one was around yet. John figured we'd have about 10 minutes so we began to explore Canada. Right outside of Le Cellier is the Victoria Gardens which were inspired by the Buchart Gardens in Victoria. We exited them and saw possible futre work locatiosn for me (if I get my call for the year program). There was an out door merchendice cart, and the outdoor popcorn/beer cart. We headed up some stairs to a set of totem poles an into the main merchendice shop.

This shop had a wide varity of typical Canadain things. There was some NHL merch but apparently we only have the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadains, and Vancouver Canucks up here... there was also come Chocolate bars brought in from Canada (I could tell because of the English and French packaging), some Roots gear, maple syrup, etc. Sterotypical Canadain things. We headed out the back entrance and found ourselfs outside the Hotel de Canada (I think thats it's name) which is inspired by a hotel in Quebec. Behind the Hotel (which I don't believe Guests could enter) was the Rockey Mountains. Here you would head down a set of stairs to a small creek running through the rocky walls. This area also proved as an entrace to the O Canada movie which has a 360 degree screen. We did not go to the movie. We walked through the ravine which brought us back out by the entrance of Le Cellier. At this point we could put our names down for a table and hugn out in the restaurant.

The food here was quite good, and appently is expensive if you go for supper since it is a steakhouse. According to John they use Alberta beef but I dunno for sure. I ended up ordering a Calgary Chicken Sandwhich which was a chicken breast with BBQ sauce and Canadian bacon (might've had some cheese as well I can't remember as I didn't taste it if it did) which I though was pretty worthy of the Calgary Stampede (just needed the Bullseye BBQ sauce). We then began to walk through the showcase. We didn't spend much time in the UK, but stopped in France to watch the movie there. John had a nap if that tells you anything about it, and continued on our journey. I can't remember the order of the next 5 countries, I think next was Morocco where we explored the shops a bit but didn't do much else, and then Japan which had a really cool shop with a lot of weird Japanese things I recognised (back scratchers with golf ball shaped massages on the end for example). I picked up a little Japanese candy and we continued on past the American Adventure into Germany and Italy where it started to rain in one of the countrys and we spend a lot of time exploring the shops.

When the rain stopped (or at least slowed down quite a bit) we continued on past the African Outpost, and China to Norway where there was an attraction to ride. At this point I began talking to Jei about plans for the evening since she was finishing her basic F&B training. After the Norway ride we went on the Mexican ride, and then used our fast pass for Sorin. Our final stop in Epcot was Test Track to use our fast pass and it was beginning to rain again. Apperantly Test Track dosn't opperate in the rain so we were a little anxious hoping to get the ride in. We got on the ride and breathed a sigh of relief but it was short lived... part way through the initial interior section of the ride the brakes slammed on and we came to a stop. We then proceded slowly through the ride spoiling any and all surprises for me until we got outside where the ride resumed normal speed until the finish. It was unfortunate but I'll have to ride it again in sunny weather now.

Anyway my phone was almost out of minutes so I told Jei we were leaving Epcot and to come over so we could figure out the night. When we arrived she was allready here so we hung out for a bit and figured we'd go to Downtown Disney so I could get a new phone card, before we headed back to Epcot to ride Test Track and view the preview of the 4th of July Fireworks. She then got upset at one of my roomates, told me she was sick, and was going to go home and have a nap. I figured out how to get a little money on my phone until I can make another trip and finished working on my pictures. While I was doing that Mattieu decided he was going to invite Jei and my roomate she was upset with to a movie (along with Jeis roomate who he likes). I felt a little dejected she jumped at the chance after cancelling with me to have a nap but what can you do. That left 3 of us in the apartment and we were going a little stir crazy so me and Wattkins called a cab and headed off to Wal Mart to get our TV and a Wireless router. Turned into a long and boring trip but wow what a difference those two pieces of technology make in the room! ANyway we sat around and watched a few shows such as Family Guy and Robot Chicken (I'd never seen this before but it had the same randomness I like from Family Guy). I ended up going to bed before Mattieu and Jared got home from the movie, but I was still awake when they got home. Apparently they went out for supper and then to Pleasure Island to the clubs. So I was a bit upset because Jei was too sick to watch the fireworks (which she wanted to) but wasn't too sick to go out dancing. Ah well no big deal...

Monday June 26 2006

Monday was set to be my first day of work, with me getting off early enough to go to the Magic Kingdom for fireworks. Anyway I got to work a little early and just sat and waitied. We started off by getting our costumes (only one pair of shorts there to fit me which wasn't cool). Then heading to some classrooms to do a few more training classes (Hazardous Materials, and Alcohol serving). We then headed off to Out Door Foods base (which was the next part of our training/tours). While we were there the skys opened up and didn't let up for hours. After an hour and a half they decided to cut our training off for the day and we all headed back to our residences. Jei was having her discovery day that day (the tour I don't get until the following monday), so she came over in her costume to show it off. Dosn't look bad, and my future in the Canada pavilions looking bright.

I was looking forward to the fireworks but it was raining pretty hard and it was calling for rain until 1 AM, so we came up with a backup plan of goign to see Cars or Click (both of which Jei wanted to see). She pulled out pictures from the previous night at Pleasure Island which was again frustrating for me, before Jared invited her to join him at the Studios with a bus leaving in 5 minuts. She jumped (literly) at the chance inviting me along. I was slightly frustrated since in less than a week she'd changed her plans with me 4 times for Jared and this would also be the 3rd time in the week that I was going to the Studios (it's fun but it isn't that exciting of a park...) and my body language showed it on the bus. Jei asked me what was wrong, I told her and she wasn't up for a park at all anymore that night. At this point the skys had cleared up and I decided I was going to the MK to see the fireworks like I wanted and Jei decided she was going home. We left Jared and Chrstine in the park and went back to the bus. I texted Matt Chan who was going to join us and told him I'd meet him at Vista Way (his apartment complex). We then went to the Magic Kingdom where I saw the Fireworks, a 3d movie called Mickey's Philharmagic and went on the Buzz Lightyear ride. We then left the parks where I came home and crashed.

Tuesday June 27 2006

Today was a long day but was short eventwise. First I got up early to head to the Vista credit union branch to set up my bank account. This didn't take long and apparently it'll be 2-3 weeks before I actually get my account, I do have the paperwork needed to cash paycheques until then though. I then came back to Chatham for a bit then turned around and left again because I wanted to go to Epcot early enough to buy a Pirates of the Caribbian pin set and check costuming for new shorts. I manged to get my pins, and unfortunatly there was no new shorts. I then got changed and proceded to ODF base for my shift on a popcorn cart just off the World Showcase lagoon. We had to wheel out our cart full of pop and a few other supplies and then we began setting up.

This wasn't as bad as I thought it wasn't overly busy yet at the same time, time flew by. It was an 8.5 hour shift and we ended up getting a 60 minute break in the middle. We also had a pretty decient view of the fireworks. We sold popcorn in boxes or souvineer buckets, coke, diet coke, sprite, small or large bottles of water, Budweiser, or Bud Light and a neck strap for the pop bottles. Pretty uneventful and rain kept a lot of our business away so we had a lot of stock to count at night. There was two of us training here so we were able to do it pretty easily, yet we still ended up leaving about 45 minutes late at 11:15... I came home to see my Quebecois roomates having a small party which was fine I went on my laptop for a bit before crashing in bed.

Wednesday June 28 2006

Today was similar to Monday only I worked earlier but with a longer shift. 10.5 hours long! I still got up early and left early to get a special 2006 Canada Day pin as well as check costuming for shorts. Today I was in luck there was maybe 6 or 7 shorts my size so I grabbed 3 pairs of random lengths, so long as the waist fits I don't care so much as to how long they are. They're all pretty close in length though so it's not a huge deal. Todays shift was on a roatsed nut cart near the world showcase lagoon, just past where my popcorn cart was. This cart didn't reqire us to wheel out any sections of it, we just had to wheel out a few supplies, unlock everything and begin making nuts. These nuts are roasted with cinimin and sugar, for about 20 minutes so they have a small glaze to them, and you have a choice of Pecans or Almonds. We sold all the same stock as the previous carts (except for the popcorn). We also had six varities of ice cream and two different types of frozed lemonaid. Today there was 3 of us training on the cart though so that made it a bit easier. I didn't like it as much as popcorn but it was very similar. It started raining and due to close lightning someone made a (rare) decision to close all of the carts in the park. They were suddenely quite busy in the back as all that stock started to appear. We still had to close down and clean like we did the previous night and the three of us training were happy to be leaving early, but not just yet we had some paperwork to fill out and somehow were rangeled into filling bags of ice for tomorrow (today's now) carts. It wasn't all that bad but it was still nice to get home.

It seems pretty much everyone I know seems to hate their jobs which is part of the reason for the party tonight and for my other roomates moping around a bit tonight. I guess in that since I don't have it too bad. Anyway I sat up for a bit with them on my lap top watching TV before I was too tired and headed off to bed.

It's currently about 11:30 in the morning and I have another 2-10:30 shift today on The Land cart which is apparently hotter inside than the surronding environment. However it is an indoor cart (I think) so that means little to no sun will be on me and from what I understand the only food item we sell is pretzals so it should be too bad of a day. We do have Slurpies, pop, cappichino and beer so it'll be beverage central, which I'd prefer to a varity of foods. Tomorrow me and Shannan from the haunted mansion) are going to spend most of the day at the Animal Kingdom park, and Canada day I also have off work but I'm still not 100% sure what my plans will be for that day.

See told you I'd try to be better....

2006-06-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

Woo I'm actually updating my blog today about... TODAY! It was a long day and tomorrows an early morning so again I may skimp a few unimportant details (if you want more info contact me I think my contact info is around somewhere here).

Today started early because I had a few things to do before the 11:45 am bus to Traditions. I decided last night while typing my blog I was going to get up at 8 and head for a quick swim in the Chatham pool. Just as nice as it was when I arrived but no one was in it. I didn't stay long before coming home to get showered for my next morning adventure (and the main reason I had to get up before traditions).

When I got my Chatham ID, apparently someone forgot to laminate it and for the past two days everytime I touched it (ie to board a bus or enter a housing property) I basically erased something. I found out yesterday I had to travel to Vista (probably a 20 min or less bus ride) just to get a new one. Since I wanted this before traditions that left this morning for me to make the trip. It was pretty uneventful, like going to get your drivers liscence, and thankfully I got home and had some time to relax before heading off to Traditions. I did some tinkering with my pictures to attempt to make them work better but am still not ready to try (I'm actually thinking tomorrow my picture site SHOULD work).

Anyway about 11:15ish I got in my suit to go to Traditions (needed formal wear). Thankfully it didn't seem that hot out when I went off to the bus. All of us new people had a special charter bus to the Disney University for this class and it was interesting to see the what some people considered professional attire, yet none were turned away (as you would be if you aren't dressed appropriate), at least none that I saw...

Anyway our traditions was a 4 hour course, and apparently it's usually an 8 hour course so I feel privlidaged (I'm sure that's spelt wrong...)! Traditions was basically our first work day, meaning I am going to get paid for it! In a nut shell traditions is a course that EVERY employee at Disney has to take before starting work. It's a basic training course (Safety, policies, etc.) combined with a history of the company. It started off interesting but got a little dry when we entered the topic of the policies. One cool thing is that some people got little figurienes when the answered a question correctly. My whole table got one each, and not to toot my own horn it was mostly because of me.

What we had to do was we had 90 seconds to list as many animated Disney characters as possilbe, and my group actually won by 3 with 38 different characters. My group elected me to be "captain" so I got to write down the names... good choice because I just flew without a lot of input for the team (but not to take all their credit they did each help out while I was going). It wasn't the neatest writing but spelling didn't count. The list we came up with was Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Chip (chipmunk), Dale, Belle, Beast, Chip (cup from Beauty and the Beast), Mrs. potts, Auroa, Snow White, Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopy, Doc, Sneezy (yes only 5/7), Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Tinkerbell, Timon, Pumba, Jafar, Aladdin, Jafar (yes I listed him twice but he only counted once), Iago, Scrooge McDuck, Huey, Duey, Louie, Alice, White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts, Mike (Monsters Inc), Sulley, Boo, Nemo, Lightning McQueen.

My strategy involved picking one movie and writing every character I could think of as fast as I could and the second I got stuck I'd pick a new movie. My teamates helped by calling naming characters that I didn't have and that helped me pick a new movie. So we got our little figurines and I dunno what I was looking at when they arrived but when I looked down two people had grabbed the Goofy's, and one had grabbed Simba leaving me with Minnie Mouse. Now this isn't bad at all but out of the 3 types to choose from she is my least favorite. Oh well I got something out if it and it still is cool in that sense.

Also while at traditions in one of the two breaks they gave us I went to Company D (a Disney Castmember only store) to buy a lanyard for both my Chatham ID and my Disney ID. Along with getting our Disney ID at Traditions we also got our name tags, which a picutre of will appear in my pictues when I get the time to figure out whats going on with them).

Once traditions was over I was in a big hurry to get back to Chatham because a large group of us was going to the Magic Kingdom. It turned out that we were going to have about 45 minutes at chatham before we left so I called Jei (who got a Florida cell today) and both her and her roomate Amanda came over to join us since the bus to Magic Kingdom dosn;t leave from their housing complex. Seven of us made the trip, Me, Jei, Amanda, Jared, Matt, Wilkins and Christine. When we arrived we met up with John and began heading over to The Jungle Cruise to see if Louisa was working (someone that they know better than me who's on a program.)

Whe we arrived it turned out she was working and running a boat today which would have been cool but we decided to pass on waiting in line, with the potential to wait another 10-15 minutes for her boat... Maybe next time. We then moved on to Splash Mountain where we decided to get Fast Passes and end our night with, and went to Big Thunder Mountain.

Now this was Amanda's first time at any Disney park so I think this was a good ride for her to experience as a first ride. It wasn't a very long wait and is longer than the one in Anaheim for sure. When it was finished we met Matt Chan and his roomate Matt (yes that makes 3 matts in the group.......) and headed off to The Haunted Mansion to see Shanan and ride the ride. She was working up front in a position I believe is called greeter (too bad I wanted to ride in her stretching room ah well). After a quick chat we headed into the ride which is slightly different (I think maybe a bit longer) than the one in Anaheim... the outside of the building is definatly different!

Anyway after this we figured Space Mountain would be a good bet, since there was a parade starting so we headed off across the park to experience it. We got seperated and Me, Amanda, Matheiu, and Willkins were on our own. In my rocket Jei was in front, with me in the middle and Wilkins in the back... Jei was almost more entertaining than the ride itself! We were then offered (by matts roomate who was unloading) another ride so back we went and were on before we knew it. This time I got the front of my rocked and I rather enjoyed that seat.

After our two space mountain times we decided to head to Splash Mountain to use our fastpasses, and this is where Matt Chan and his roomate bid us goodbye. It was about this time our fast passes became active however the parade was just ending by splash mountain thus there was still a mad mob... we got in pretty quickly though, and luckily there was 8 of us, perfect for the 8 person log.

THe Wishes fireworks started while we were on the ride so that was quite cool to see, well from what little we could see of it, but I'm sure you can all guess what that ment for our park exit plans..... Anyway John and me were thinking about buying the picture and it was cool looking so we did. We got two prints for about 8 bucks each which was a pretty good deal (smaller than normal but a normal sice one is currently 17 bucksish!), and everyone started their treck to the exit of the park.

Of course it was about this time the fireworks ended and when we reached mainstreet we hit a major traffic jam. John was going to stay with Christine and Jared, so the rest of us headed off to move slowly through the crowd. When we reached the main enterance somehow we noticed Christine and Jared ahead of us so we met up with them again, apparently John lost his cellphone today somewhere in the MK (although it would have had to have been, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain or while walking).

Once outside we had to wait a bit for a monorail (due to the crowds) and when we arrived where we needed to go no one knew where to go for our bus, it pulled up as we were arriving to the correct spot so we all headed back to Chatham where Amanda and Jei headed back off to the commons.

Tomorrow morning I have basic Food and Beverage training at 7, but I need to catch a bus at 6 which means aprox a 5 am wake up time (4 hours away) so I should be off. After work I plan on going and setting up my bank accout and getting work shoes. Jei wants to go to Animal Kingdom just to ride everest but I don't think we're going to have time when her Traditions is over. If not I plan on relaxing around chatham, I need a bit of a break!

Finally I can update!

2006-06-23T00:15:00.000-04:00

Finally I get a chance to update! I would've like to do more detail and maybe I can in future posts but here is pretty much everything that I can remember about the last 3 days.

Ok the red eye flight from Calgary, I was a little tired but decided I'd try to watch the Pink Panther as my plane had little touch screen tvs in the seats where you could choose movies or music or TV shows to watch. I got about 5 minutes into the movie and decided I was going to try to sleep. I pulled out my iPod, set it to shuffle and unsuccessfully attempted to get some sleep. A few hours later I noticed it was light out and gave up on the sleep, and played some video games until I landed in Montreal.

When I arrived I followed the signs to the USA transfer baggage claim where I met Christine. Jei was also suppsoted to be there but apparently hadn't arrived yet. Christine had all of her bags and within minutes I had mine as well. While we were waiting for Jei and Brodie to show up (we had all planned the same flight to Orlando), we happened to notice some bright pink luggage on the luggage belt. Knowing Jei had bought pink luggage, we checked the tags and realising it was hers, pulled if off the belt for her. Eventually she arrived and Brodie's luggage showed up. We grabbed his luggage and waitied, and waited, and waited... eventually Christine decided to go look for him so we could go through customs, and literly no less than 30 secconds after she left Brodie walked in so we ended up having to wait for Christine.

She didn't take long to show up so we went through customs which was another adventure. Since me and Christine were replacing people on our program we had to go off into a seperate room. Christine had forgotten a bag a few minutes ago by where we had to fill out forms and the customs agent didn't seem too impressed but nothing happend which was fortunate. After a few stressful minutes we were called up (individually) and were asked questions like where we were going and why we were going there. Simple questions and we had our Visa and were off to the gate.

When we arrived in Orlando after a 3 hour flight that seemed much longer, we met our Disney person by our baggage claim, told us where we were staying (Chatham Square which is what I wanted) and he took us off to a waiting area for our bus. There was only 4 people on the bus to Chatham, me, Christine, Matt from Montreal and a guy from Brazil that I didn't meet. WHen we arrived he even requsted to be moved to Vista Way (not sure if it happened). Anyway we found out that me and Matt were in the same apartment, and Christine was in our building just under us! So that was awsome.

Now our bus driver had to drop us out on the sidewalk outside the complex, and our building was in the back corner. This wasn't much of a problem for me and Matt with our rolling suitcases, but Christine had a backpack, laptop case, duffelbag, and a hockey bag... in other words NO WHEELS. Matt took her laptop case on top of his rolling suitcase and I helped her put her hockey bag on as a backpack after she put her backpack on her front. About halfway to our apartment though she couldn't breathe so I swaped her one of my rolling suitcases for her hockey bag for the rest of the trip. At this point I desperatly needed a shower but me and Christine decided to take a quick swim in the pool first.

The Chatham pool was much nicer than I expected! I was expecting it to be cold but it was nice and warm and I plan on visiting it often! Matt came down with me and Christine but tried to take a nap in the sun on one of the lounging chairs. We didn't stay long because we didn't have suntan lotion and started getting hungry. While we were there Christine showed me her shoulder and she definatly broke some blood vessals or something with that hockey bag. We decided to check out the outlet mall for lunch so we headed back for our showers.

When I was done having my shower I checked my e-mail to find out Jei was alone in her apartment and wanted to hang out so I invited her along for food as well. Matt decided to join us and we went to get Christine. When we arrived we found out her roomate Mara had arrived. Mara was interviewed the same time as me and all of us had talked online for abit so she joined us as well and off we went on our short walk (10-15 minutes) to Jei's.

We decided to head to the outlet mall across the road for lunch but that turned into an interesting adventure as well. There was a wall up in teh way so we headed left along to wall to try to find the end, and we eventually did but then we had to walk back towards the outlet mall. After a few minutes of searching (the outdoor mall) we found the foodcourt and headed for subway.

After we ate I had the BRILLANT idea to try going around the other side of the outlet mall since we were going back to Chatham. It made sence in principal since chatham is about half a block farther down then the Commons (where Jei lives and we originally started our trek to the outlet mall). Anyway to make a long story short we had to walk way far out of the way and would up a block further... not sure if anyone was impressed with the suggestion but noone let me know if they were upset.

We then got to show Jei Chatham, and she seemed to enjoy it much more than the Commons. We all headed off to Wal Mart to grab some nessicities like towels and sheets and things like that. I didn't get much food since we decided we'd go Wednesday again so I grabbed a few small things for breakfast.

When we got back I started to finish unpacking (still not done now though) and put away my wal mart items before calling it a night.

Wednesday
Today wound up to be a long day but our elaborate plans didn't work out. Originally we all thought we'd be done early and would be going to Downtown Disney to see Cars, have supper, and I'd get my cell phone as well as our Wal Mart Trip... Turns out that Me, Matt, Christine and Mara had a full day of paper work to do and didn't manage to get home until around 4ish. While we were spending our 3 hours on the bus outside of the Social Security we realised one of my roomates was a good friend of Jeis that she was trying to locate the day before so I suggested instead of taking the bus back to Chatham we'd instead go to the commons and surprise her... well it turns out we were so late she went off to Wal Mart without us so we got to go back to the commons... shortly after we got back she got home and I let Jared (her friend) use my computer to talk to her and she came over. We basically tried to keep up the illusion we didn't know each other until she got here but I'm sure she knew when his room was the same as my room.

Also while this was going on John finally surfaced out of no where and needed to make a trip to Wal Mart as well, since he had teh night off I invited him to join us and he was in Chatham before Jei was.

Anyway since Jei didn't have to go to Wal Mart but a bunch of us still needed food, we left her in the apartment with Jared and made our quick trip to Wal Mart. In an hour I got about 90 dollars worth of food and a few other things I had missed the night before... man it was heavy! Me and Matt both filled our own carts and thats a lot to haul across Chatham. They do have cool food down here though I got Reese's brand peanut butter for example! By this time it was too late to see Cars, and when we got back I noticed we only had about 5 minutes to get to downtown disney if we wanted to eat and get me my cell phone. Me, John, Chritine and Mara all made that bus, and Jei and Jared said they'd come by on the next bus meeting us at Planet Holleywood.

So we all ran to the bus and made it with time to spare and were off to Downtown Disney! When we arrived we went straight to Virgin Records to get me my Virgin mobile phone. It didn't take me long to find the $50 flip phone I was told about so I grabbed it and a $20 phone card paid and we were off to Planet Hollywood. When we arrived we found out they wouldn't seat us until everyone arrived so we had about 30 minutes to kill.

Me and John began to try to open my phone so I could set it up... it took most of our half hour which was good but then I found out I had to basically set it up online so it was pretty worthless. Christine had a hunch that Jei and Jared wern't coming so John phoned Jei's place and we were told she had left for Downtown Disney so that was great news... at about midnight (10 minutes after they should have arrived) I phoned my place and got ahold of Jared, because Jei started training today at 6 something they decided not to come and since they didn't have Johns cell they couldn't get ahold of us... so we just went and got our table.

We all had a pretty good meal, Mara and Christine shared a appatiser, while me and John each got a burger. When we were done we did some exploring of the movie memorebilia around the restaurant before we caught the 1:30 am bus back to the residences... it was a LONG ride with me and Christine not getting home until 2:20... I felt bad and tried not to wake up any of my roomates, fortunatly I only work up one but thankfully he had just gotten to bed so he wasn't really sleeping yet.

Thursday
Today seemed innocent enough from our itinnary. We had to board a bus at 9. Get our training schedules at 9:30, board another bus at 10:30 and sign in with international recruting at 11. So it was pretty natural we planned on going to Cars tonight since last night didn't pan out... well we still haven't seen it!

Matt's alarm went off early enough that after I showerd I managed to activate my cell phone so it was officially good to go at this point (came in handy today!)

One of my roomates had managed to get himself into the magic kingdom Wednesday night without his Disney ID (which we get on Friday). So we decided that when we were done we'd hit up Property Control (massive discoutns on merch... kinda like Winners) and then try to get into MGM. When we got to where we picked up our trainingh scheduels I was one of the first people through and got a picture of my uniform which thankfully isn't TOOOO bad. The worst part has to be the white shoes I get to wear. Other than that I wear either Khakies or khakie shorts with a black belt, and what is essentially a red polo shirt. I also have the option of a white visor or straw hat.

The weirdest thing on my schedule was my Discovery Day (orientation basically) is a whole WEEK after I start work. I wasn't too thrilled with that. Very fortunatly for me I have Sunday off and John (who has been working in Epcot since March) also has Sunday off. I have since cashed in on a promised tour so I will know where everything is come Monday morning.

Anyway our bus left early for The Commons so we got to sit around for a half hour while we waited. Thankfully after maybe 10 or 15 minutes they let us into an air conditioned room, but they didn't start until everyone else arrived almost 30 minutes later. Signing in turned out to be paper work... we had to sign a bunch of stuff and that took about an hour... we finished around noon.

At this point we had set up with John that I'd call him and we'd go to property control before heading off to MGM. First I called Jei to see if she was free and wanted to join us. She did want to join us but unfortunatly had some training stuff at 2. We figured a few hours would be nice so we agreed to go at 4 instead so she could join us. While John started getting ready I went and met Jeis roomate who seemed quite nice. While I was there Jei got a phone call and made other plans for the night so at about a quater to two I left for Johns, and we got everyone together and went to property control early. Before we left I finally got a chance to talk to Matt Chan (from Alberta) and he met us on the bus when it arrived at Vista Way.

I was a little dissapointed because all of the 75% off stuff was visably damamged in some way, but I got a cool Pirates of the Caribian plastic gun for 50 cents and an epcot passport (with just a damaged box) for 2.50. We then went to a location that was basically discontinued merch at 20% off so I got a WDW International Programs day planner, a notebook, and two books which totaled around $25. Since the bus only went to Vista and Chatham, Matt took his stuff home and me, John, Matt (my roomate) and Christine all brought our stuff back to Chatham.

we had about 45 minutes before the bus to MGM Studios, so we checked out our swag for a bit and then went out to the bus. Just like for Property control Matt joined us as well. When we got to MGM, my roomate who got in the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday was there as well ready to attempt MGM admission. We let him do the talking for us and within 5 minutes we were all in MGM.

First stop was the Rockin Rollercoaster which shockingly had maybe a 20 minute wait. Our first ride has some kind of malfunction and we didn't have the Aerosmith music playing so we were alloud thorugh a hallway to ride it again. It was a great ride. A dark rollercoaster with a boosted/quick start. After our two rides of that we set off across the park to dake the backlot tour. Unfortunatly when we arrived it was closed so we went back and rode Star Tours instead. After a snack stop, John, Matt C, and Christine all then went on the tower of terror while me and Matt waitied outside. When that was done we all went on the Rockin Rollercoaster a 3rd time, since Fantasmic was on neither ride had a long line and everyone else went on the Tower of Terror again leaving me and Matt to wander arround so we checked a few shops before meeting up with the ToT Trio again. We then headed off to watch the 10:30 Fantasmic show.

Fantasmic at MGM is in my opinion better than the Disneyland version. It's longer, has bleachers, and has it's own set (thus not taking over a good chunk of the park). I plan on seeing it again a few more times as it's just that good!

After that we took our busses back to our residences and I've spent almost 2 hours chatting on MSN and trying to get these 3 days updated. I'll hopefully be a little more regular and detailed with future entries so we shall see.