crazy week!

Saturday:
Saturday was my official Downtown Disney orientation called "Our Town." It was alright but boring at times. We basically learnt the past, present and future of Downtown Disney and walked around. Walking around was not the best because it was like 492487589 degrees out!!! and a lot of it was just explaining what was in the stores and after you've been there so many times  you pretty much already know what is inside the stores.
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Sunday:
World of Disney training!! My roommate went through this while I had a day off and she absolutely hated it. She said her trainer was and the group was annoying. But we had some great trainers!! We pretty much just toured the store and did a little bit of e learning stuff! World of Disney is slowly becoming a lot smaller!

Monday:
Merchantainment! Probably the boringest part of my training so far! It was a class on how to work the regiesters and on loss prevention. They say working merchandise at Walt Disney World is a lot harder than working retail anywhere else but the register is really quite simply. The only good thing was I was being paid for this because it was just so long and boring! It was also at 8am but thank god my friend had a car because I would have had to get up at 5am just to be there on time.

Tuesday:
Register training at World of Disney! I had the most awesome trainer for this! Her name is Seema and she seems to be friends with just about everybody! I love how friendly she is because she makes it a lot easier to meet new friends! The first half of my training was pretty much meeting new people and talking to them! The second half was all register which I am not too bad at thank god! I also got put into the Great Hall North room which is the room with the entrance right behind the waterside stage. When the DJ dance party was going on Seema kept encouraging me to go out and dance on greet which I was totally okay with and loved every second of it! I enjoyed my shift a lot and met a few great people!

Wednesday:
Wednesday I worked with Alicia (my roommate) and before work we went to Earl of Sandwich. I normally wouldn't buy lunch but NONE of our stovetop burners were working and we still didn't have half of the supplies for the kitchen so we couldn't cook anything in the stove. This shift was even better because not only did I know exactly what I was doing on cash but Seema also made sure that I had at least an hour and a half outside on greet for the DJ dance party. The only thing that wasn't so great about my shift was as a mom and her little girl were walking out of the store he daughter felt dizzy and fainted. Her mother was screaming out for help so myself, Seema and a manager went to help her out. While the manager called for 911 and Seema calmed down the mother I was trying to distract the little brothers. They both looked around the age of 7 and were completely adorable. One of the boys clearly had cancer but was wearing a button that said "remission rules!" My manager made sure she took note of it and congratulated him and told him she was proud before he left. I got the brothers up and dancing with me to the music, talked to them about their favorite rides and characters and gave them their first pins for pin trading! We also took care of their purchase with a no strings attached card. This card basically means Disney has taken care of it and the customer doesn't need to purchase a thing. Before going to bed Alicia was telling me she didn't like her training and was really considering leaving like she had been talking about all week.

Thursday:
Thursday morning I wake up to find Alicia's side of the room completely packed up and the first words she said to me were "oh good, you're up. I'm leaving tomorrow morning." I was sooooo shocked she had made a decision so fast! So I woke up and hung around the pool and then went to Walmart with Alicia to return a bunch of her stuff. And we went out for dinner at Cici's with our friends Hailey, Kellie and Katie! That night was the night in lights welcome party that the Disney Housing offered. It wasn't too bad but I only knew a few people going. Alicia was too tired and others just weren't interested so I went with a girl I knew from home and her friend which ended up being a lot of fun!

Friday:
I woke up to an empty apartment and it was weird! This was also the Monstrous Summer All Nighter at Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately all cast member IDs were banned from the park and everyone was working. I had nothing to do so I figured I would pick up a shift. I worked Fantasyland Zone 2 which includes the Seven Dwarves Mine, Enchanted Grove (the cart outside of the Merida meet and greet), and Pooh's Hundred Acre Goods. I LOVED it. It was a little weird at first. I couldn't find lockers or anything/anywhere to put my stuff so I asked a manager who put it on her desk in a locked room. This made it pretty hard to get to on breaks so I ended up buying lunch in the Mouseketeria. I got to know the utilidoors a lot better and I really hope I pick up more shifts around there. I loved the atmosphere, guests, and cast members. Lucky for me I picked up an easy shift. Just 5-12!! Most people I talked to had crazy shifts like 5-6:30am or something like that. It was kind of scary coming back to an empty apartment but I learned to love it. I got off of my shift really late and ended up getting back around 2:30 or 3.

Saturday:
I woke up to the sound of someone walking into my apartment.... how scary. Turns out I got a new roommate! Her name is Lauren and she is from Alabama. I am happy that she moved in because she is super nice. I had my stock training on this day which was 330-12 and it wasn't bad at all I loved it. I love everything about my job!!

Sunday:
I had the day off and Julia and I hit up Hollywood Studios for a reservation at 50's Prime Time Diner. I LOVE this restaurant. The themeing, the drinks, the food everything. This time unfortunately I was not as impressed. It may have been that we were just a party of two teenagers or it could be that is was lunch time I'm not sure. The food was delicious but not worth the money because really you pay for the atmosphere which wasn't all the impressive. It was Sunday of memorial day weekend and Star Wars weekends so the park was absolutely PACKED. The wait lines at one point were 180 for TSM, 130 for Rock'n'Roller coaster and 70 for Tower of Terror. It was crazy. So we met up with our other friends Katie, Haily, and Kelly. We were all waiting in front of the stage for the Hoopla! The Hoopla was hilarious  It probably would have been better if I knew who these Star Wars characters were but either way it was hilarious. While we were waiting I overheard a conversation behind us. A tween went up to the guy behind us and said "Has anyone ever told you, you look like Macklemore?" He said yeah and the kid asked if he really was Macklemore and the guy answered yeah. The kid ran over to his friends and then went onto to get pictures. EVERYONE around us old and young were asking for pictures. We were the only ones around who knew he wasn't actually Macklemore. It was hilarious watching him take pictures with his "biggest" fans. When the Hoopla started playing Thrift Shop everyone turned around and he just went along with it. After that we waited to watch the 10:30 Fantasmic viewing and got front row! It was a little wet but we loved it.

Monday:
We got another roommate!!! Her name is Alex and she is from California. She is super nice and I love her! I got so lucky with roommates! I also had my assessment at work which I passed :D 60/62 not to bad at all :D buuuuuut today (Tuesday) is the official day I earned my ears!! I am so excited to be..

AN OFFICIAL DISNEY CAST MEMBER 

First day of Disney Freedom!

All College Program participants are allowed to get into the Water Parks for free until June so I have decided to take advantage of it while I can. The first park I went to as a Disney Cast Member was Typhoon Lagoon with a girl I met in the immigration meeting. It turns out she lives in Burlington and goes to Laurier so she is pretty much my neighbour in every way! Her name is Kelly and is so so lucky because she will be working at Haunted Mansion.
Typhoon Lagoon had been closed all week because they needed to reapply for a water pump or something. The park was dead and I am assuming it was because no one knew it was open again or something. We got there about an hour after opening and did all the Crush'n'Gusher's, Shark Reef, Mayday Falls (or something like that), Lazy River and the Wave Pool! I got a little bit more burnt than planned.
As soon as I got home I grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to Epcot with Hailey. It was the only time I was going to be able to view the Flower and Garden Festival so we ran around Epcot for a little bit, mostly just the World Showcase. I tried Frushi and it was pretty delicious. Instead of Sushi and fish, it is FRushi. Sushi with fruit!

Afterwards we headed to Magic Kingdom for fireworks but before that did Space Mountain and watched the Main Street Electrical Parade. My friend Julia had only been to the Magic Kingdom during Traditions so she was in awe watching the fireworks and seeing the castle.

I have to say I got a lot done on my first official Disney day!

TRADITIONS

 I was so so so so so nervous about Traditions because of how strict they were the day before. I was afraid my shoes wouldn't be appropriate, my dress was too short or the wrong material but I was really freaking out about my hair. While I was in line for Traditions waiting to get checked in a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to go with him. OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAPPEN TO ME. He casually walked me down the hall and mentioned something about having the wrong paperwork. I had no idea what he was talking about so I just went with it. WELL, it turned out he had picked out the wrong person in line and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me!! HUGE relief but at the same time... still kind of freaking out a little bit.
When I went to check in I had to tell them my name where they would sign me in but there was a star beside my name which made him have to check another list. This other list was the list of people who had to change their hair and he literally looked at me for a good 2 seconds and then gave me my ID. For all he knew I didn't change my hair at all but whatever I wasn't going to argue!! My friend Julia had to change her hair as well but because hers was more of a drastic change she didn't get all of her highlights out so here's a tip that she came up with... girls, if you need to hide some of your highlights run dark mascara through your hair and put it up because you can't see the blonde or the mascara!! GENIUS.

So Traditions starts off pretty boring and is kind of mostly boring. A lot of it was repetitive because "Safe-D begins with me!" But they throw in some games and prizes to make it all fun! The history, present, and future of disney was interesting and I loved learning about it all! But of course the best part of the day was walking through the Magic Kingdom. You really don't do too much at MK but you do enough! You go through the Utilidors and my group entered through the Cast Member entrance beside Tony's and Le Chapeau. We walk up Main Street up to Mad Tea Party and then go back through the Cast Entrance to leave. We walk around Magic Kingdom to point out Disney's 4 keys, which trust me you will know all about when you arrive.

After Traditions of course everybody was doing parks because it's the first time you can use your passes!! But for me it was my family's last night so I spent it with them. They picked me up and we ate dinner at Applebee's and made our way to Downtown Disney to do some shopping. The first thing I bought with my discount for myself was a Disney Trivia book and I am very, very happy with this purchase! It was hard to say goodbye, but

"Never say goodbye, because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting"
-Peter Pan

just come catching up!

All last week there has just been meeting after meeting about immigration stuff and housing stuff. They told the scariest stories to try to keep us away from bars.
If I had a dollar everytime they said "Safe-D begins with me" I would be richer than Bill Gates. Honestly, these meetings are so boring and they just make it out to seem like the rest of your program will be horrible but I have already seen it getting better!
On Wednesday after a very, very boring immigration meeting I found out that my Traditions class was the afternoon class when I was really, really gunning for the morning because it was my family's last day here and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them. So I asked if I could switch it and she said no all the classes are full. Later on I went to Vista Way to hand in paper work and I was talking to some really, really nice ladies. I decided to try my luck with them so I just politely asked if there was anything they could do about it. They said absolutely they would figure something out for me when behind the computer there was a lady who must have been there when I asked in the morning because she pipes up and says, "no you already asked, there is nothing we can do." THAT FRUSTRATED ME. It would have been okay if there really was nothing they could do but these ladies were just trying to help me and I was finally getting somewhere but NOPE. too bad Caitlyn.
I was also told that I had to dye my roots because they were too dark compared to my roots. Most girls who had even a little bit of blonde in their hair had to get it re done so they were all going to a salon. I trust box dyes enough to save $50 bucks so I decided to ask my Grandma to do it for me when she offered to take me out to dinner because other than my brother everyone else was at Epcot. We ate at Bob Evans and I decided to spend the night at their house and go back to my apartment in the morning before Traditions which was actually a great idea. I got to spend some more time with my family before they left and it was great!

Pictures from the first few days