Hi

So I figured I should update this before my family decides to disown me. Of course, if you disown me, this means you don't get to stay at resorts. So there.

Anyway. So last update I was excited about going to the mall. The day of, I was considerably LESS excited about going to the mall. Here's what happened: Selina and I got up at the crack of stupid (aka about 10AM) so that we could catch the first bus and have optimum shopping time. ...Well, that bus filled up at Vista Way, so it never got to The Commons or Chatham Square. I was not amused. It also served to fuel my hatred for Vista Way that much more. Okay, so we go walk around the outlet mall for a while, Selina buys an awesome new coat (it was still kinda chilly at this point), and then we go back to catch the next (of only three) mall bus. THAT one filled up at Vista, and never made it to us. By this time, I am decidedly NOT AMUSED. Okay, FINE. We hop on the next bus heading to Vista and stake out the bus stop there, and hop on the mall bus as soon as it pulls in there. Good thing we did, because it also filled up and never made it anywhere else. So we finally got to the mall and had a mostly awesome time. I bought new books, and I got some new clothes from the awesomesauce clearance racks at Old Navy. I love Old Navy. Then, since the last bus was leaving at 8:30, we went out to the stop at 8:00. At 9:00 I called the dispatcher to find out where the heck this bus was. APPARENTLY it filled up at 8:15 and went back to Vista and we were just going to have to be patient while they dispatched another unit to pick up the extra people. Clearly, given the time we were out there, this is a lie. Eventually we got picked up at 9:20, and I crashed before my AM shift the next day.

I assigned on Thursday. I don't really remember that day. On Friday I worked AM popcorn, but I don't really remember that day either. Seems to me that it wasn't particularly busy that day.

On Saturday, I got off work and came home as Mel was planning to go out to Downtown Disney. She and David were planning to attempt to break the Canada Pavilion record for most times on Tower of Terror in one day, and wanted to make t-shirts at the Design-A-Tee to make it more official. So I accompanied her, and we decided to go to DisneyQuest, since she'd never been and we only stopped in briefly the last time we were on vacation here. We've discovered that the Pirates of the Caribbean game is particularly difficult when she's steering the virtual ship and I'm left to man six guns on my own (we still got the second-best ranking, though; clearly other people suck really bad). And dinosaurs still scare me. It was a lot of fun, though, and we'll probably go back sometime soon before we lose our free admission in February.

Sunday was fun. Selina and I got ERs, and we wanted to do a park. When I'd told Dad about eating in Animal Kingdom, he'd asked what animal I'd eaten, and I said chicken. He bet me there wasn't a chicken on the Tree of Life. I said there probably was. So, since Selina and I couldn't decide what park we wanted to do, we decided to just hop the next bus that pulled up that wasn't going to EPCOT. This happened to be the bus to Animal Kingdom. So off we went. We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, which was really cool. We weren't anywhere near the snake, which was uber-awesome. Even more awesome was that our table was underneath a giant toadstool, which made me feel very Alice in Wonderland-ish. Small things, small minds. Anyway. So after that, I told her I wanted to do a walk around the tree to see if I could spot a chicken, because of what Dad said. This turned into a three-hour ordeal during which I took pictures of every possible carving on that tree. Final verdict: there is not, in fact, a chicken on the Tree of Life. We had a ton of fun, though, exploring every possible angle on the tree, and walking through all the roots to find even more hidden-away carvings. We headed over to Magic Kingdom after that, because we love Magic Kingdom. That night, we decided that we wanted to do a 4 Park Challenge on Wednesday.

Monday was a holiday in the USA, so the park was crazy-busy, and I was closing popcorn. Whee. When I first got here, everyone kept telling me how much I looked like a girl who had worked here previously. A guest that night also mistook me for the same girl, oddly enough. It was kinda surreal. I really want to meet this girl now. I didn't go to games night because I was extremely tired. Not that I'm not always tired, but this was worse than usual.

Tuesday was grocery day. Yay food! I may or may not have a slight addiction to herb & garlic whipped cream cheese. Also, I needed more peanut butter so that I could have peanut butter and tomato on toast again. Mel and David had headed to the Studios for opening, so once my groceries were away and I'd had lunch, I headed over to meet up with them for a while. Their goal for the day was 60, and it seemed likely, since they were able to stay for Extra Magic Hours (I had to leave them when the park closed to non-resort people). However, what they didn't count on were the masses of Brazilian tour groups. Like, seriously. There are a ridiculous number of them right now. I so don't get it. Anyway, so when I met up with them at around 4PM, I expected them to be almost halfway done. They had just finished up ride 12. I seemed to be a bit of a lucky charm, though, because after I got there the cast members started helping them out. So from 4 until 7, when I had to go, we managed to get in 11 rides. I left them when they were going for ride 24, and apparently they made it to 30 before calling it quits. I still think they're nuts, but it was a lot of fun.

Wednesday was, in a nutshell, craziness. No one had volunteered to join us, so it was just Selina and I meeting up at the bus stop at 8AM to begin our 4 Park Challenge. I believe I explained this concept before, when David, Craig, Kim, and the Pitmans did it, but for those who are too lazy to go through my archives (ie. EVERYONE, including me), I'll go through it again. Four parks, one day. In each park, you must ride a thrill ride, a classic ride, and a random ride (pretty much whatever had the shortest line). You must also use all three modes of transportation: bus, monorail, and boat. In some challenges, people have decided that throughout the day you must have one quick service meal, one table service meal, and one snack. I'd taken this out because we already seemed quite pressed for time when I planned it out, so there was no way we were gonna be able to do it. In place of it, though, I added that we must take a picture with one character per park. Okay. So, we decided that it would be best to start with Hollywood Studios, because of Toy Story Midway Mania. This is arguably the most popular ride at WDW. Like, it has a longer standby line than Peter Pan (for those of you who have been here, you know that's saying something). The fastpasses are always gone by, like, noon. And now I know why, actually. When the park opens, cast members block most of the streets, so EVERYONE there at the time gets herded right to Toy Story. The fastpasses had a 10:00 opening window by the time we got to them, so we grabbed those (the standby line already said 60 minutes - I think that might be their default time) and then bee-lined it past the backlot area and up the Streets of America to hit up Star Tours, our classic ride. We were loaded right onto that, enjoyed it thoroughly (I may or may not mutter the whole thing under my breath while riding), and then (practically) ran over to Sunset Boulevard, where the Tower of Terror and Rock'n Roller Coaster are. Now, Selina doesn't do well with thrill rides. She's a screamer. So she was desperately hoping that the Tower of Terror line was longer so that she wouldn't have to face that one. She'd already done Rock'n Roller Coaster in the past, so it would be significantly less frightening. Luck was on her side. The sign totally lied to us, though, because our 5 minute wait was more like 15. No matter. We were ahead of schedule. When we got out, we were heading over to Animation Courtyard to get in line for Mickey as our character photo. However, there were a bunch of characters out by the sorcerer hat, and Daisy Duck had a total of about two people in her line, so we decided that was a better option. Then it was back to Toy Story for our fastpass time. We were out of the park and on the bus to Animal Kingdom by 10:30, an hour and a quarter ahead of schedule. Upon arriving to Animal Kingdom, we took our first washroom break, after being disappointed that there were no characters at the main gate to get that over with first. However, by the time we were done with our washroom break, Timon and Brer Bear had appeared, so we headed over to the (again) two-person line and blitzed our photo. We fastpassed Expedition Everest, and then headed to Dinoland for some cast-discounted quick service, since we had time and granola bars were totally not doing it for the energy we'd expended in the Studios. Originally we'd planned to ride the mini-coaster in Dinoland (I still can't work up the courage to do Dinosaur, and I wasn't too keen on getting soaked on Kali River Rapids), but that had a huge lineup, so we opted for the triceratop-themed Dumbo-like ride as our random. Then we sauntered over to Africa to ride Kilimanjaro Safaris as our classic ride. The wait was half of what it said it was, and then we were loaded into a car to see a ton of really awesome animals. Like, really. I wish I'd bothered to charge my camera battery so that I could've taken pictures on it, but I was empty-headed and didn't so I was stuck conserving what battery power I had to take our necessary pictures for the day. After that, we STILL had time to kill before our fastpasses for Everest, so we sauntered slowly back over to Asia. Selina did particularly awesome on that ride, only screaming about three times, and then we were done with that park. Somehow at this point we managed to gain ourselves an extra two hours. So at EPCOT we decided to have a table service meal to cut that time down. Well, first we rode Spaceship Earth as our classic (though we did it in Portuguese, which neither of us speaks; I've now done that ride in half of the languages it offers), and then went to grab fastpasses for Test Track. Our thrill ride here was actually the new virtual roller coaster in Innoventions, Sum of all Thrills, so we went in to do that. It was ridiculously awesome. What we built was actually a jet track, and kinda made me want to be a fighter pilot, feeding off of the wish that was already there from having been on Star Tours earlier (honestly, I'm dreading the day the refurbishment is installed and pod racing becomes part of it, because that's just going to make the strange want even worse). I stopped in briefly at work to inquire about a schedule change that was supposed to be happening for the next day, and then we went off to do our character photo. There were a bunch of characters at World Showplace, so we actually managed to get Geppetto and Gideon (from Pinocchio) before heading to the UK to see if they had availability at the Rose & Crown Pub. We got in right away, and were seated in the section of someone I knew. Given how much I socialize in general, much less outside my pavilion, this is somewhat surprising. But Anna and I had training together one day, and had a bit of a bonding moment over how we keep sloughing excess guests off on one another. She was a fantastic server, and the food was really good. Especially dessert! I make it a point to try an entree and dessert every time I'm somewhere new in WDW, and I couldn't make an exception here, despite how full I was. It was a raspberry tart with cake batter and almond paste involved somehow. Anyway. So after that we went back to Test Track, rode that, and then boarded the monorail for Magic Kingdom. However, when we got to the Transportation & Ticket Center, the ferry wasn't running. We were worried, because that was a totally unacceptable reason to fail the challenge. So we decided we would take it on the way home, since the cast members assured us it would be running then, and grabbed the monorail the rest of the way to the park. Somehow, and I really don't get this one, we still managed to be two hours ahead when we arrived at the gates. So don't get it. It shouldn't have been possible. Whatever. So we fastpass Space Mountain, decide that we're too full for the teacups, and go in search of a character (I hadn't had a repeat character photo all day, and didn't want to stop that streak right at the end). Well, 'it's a small world' was a walk-on (gee, I wonder why), so we suffered through that as our classic ride. Then we went over to Adventureland to see if Lilo and Stitch were still available. They were, and they had a shorter line than any other characters we'd seen in the park thus far anyway, so we got that done. We decided to just hop onto Pirates as our random, and that had a much longer line than we'd expected, probably due to the fact that one of the queue lines was closed. We still got on in decent time, and had time to do Haunted Mansion on the way back to Tomorrowland for Space Mountain. It's kind of impossible not to do Haunted Mansion when I'm in that park. We finally got back to Space Mountain, rode it, and then grabbed our snacks (yay free popcorn coupon!). We got trapped in the parade crowd for SpectroMagic, so we watched it whether we wanted to or not, and then stood on Main Street and tried to stay awake for Wishes. Eventually we made it back home, somewhat disappointed that our challenge was not challenging in the least (and I don't think it was for lack of people in the park, since we ran into at least one Brazilian tour group per park).

Yesterday I was greeter, and today I was assignor. Dinner was hell today. Just an observation.

And the quote of the week is...

"Would you take a bullet for a wonton?"

That comes to you courtesy of Taryn while dining at Yak & Yeti in Animal Kingdom the other day.

I think that's probably the only interesting story for the week, to be quite honest. Thursday I assigned; lunch was awesome, and dinner was a disaster. I'd rather not relive that. Friday I was popcorn stocker and FROZE outside. Like, seriously, you have no idea how cold it is here. Yes, Canada probably is colder, and yes, you have snow and we don't (or didn't anyway), but that doesn't stop it from feeling absolutely frigid when the temperature takes a sudden dive from a comfortable zone of about 55-65 Fahrenheit into 24 Fahrenheit. Not. Fun. Saturday, though, it actually did snow in Florida. Not much, and it mostly melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it was all over the news. The fact that the last time it snowed in Florida was '89 probably had something to do with that.

Saturday I was when I went out with Taryn. I got out of work at 3, rushed to Cast Services (where my cell phone was), called her, and set out our plans. I figured that EPCOT could be our fallback park, since it's open latest and I knew a lot of reservations had been open that day from doing searches for guests during my shift. But I've never eaten in Animal Kingdom before, ever, so I just HAD to do it. And it closed at 5. So Taryn hopped our bus line from home, and I booked it over to the Yacht Club Resort to catch the bus from there (I figured it was faster to head over the walkway to there than to go to the front of the park and hop a bus over there). Exactly one hour after I'd rounded the corner backstage to head over there, I was through the turnstiles. Taryn followed not long after. It's now about 4:15-4:20. Animal Kingdom closes at 5. We rushed against the crowds to Asia, and the lobby of Yak & Yeti was pretty much dead. Thankfully, though, they were still seating, and we got an awesome table with a window that overlooked the parade route. Why they were having their parade so late in the day is beyond me, but whatever. It was cool. And the food was awesome! Ros and Carol, imagine a place that looks like a Nepalese hotel, and serves the food from East. 'Cuz that's pretty much what it is. I love it! Afterwards we headed over to Hollywood Studios, where we stood in line for almost an hour for Midway Mania, and then rode The Great Movie Ride, since Taryn had never been on it. Then, of course, we had to do Rock'n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror. The view from Tower of Terror was GORGEOUS! All the lights were on, because it was dark, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky - it was crystal clear! If only it hadn't been about the temperature of Calgary...

Today has been my do-nothing day so far, but that's beginning to annoy me, so I think I might actually change out of my pj's and go do something for a while. Selina and I are going to Florida Mall tomorrow to raid their bookstore. Yay! New books!