Okay, I have no idea what happened to 'updating more often.' I was totally gonna do it! Then again, I kind of have the memory of a goldfish and the attention span of a two-year old, so that might have something to do with it. Every time I resolve to update this thing, someone swings something shiny in front of my face. Whatever.
So Dungeons & Dragons was a total blast, in a really, REALLY nerdy way. I won't really bother you with details, because 94% of you don't care about how well we actually seemed to do in out first encounter. But for those few of you who do care, I will say that I was playing a Level 5 Female Half Elf Paladin. Patrick created all our characters for us, and included pictures! Yay! I love mine; it's on my wall. She has green hair and a giant sword. Midway through our second encounter, we stopped to make tea and refresh drinks and whatever, and Ali passed out on the living room floor in the middle of a conversation. We decided that the game was probably over for the night at this point, and proceeded to geek out a bit more in Patrick's study before waking Ali up enough to get her into the car.
Wednesday was my last day of training, and Heather was my trainer! Yay! I still can't carry three dinner plates, OR two dinner plates plus a ketchup saucer, but I think by the end of that night I might have been doing three dessert plates. And at one point, I totally lost a plate of scallops in the dining room, which was when I decided for certain that no, taking three entree plates is NOT a good idea. But no one gave me a hugely hard time about it (though apparently there was some major griping outside my hearing), so whatever. If people are so worried about me dropping stuff, they can run their own food. That night, we had to say goodbye to Craig, Kelly, and Pierre-Luc. That really sucked big-time, especially because I spend at least two days a week hanging out with Craig at movie night and games night (when I remember what day of the week it is and go). But at least I have them on Facebook, so we haven't completely lost touch.
Thursday was my first non-training shift, and I think I did rather well. I only took what I knew I could take, I didn't drop anything, and I don't think anyone wanted to kill me by the end of my shift. I figure that's a pretty good day.
Friday Heather and I were both off, and we'd made a couple reservations when we were hanging out before the Throw Out on Wednesday. She had one restaurant left at the Grand Floridian, so we were having lunch there, but by some fluke we also managed to get into Chef Mickey's for breakfast! So Ali and Heather and I headed out that morning to the Contemporary to have an awesome buffet with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, and Donald. So much fun! The people sitting beside us were a pain, but mostly we ignored them in favour of the characters. And Mickey waffles. Then Ali went home to bed, because she was sick and barely had a voice, and Heather and I trekked over to Magic Kingdom to finish the last two attractions on her list there: The Enchanted Tiki Room, and Cinderella's Carousel. Of course, we did Haunted Mansion, too, but we've both done that too many times to count. We boarded the monorail and rode all the way around the track to the Grand Floridian for our lunch at the Grand Floridian Cafe. It was a really nice place, and the desserts were awesome! Turns out, one of the chefs who was at Le Cellier is now over there, so he came out and talked to us for a bit. Then it was home in the pouring rain to get some stuff done. Friday night Mel was packing so that she could go check in at the resort she was staying in with her family, but she kept procrastinating. I don't think I was much help, either, really. At one point we hopped over to Downtown Disney for the sole purpose of getting the awesome cookies you can get at Goofy's Candy Co., because one of us had mentioned them, and then we were both craving them until we gave in.
Saturday Ali played taxi once again (I feel so bad for abusing people with cars like this!) for Mel and I as Mel checked in at Animal Kingdom Lodge. Then we had lunch at one of the restaurants at the resort, Sanaa. So good! It's like Indian-African fusion food. I had curry and it was so good! And they have the bread service with the different breads and sauces, and then I had an orange something-seed cake for dessert that was absolutely amazing. I would definitely go back there again, which is good, because I have reservations there for when Mom and Aunt Bonnie are down. Later that day I was supposed to meet up with Drea, since she was coming down with her parents and sister, but they got caught in snow in Georgia, so that didn't really work out, which kinda really sucked, because she'd be the first person I'd seen from home since just before Christmas, and the person before that was my massage therapist...
Anyway, Sunday and Monday I worked, and I don't really remember much about them, except that I was there. Monday night I got a message from Drea asking if I was off Tuesday or Wednesday, which were my days off exactly. So I got to see Drea on Tuesday! I was so happy! We walked around the outlet mall for a couple hours and just talked about everything and nothing. Then she had to head back to her resort, and I headed home. It was quiet at my place, and there was nothing to do. I was extremely bored.
Much of Wednesday passed in the same way that Tuesday night did. I was bored out of my skull. Finally I got a hold of Taryn when she was done work, and we decided to head to a resort to eat. But it was after 8 before we were able to leave housing, so our choices were limited. We'd decided to go to the TTC so that we had our choice of the resorts along the monorail and boats from Magic Kingdom. Our first stop was Kona Cafe at the Polynesian, but the restaurant itself was booked and the seats at the sushi bar (which also serve the full Kona menu) weren't being bussed at all so that we could sit down. So we said forget it and headed over to the next stop on the line, the Grand Floridian. Obviously we weren't going to do Victoria & Albert's, because neither of us was dressed for it. At all. I'm pretty sure I was wearing my black and white Mickey skimmers. Anyway. We thought of Citrico's, but that still looked kind of expensive when we glanced at the menu, and 1900 Park Fare had stopped seating already, so we only had one place left at this resort: Narcoossee's. We debated it for a ridiculously long time before deciding that we might as well, and put ourselves on the list. We were seated in Tom's section, and he was an absolutely fantastic server. We both had a chicken dish, and I honestly can't remember the last time I had chicken that flavourful. It was so good! Taryn didn't like her dessert much, but mine was really good! ....Now if only I could remember what I had, that would be even better. I think it might've been some kind of cheesecake.
Thursday I picked up an assigning shift for Josh, since his brother was in town. Normally Thursday would be my third day off, but I figured, why not? It's extra money, and I'm not going to say no now and then want people to do the same for me when my family's here! Lunch got kinda crazy for a while because I got slammed with parties of four, but I got over it. Dinner was a lot slower than lunch, which was weird, but we made it through. It made me realize how much I miss assigning, though. Food running is all well and good, but it doesn't require the same amount of mental labour that assigning did, and anyone who knows me well enough knows that I'm a very mental person (in every sense of the word).
I've just finished up four straight days of food running now, and my hands and arms hurt what good. I only have one burn from the bread pans, and one tiny one from the food windows in the kitchen. I don't remember a whole lot of those days. Somewhere along the way I started carrying four dessert plates, which is kinda crazy when I still can't manage three entrees. But I think what stands out the most for me the past few days was dinner on Sunday. See, I was serving a table, and the kid from the table behind me on an angle for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to kneel on the floor behind me, where I couldn't see him in the already poorly lit dining room. I stepped back so that I could move around to serve the last steak I was holding, and stepped on the kid. Just wait, it gets better. I went down, backwards, partially on top of the kid, and into the empty table that was next to the table the kid was supposed to be sitting at. And remember, I had a steak in my hands still. SOMEHOW, and I'm not sure I could do it again if I tried, not that I would ever try, I managed to keep the steak perfectly balanced so that it didn't even shift on the plate! Aliyyah, whose table I'd fallen into, calls it a Matrix move, and I'm now known to her as Matrix Girl. I suppose there are worse ways to be known. My arm is kinda bruised and hurts what good, but falling backwards full force into a table can do that.
And now today is my Do Nothing day, because I'm exhausted. We'll see how long that lasts before my attention span and proximity to the parks demands that I go out and do something.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Another Week, Another Job
So. Animal Kingdom. Really early. Never Again. ...Well okay, maybe not never again, but never again in the rain, that's for sure! It rained pretty much the whole time we were on the tour. Eventually I bought an umbrella during our first break on the tour, but even after that capillary action meant that my pants were wet from the knee down. Plus my left coat sleeve was stuck to my arm, and I had to peel it off. Mel had a jacket with a hood, so she didn't opt to share my umbrella until she got to the point where her coat was so wet the water was coming through it. And we're both sick with colds. The tour was fun, though. We had a guy named Glen from Guest Relations take us around the East half of the park and tell us not the story behind the building of the attractions themselves, but the stories that the Imagineers made up for each of the attractions and areas to follow. So we started out on Discovery Island, and talked about the Tree a bit (the Tree is kinda still a sore spot with me right now), before heading to our first major stop: Dinoland, USA. Yay.
For those of you who don't speak fluent Mel N., that 'yay' was extremely sarcastic, so go ahead and read over it again in the proper tone of voice. ...Okay. We're good now. Anyway, that's because in Dinoland, USA is an intense thrill ride called Dinosaur! I have a rather intense fear of Dinosaurs that aren't on a tiny, flat, non-3-D screen (because I do enjoy Jurassic Park), never mind animatronic ones that kinda look realistic and try to eat you. And yes, I realize that they're extinct and they can't actually come and eat me, but I don't care. So, for part of our tour, we're told the story of Dinoland, USA as a whole, and how the institute had developed this new technology called Time Compression (which had me giggling a bit, because that's one of the major concepts during the last battle sequences of Final Fantasy VIII), and how you could actually go back to the age of the dinosaurs. So what's the next thing we do? We go back to the age of the dinosaurs! Now, obviously we have a choice as to whether or not we want to go on this ride, but this is as good an excuse as any to actually get me on the ride, since you have to try everything once (which is the only reason why I've seen the Playhouse Disney show at the Studios). Mel assured me that I would live through the ride. Well, I'm not sure whether or not me being in the ride vehicle actually counts, because I didn't see anything beyond the first ten seconds of the ride. I had my eyes closed the whole time, and at one point I also had my ears plugged and my coat lapels flung over my face. But I survived, so I figure that if I go on it once every time I'm in Animal Kingdom and get familiar enough with the sounds of the ride, I might eventually be able to open my eyes for some of it. We'll see.
Moving on, we did more Discovery Island (kangaroos!), and saw the 3D movie inside the Tree, 'It's Tough to be a Bug.' I'm not overly fond of this thing, either, but I'm not afraid of anything there eating me, so we're good. The last large area on our tour was my favourite section, Asia. We were told the story of the particular part of Asia we were meant to be in, and did the Maharaj Jungle Trek. By this point, everyone is soaked, and it decides to pour even harder. And we have to finish the walk still, because we're only halfway down the trail. There is a tomb halfway there though, so when we're stopped Glen asks us if we want to continue to our final stop afterwards, or just end the tour here, since we're all really, really wet. The last stop is the Forbidden Mountain, so like hell we're gonna skip that! He's surprised at our resilience, but honestly, who doesn't love a good yeti?
So we walk through the queue line of Expedition: Everest and we're told about the things on the walls and all the decorations around us (Mel points out at least three hidden Mickeys). Eventually we get to the front of the line (which had a whopping 5 minute wait due to the rain) and those who want to ride can. Honestly, I was all for it, because I love Everest (to the astonishment of one of the guys on the tour who'd ridden Dinosaur with me). But then Mel brought up a good point: Everest goes outside a lot, like at least half the track is outdoors. Doing high-speed rides in the rain HURTS. So we didn't do it. And we definitely weren't the only ones. Once the weirdos got off the ride and met us in the gift shop, Glen said good-bye to us, and we all went our separate ways. Mel and I went to Yak & Yeti for some hot food, hot tea, and a chance to use the freakishly high-powered hand driers they have there. Then we came back home, I made myself comfy on the couch, and I didn't leave it until time for bed.
Wednesday was much the same (the couch part, not the tour). I got out of bed, eventually I showered, put new pjs on, and sat on the couch all day. I also started on my Japanese books I'd bought in EPCOT the other day, so now I know a whole seven hiragana! Out of forty-six. And then there are forty-six katakana. And after THAT come the 1,945 basic kanji. Just the basic ones, mind you. ...I've got a long way to go.
Thursday and Saturday were assigning shifts. Things went fairly well, and nothing overly exciting happened. Friday was my last scheduled popcorn shift, and I got rained on at about 3:30, and it didn't stop until way after I'd clocked out. Fun times.
Sunday was my first day of food running! Huzzah! I was taught how to read a ticket, the proper way to deliver the food to the table, position points on the table so you're not just auctioning the food at the table, and the tricks to holding three plates at once. Despite knowing the trick to it, though, I still can't really do it. My fingers are too short and stubby to stretch enough for stability! Yesterday was much the same, except that we incorporated the pantry window into our running, and we were taught the closing duties. I have one more day of training on Wednesday, and then I'm on my own. I should be fine, though. Dana and I have made very few mistakes over the past couple days. Today, though, I'm heading over to Patrick's to play my first-ever game of Dungeons and Dragons! ....Just you shush! I think it'll be fun.
For those of you who don't speak fluent Mel N., that 'yay' was extremely sarcastic, so go ahead and read over it again in the proper tone of voice. ...Okay. We're good now. Anyway, that's because in Dinoland, USA is an intense thrill ride called Dinosaur! I have a rather intense fear of Dinosaurs that aren't on a tiny, flat, non-3-D screen (because I do enjoy Jurassic Park), never mind animatronic ones that kinda look realistic and try to eat you. And yes, I realize that they're extinct and they can't actually come and eat me, but I don't care. So, for part of our tour, we're told the story of Dinoland, USA as a whole, and how the institute had developed this new technology called Time Compression (which had me giggling a bit, because that's one of the major concepts during the last battle sequences of Final Fantasy VIII), and how you could actually go back to the age of the dinosaurs. So what's the next thing we do? We go back to the age of the dinosaurs! Now, obviously we have a choice as to whether or not we want to go on this ride, but this is as good an excuse as any to actually get me on the ride, since you have to try everything once (which is the only reason why I've seen the Playhouse Disney show at the Studios). Mel assured me that I would live through the ride. Well, I'm not sure whether or not me being in the ride vehicle actually counts, because I didn't see anything beyond the first ten seconds of the ride. I had my eyes closed the whole time, and at one point I also had my ears plugged and my coat lapels flung over my face. But I survived, so I figure that if I go on it once every time I'm in Animal Kingdom and get familiar enough with the sounds of the ride, I might eventually be able to open my eyes for some of it. We'll see.
Moving on, we did more Discovery Island (kangaroos!), and saw the 3D movie inside the Tree, 'It's Tough to be a Bug.' I'm not overly fond of this thing, either, but I'm not afraid of anything there eating me, so we're good. The last large area on our tour was my favourite section, Asia. We were told the story of the particular part of Asia we were meant to be in, and did the Maharaj Jungle Trek. By this point, everyone is soaked, and it decides to pour even harder. And we have to finish the walk still, because we're only halfway down the trail. There is a tomb halfway there though, so when we're stopped Glen asks us if we want to continue to our final stop afterwards, or just end the tour here, since we're all really, really wet. The last stop is the Forbidden Mountain, so like hell we're gonna skip that! He's surprised at our resilience, but honestly, who doesn't love a good yeti?
So we walk through the queue line of Expedition: Everest and we're told about the things on the walls and all the decorations around us (Mel points out at least three hidden Mickeys). Eventually we get to the front of the line (which had a whopping 5 minute wait due to the rain) and those who want to ride can. Honestly, I was all for it, because I love Everest (to the astonishment of one of the guys on the tour who'd ridden Dinosaur with me). But then Mel brought up a good point: Everest goes outside a lot, like at least half the track is outdoors. Doing high-speed rides in the rain HURTS. So we didn't do it. And we definitely weren't the only ones. Once the weirdos got off the ride and met us in the gift shop, Glen said good-bye to us, and we all went our separate ways. Mel and I went to Yak & Yeti for some hot food, hot tea, and a chance to use the freakishly high-powered hand driers they have there. Then we came back home, I made myself comfy on the couch, and I didn't leave it until time for bed.
Wednesday was much the same (the couch part, not the tour). I got out of bed, eventually I showered, put new pjs on, and sat on the couch all day. I also started on my Japanese books I'd bought in EPCOT the other day, so now I know a whole seven hiragana! Out of forty-six. And then there are forty-six katakana. And after THAT come the 1,945 basic kanji. Just the basic ones, mind you. ...I've got a long way to go.
Thursday and Saturday were assigning shifts. Things went fairly well, and nothing overly exciting happened. Friday was my last scheduled popcorn shift, and I got rained on at about 3:30, and it didn't stop until way after I'd clocked out. Fun times.
Sunday was my first day of food running! Huzzah! I was taught how to read a ticket, the proper way to deliver the food to the table, position points on the table so you're not just auctioning the food at the table, and the tricks to holding three plates at once. Despite knowing the trick to it, though, I still can't really do it. My fingers are too short and stubby to stretch enough for stability! Yesterday was much the same, except that we incorporated the pantry window into our running, and we were taught the closing duties. I have one more day of training on Wednesday, and then I'm on my own. I should be fine, though. Dana and I have made very few mistakes over the past couple days. Today, though, I'm heading over to Patrick's to play my first-ever game of Dungeons and Dragons! ....Just you shush! I think it'll be fun.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Life Goes On
After another few not-so-exciting days of work (firstly because I was a seater and second because I can't remember them), it was time for Tuesday. I like Tuesday. It's my Saturday. Though some time in the week Selina and I went to the Studios and ate at the Sci-Fi. She'd never been. It was my third time. We had fun. Anyway, back to Tuesday. I was up just before 10AM on Tuesday to sign up for a special tour at Animal Kingdom. There are sporadically tours in different parks we can sign up for, some of them for specific rides (there's one in a couple weeks for Haunted Mansion that I would kill to be on, pun fully intended) and some of them general park tours with special insider tidbits. Apparently this one is part of the latter. Registration for the tours is really, really limited, and they open up at 10AM one week before the tour. So basically you set your alarm, sign up, and then go back to bed. Except that instead of going back to bed, Mel and I headed off to Wal-Mart for groceries. Mel's decided to start eating healthier, but it was still amusing to see what was in her part of the cart as compared to mine. After that, Mel had to go to work, and I hung around and had a lazy day. I think. I don't completely remember. I really should update more often so that I don't have these gaping holes in my life.
Wednesday was David's last day. At Le Cellier, we have a tradition for when someone is leaving: during the break between lunch and dinner, when there are as few guests and as many cast members as possible, we make the person leaving stand up at the fireplace and we sing O Canada at them. After that, everyone goes back to their lives. I'd told David I would make him cookies for the road (even though he didn't give me my container back before the throw-out!), so I was just going to head back to the apartment to bake those and kick around and be generally lazy. Aliyyah was walking out at the same time, so I figured I'd head out with her. Turns out, she's heading to Magic Kingdom by herself since people bailed on her. Hm... Magic Kingdom.... cookies in apartment... I wonder which one will win?! So we hit the monorail and headed into Magic Kingdom. Aliyyah was dying to meet Princess Tiana, and so was I to be honest, so we headed over to her character spot (with Prince Naveen, but let's face it, no one cares) and waited in line. We ended up behind this incredibly awkward woman who kept talking to us. It was kinda mean, but after she'd turned away from us for about the fiftieth time, Aliyyah and I began speaking to each other about how awkward this was. In French. Which basically means that Aliyyah was speaking and I was responding minimally, since after five years of not speaking it, my French is a bit rusty. And by rusty I mean it's corroding and looks a bit like orange-y brown swiss cheese, with more holes than rust. At some point in line, Aliyyah realizes that she had charged her camera battery in anticipation for this day, but forgot to actually put it back in her camera. Luckily, I have mine. Eventually we make it up there, Aliyyah fabricates a story about only having been here a few days in Montreal, and I blow that to bits when I say we know each other from work. At EPCOT. Oops. My mouth is so much faster than my brain sometimes. After getting our photos with Tiana and Naveen, we headed to Fantasyland and were shocked to see that after 5pm there were still fastpasses for Peter Pan available. Clear proof that the parks are indeed dead at this time of year. We're a bit hungry by this point, and guess what? Aliyyah's never been to Tony's! Yes, I have a strange love of that restaurant. The food is awesome. Leave me alone. On the way, we stop to watch a bit of the Dream Along With Mickey show in front of the castle. Awkward Girl sneaks up behind us and surprises us at some point during this show. Aliyyah and I are now kinda afraid for our lives, and our brain cells. As soon as the big finish with the fireworks and stuff is over, we book it into the crowds on Main Street, hoping to all that is good in the world that this girl does not follow us. Luckily she didn't and we were able to get a walk-in at Tony's without a problem. We had an awesome meal, and I loved Aliyyah's reaction to the atmosphere of the restaurant and everything. Then we went back to ride Peter Pan, which she'd also never done before, and then headed to the Grand Floridian to check out a couple shops. It was home time after that, because I still had to get those cookies in the oven! Turns out I can make and bake two different kinds of cookies in 25 minutes total. Awesomeness. Soon after that it was time to head to the throw-out to see what kind of stuff David and Johnny were getting rid of. Turns out, nothing I needed or wanted. I was disappointed.
I was assigning on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday actually went rather well, I thought. Friday, though. Oh God, Friday. Friday was a full moon. Thus, people were NUTS. And ALL of my large parties within a two and a half hour time span decided to show up, as did my smaller parties, so I had no tables to combine to accommodate the larger parties. I basically ripped the dining room apart trying to find places for all of these people. It was crazy, and I never want to do that again. Of course, after all that, I come home to even more craziness. My roommate's last day was the same as David's, so she was supposed to be gone from the Commons by 11AM sharp on Friday. You're pretty much treated as a fugitive afterwards, and if you're still staying in housing after you're supposed to be gone, everyone involved can get terminated from the program. Well, she didn't even start packing until Thursday night, and planned to pull an all-nighter to do so. Yet she went out for a while that night. Friday I leave for work, noticing she still has quite a bit to pack, but she's got an hour and a half, so she's probably got a plan for everything. When I return home after 10PM that night, not only is she still here, but her bed is heaped with stuff, as are areas of the living room, and not long after I enter the apartment SHE GOES OUT. AGAIN. AND we're supposed to be getting our new roommate that very night. Well currently that new roommate has nowhere to move into! Plus the cleaning people could barely move, according to Mel. Mel and I are kind of afraid for our jobs, since we know Mila's here when she shouldn't be and if the new roommate comes in and then complains, we're gonna be in trouble. So we go to security, explain everything to them, and then go out to Starbucks to calm Mel's nerves a bit. We know that this is going to be incredibly awkward when we get back, since when we were leaving our other Italian roommate made a comment about hoping that security wouldn't come. When we get back, Mila is out of the apartment (as are the other Italians who were there when we left, at least one of whom was also done her program and could get us in trouble), and Francesca is stuck packing the rest of Mila's stuff while crying her eyes out. Not two minutes after she leaves with the last of Mila's stuff (which took two or three trips, and tons of it is still against the wall in Francesca's room) our new roommate, Yukiko, comes in with her stuff. I can only imagine what would have happened if we hadn't done what we did. Of course, Francesca's mad at us for going to security because she thinks it was too much and we could have just asked them to leave. However, she's missing some vital points that I don't think the language barrier allows her to really grasp:
1) Mila wasn't even home, so we COULDN'T ask her to leave
2) We still know that they're somewhere in the Commons
3) If they're found in the Commons, they'll know that Mila used to live with us, and they'll interrogate us
4) I'm not going to lie to security for their sakes.
But she talked to each of us yesterday, and I think we're good now, even though she still thinks we went to far. But whatever. So long as she's not going to murder us in our sleep, we're good. I think international cast members need to be provided with a fully translated copy of our contract so that they have as good a grasp of the terms as we do as Canadians (and UKs).
Moving on.
Saturday was so-so. I was glad when it was over, though. I'm not used to assigning three days in a row, so I was exhausted afterwards and decided to take an ADO for Sunday. Mel called in sick that day, since she had the cold from Hell, so we had a relaxing day of rest and recuperation. This involved spaghetti and meatballs while watching Tinkerbell, napping, and popcorn while watching A Knight's Tale. And that's seriously all we did all day. ...Well, I talked to Ros and Mom earlier in the day, but other than THAT that's all we did. And I forgot that it was Sunday, so I missed movie night, which really upsets me because it was The Breakfast Club. I love The Breakfast Club!
Today I worked for a while and then took my last-ever (probably, unless something weird happens after I'm a server) ER. Selina and I headed over to France for a nice lunch, which included a visit from Remy (from Ratatouille). I had a three-course meal of French onion soup, quiche Lorraine, and some kind of puff pastry with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. It was fantastic, and the restaurant is quite pretty. It's also, like, two and a half times the size of ours. Then we headed over to Japan so that Selina could get candy, and I bought Japanese language books so that I can actually start learning the language beyond the random useless words I currently know (I can't really imagine 'ultimate weapon' coming up in conversation too often). So I worked on a couple of the most basic characters before putting it aside for a bit to update this.
I think I'm catching a cold, so I probably won't go to games tonight. I'd rather get a good amount of sleep to prevent this from getting worse, before I have to catch a bus to be at Animal Kingdom at, like, 8AM.
Wednesday was David's last day. At Le Cellier, we have a tradition for when someone is leaving: during the break between lunch and dinner, when there are as few guests and as many cast members as possible, we make the person leaving stand up at the fireplace and we sing O Canada at them. After that, everyone goes back to their lives. I'd told David I would make him cookies for the road (even though he didn't give me my container back before the throw-out!), so I was just going to head back to the apartment to bake those and kick around and be generally lazy. Aliyyah was walking out at the same time, so I figured I'd head out with her. Turns out, she's heading to Magic Kingdom by herself since people bailed on her. Hm... Magic Kingdom.... cookies in apartment... I wonder which one will win?! So we hit the monorail and headed into Magic Kingdom. Aliyyah was dying to meet Princess Tiana, and so was I to be honest, so we headed over to her character spot (with Prince Naveen, but let's face it, no one cares) and waited in line. We ended up behind this incredibly awkward woman who kept talking to us. It was kinda mean, but after she'd turned away from us for about the fiftieth time, Aliyyah and I began speaking to each other about how awkward this was. In French. Which basically means that Aliyyah was speaking and I was responding minimally, since after five years of not speaking it, my French is a bit rusty. And by rusty I mean it's corroding and looks a bit like orange-y brown swiss cheese, with more holes than rust. At some point in line, Aliyyah realizes that she had charged her camera battery in anticipation for this day, but forgot to actually put it back in her camera. Luckily, I have mine. Eventually we make it up there, Aliyyah fabricates a story about only having been here a few days in Montreal, and I blow that to bits when I say we know each other from work. At EPCOT. Oops. My mouth is so much faster than my brain sometimes. After getting our photos with Tiana and Naveen, we headed to Fantasyland and were shocked to see that after 5pm there were still fastpasses for Peter Pan available. Clear proof that the parks are indeed dead at this time of year. We're a bit hungry by this point, and guess what? Aliyyah's never been to Tony's! Yes, I have a strange love of that restaurant. The food is awesome. Leave me alone. On the way, we stop to watch a bit of the Dream Along With Mickey show in front of the castle. Awkward Girl sneaks up behind us and surprises us at some point during this show. Aliyyah and I are now kinda afraid for our lives, and our brain cells. As soon as the big finish with the fireworks and stuff is over, we book it into the crowds on Main Street, hoping to all that is good in the world that this girl does not follow us. Luckily she didn't and we were able to get a walk-in at Tony's without a problem. We had an awesome meal, and I loved Aliyyah's reaction to the atmosphere of the restaurant and everything. Then we went back to ride Peter Pan, which she'd also never done before, and then headed to the Grand Floridian to check out a couple shops. It was home time after that, because I still had to get those cookies in the oven! Turns out I can make and bake two different kinds of cookies in 25 minutes total. Awesomeness. Soon after that it was time to head to the throw-out to see what kind of stuff David and Johnny were getting rid of. Turns out, nothing I needed or wanted. I was disappointed.
I was assigning on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday actually went rather well, I thought. Friday, though. Oh God, Friday. Friday was a full moon. Thus, people were NUTS. And ALL of my large parties within a two and a half hour time span decided to show up, as did my smaller parties, so I had no tables to combine to accommodate the larger parties. I basically ripped the dining room apart trying to find places for all of these people. It was crazy, and I never want to do that again. Of course, after all that, I come home to even more craziness. My roommate's last day was the same as David's, so she was supposed to be gone from the Commons by 11AM sharp on Friday. You're pretty much treated as a fugitive afterwards, and if you're still staying in housing after you're supposed to be gone, everyone involved can get terminated from the program. Well, she didn't even start packing until Thursday night, and planned to pull an all-nighter to do so. Yet she went out for a while that night. Friday I leave for work, noticing she still has quite a bit to pack, but she's got an hour and a half, so she's probably got a plan for everything. When I return home after 10PM that night, not only is she still here, but her bed is heaped with stuff, as are areas of the living room, and not long after I enter the apartment SHE GOES OUT. AGAIN. AND we're supposed to be getting our new roommate that very night. Well currently that new roommate has nowhere to move into! Plus the cleaning people could barely move, according to Mel. Mel and I are kind of afraid for our jobs, since we know Mila's here when she shouldn't be and if the new roommate comes in and then complains, we're gonna be in trouble. So we go to security, explain everything to them, and then go out to Starbucks to calm Mel's nerves a bit. We know that this is going to be incredibly awkward when we get back, since when we were leaving our other Italian roommate made a comment about hoping that security wouldn't come. When we get back, Mila is out of the apartment (as are the other Italians who were there when we left, at least one of whom was also done her program and could get us in trouble), and Francesca is stuck packing the rest of Mila's stuff while crying her eyes out. Not two minutes after she leaves with the last of Mila's stuff (which took two or three trips, and tons of it is still against the wall in Francesca's room) our new roommate, Yukiko, comes in with her stuff. I can only imagine what would have happened if we hadn't done what we did. Of course, Francesca's mad at us for going to security because she thinks it was too much and we could have just asked them to leave. However, she's missing some vital points that I don't think the language barrier allows her to really grasp:
1) Mila wasn't even home, so we COULDN'T ask her to leave
2) We still know that they're somewhere in the Commons
3) If they're found in the Commons, they'll know that Mila used to live with us, and they'll interrogate us
4) I'm not going to lie to security for their sakes.
But she talked to each of us yesterday, and I think we're good now, even though she still thinks we went to far. But whatever. So long as she's not going to murder us in our sleep, we're good. I think international cast members need to be provided with a fully translated copy of our contract so that they have as good a grasp of the terms as we do as Canadians (and UKs).
Moving on.
Saturday was so-so. I was glad when it was over, though. I'm not used to assigning three days in a row, so I was exhausted afterwards and decided to take an ADO for Sunday. Mel called in sick that day, since she had the cold from Hell, so we had a relaxing day of rest and recuperation. This involved spaghetti and meatballs while watching Tinkerbell, napping, and popcorn while watching A Knight's Tale. And that's seriously all we did all day. ...Well, I talked to Ros and Mom earlier in the day, but other than THAT that's all we did. And I forgot that it was Sunday, so I missed movie night, which really upsets me because it was The Breakfast Club. I love The Breakfast Club!
Today I worked for a while and then took my last-ever (probably, unless something weird happens after I'm a server) ER. Selina and I headed over to France for a nice lunch, which included a visit from Remy (from Ratatouille). I had a three-course meal of French onion soup, quiche Lorraine, and some kind of puff pastry with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. It was fantastic, and the restaurant is quite pretty. It's also, like, two and a half times the size of ours. Then we headed over to Japan so that Selina could get candy, and I bought Japanese language books so that I can actually start learning the language beyond the random useless words I currently know (I can't really imagine 'ultimate weapon' coming up in conversation too often). So I worked on a couple of the most basic characters before putting it aside for a bit to update this.
I think I'm catching a cold, so I probably won't go to games tonight. I'd rather get a good amount of sleep to prevent this from getting worse, before I have to catch a bus to be at Animal Kingdom at, like, 8AM.
Friday, January 22, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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!
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!
Friday, December 25, 2009
So This Was Christmas
And what have I done? (Yes, that was corny. Shush and keep reading.) Well, we should really go back to Tuesday first. I was woken up at 9 by a call from my manager, asking me to come in for our assignor. Okay, 11 hour shift on about 5 hours of sleep. It actually went very smoothly. I was rather proud of myself. And - OHMYGODPUPPIES! Sorry. Christmas Day Parade. There are puppies on TV.
Wednesday I pretty much did nothing all day. I did go to EPCOT that night, though, to meet up with a family friend in possession of my shiny Christmas gift from my family. Yay!
Christmas Eve I worked 12-7 as a seater. Honestly, it was WEIRD. We were expecting to be bombarded with people all day like we were for Thanksgiving, but we took a ton of walk-ins at lunch, and dinner didn't get bad until time for me to leave, so I didn't really have to deal with it. I covered greeter for a while, and it kinda shocked me that I could've done a stupid dance in the middle of the promenade and not disturbed any traffic at all. But, as Sam (I think) had pointed out, EPCOT is a last resort park for a lot of people, when they realize how incredibly nuts Magic Kingdom is. So we had a pretty good day. Then I came home and had nothing to do. Jen was having a potluck, but that was all the way over at Patterson, and I had nothing to bring. Plus I'd taken chicken thighs out to thaw, so I had to cook those. As I started making those, Keiko was making sushi to bring to a friend's place, but she did cut up a roll for my Norwegian roommate (Marian? I'm not sure how to spell it because I've never seen her nametag, but that's how it's pronounced) and I to share. While my curry was in the oven, after Keiko had left, Marian decided she wanted pizza. So she put in an order to Domino's, and we had a bit of chicken curry as an appetizer. I turned the TV on, but there were surprisingly fewer Christmas specials on than I thought there would be. However, it WAS Thursday, which is Supernatural night, and they were airing the Christmas episode from season 3, so we watched that. We're both big fans. Then there wasn't much else on, so it was Phineas & Ferb and Hannah Montana for us. Eventually I went to bed, after clicking around online, upgrading to Windows 7 (YAY! Though I mourn the loss of my stock market desktop gadget), and opening one of my Christmas presents.
This morning I dragged my butt out of bed, put on my present from Ros (Yes, I wore it; no, I don't have pictures), and got out the stuff I'd been shipped so that I could skype with my family and open my presents. Thanks, everyone! After video calling my family, I turned on the TV to watch the DisneyParks Christmas Day Parade (SO wasn't missing that). And that's where I am now. Yay Celine Dion!
(The rest of this was written on the Feast of Fools. For those of you who don't speak Hunchback of Notre Dame, that's January 6th.)
Okay, so after the parade I finally got into the shower and grabbed my cookies to take to the contest at work. Yeah, we were having a cookie contest. I made white cake mix-based cookies with crushed candy cane and red and green m&ms. I won for taste! Yay me! Mel and Ali won for presentation, because Mel was crazy enough to make sugar cookies in the shape of ornaments, decorate them, and then stick them on a small tree. Like, actually. I rode to work in the back of Ali's car, holding the tree steady so that it didn't fall over on me. After that, Mel and I went to her place to cook Christmas dinner. She already had the turkey stuffed and in the oven, so we made a game plan for cook times and then stuck on Love Actually for a while. Then it was time to start the potatoes, which was a mildly grueling ordeal because those things just did not want to peel! Eventually we got them, though (okay, Mel got them and I was put on jell-o duty because I fail just that epically, but whatever), and we put them on the stove to boil. We got the Pilsbury biscuits ready to bake, took out the non-turkey-stuffed turkey (made without chicken stock so that our vegetarians could eat it!), and started the veggies (microwavable bags - surprisingly very good). We also put on the cranberry sauce that Craig had donated to Mel's cause (which he'd had around since Thanksgiving when nobody ate it). By this time, people had started to show up, but since dinner wasn't going to be ready for a little bit, Mel had set up a cookie decorating station on the coffee table for them. She still had a few undecorated cookies from her massive sugar cookie bake, and some icing, so they had fun with that. Eventually the bird was done and we transferred it creatively to the cutting boards on the counter so that we could start on the gravy (my specialty!). I taught her to make gravy, and then she got down to carving the turkey, Commons style. Which means we totally didn't have a long serrated knife at all so it was mostly done with a fork and table knife. She did an amazing job, though. All in all, it was a great turnout, great food, and good drinks (unless you were Craig, in which case you were drinking eggnog instead of sparkling grape juice). Cookies were for dessert, as well as little pumpkin tarts that Desiree had brought, and ice cream! Unfortunately (or just humourously, depending on how you look at it) the ice cream also had to be consumed Commons style. See, we'd used almost all the bowls and spoons earlier for serving dinner. So ice cream was served in cups, and you had your choice of measuring spoon sizes to eat with. Allison claimed the smallest one, so she got to eat hers with a 1/8 tsp. We sang a few Christmas songs - like, the pop ones. Not the traditional ones. Mariah Carey, which was followed by NSync, and then somehow morphed into Sister Act (not quite sure how the transition happened there). I helped clean up as people began to disperse, pulling the rest of the meat off the turkey and removing the wish bone for Mel, which was much easier said than done (speaking of, I should ask her what happened with that...). We sent a couple people out the door with garbage bags, began a load of dish towels, and then kinda collapsed. Eventually Ali and I, the last ones there, decided we should probably go home. About ten or fifteen minutes later we actually made it up off the couch.
Saturday and Sunday were nothing particularly fascinating. I was seater, the parks were nuts, we move on. Monday and Tuesday (I'd been asked to come in again) I was assignor, and still nothing particularly fascinating happened. I missed Celine Dion using our break trailer washroom twice, and Toby Keith decided not to grace us with his party of 16 because the only time we could fit them in was too close to his dinner reservations at Italy. Thank god. I've managed to avoid assigning for major celebrities so far, and I'd like to keep it that way. Too much craziness to deal with.
Wednesday was fun because earlier in the week (Sunday?) I'd found out that Mel's French roommate had left, and there was a bed free in her apartment. I'd applied, and on Wednesday the lady called me to ask how soon I could move. Thanks to being called in on Tuesday, I now had Saturday off, so I told her so and everything was approved. Yay!!!! Only afterwards did I realize that phone calls would become a lot more confusing now, especially when one of us picked up the phone ("Is this Mel?" "...Well, it's one of them.") or if people were talking to us while we were both in the living room (this was bad enough on Christmas). That night, Selina and I went to see Avatar, which was SO awesome! Such a great movie! I mean, okay, the plot was like some strange hybrid child of Pocahontas and Dinotopia, but in away that made it even more entertaining. In other news, Sigourney Weaver is totally looking her age. She also kinda looks like Carrie Fisher. Whatever.
Thursday was kinda sorta Hell on Earth. My family may recall me mentioning over and over how much I'd love to be here at Walt Disney World for Christmas and New Years. I would like to amend that now, particularly with regards to the 31st. On New Years, I would like to be at the geographical furthest possible point from Walt Disney World. It is SO many levels of insane! The people! It's just madness! Originally I was scheduled to open popcorn that day, but Kari wanted to trade shifts to have the evening off, so I jumped at the chance to be PM greeter. I mean, New Years kinda stopped being a big deal to me after I started staying up til midnight regularly. Plus it meant that my shift didn't start at 9:30 in the morning. I got up to remote podium to start my shift and just kinda stared at the freaky sea of people. Surprisingly, though, I don't think I turned away any more people than usual (which is still a lot, really). I think people must've figured we were crazy-booked. Which we were. Just before midnight we all got to run up to the promenade to watch the special New Years fireworks, which was BEYOND awesome. After the normal IllumiNations run, the voiceover comes up and talks about how different countries are in different time zones, so they rang in the new year at different times. They start with when Japan and China celebrated it, and then fireworks started going off right above the Japan pavilion, when those were done, China started. And so on and so forth, until just before midnight, when Canada, the US, and Mexico "all celebrate the New Year" (despite the fact that we have how many time zones over here?), when the ten second countdown began. So there's 88,000 people plus cast members gathered around World Showcase all shouting numbers together, and then everything goes nuts. Fireworks are EVERYWHERE. It was crazy. Gorgeous, but still something I'd like to avoid in the future.
Friday I was really tired, but I dragged my butt to work anyway for a popcorn floater shift. In the cold and rain. Yippee. I probably should have started packing that night, but I didn't. I left it all for Saturday, after I'd gone to housing at 9 in the morning to pick up my new key. Having been driven here rather than flying, I didn't have rolling suitcases I could load up a few times and cart back and forth. No, I had to load all my hoarded stuff (I really should consider being less of a packrat) into a few travel bags I'd picked up at throwouts (Thanks Chantal and Greg) and my boxes, and walk back and forth for a really long time. Between noon and 1, Mel got back from horseback riding at Fort Wilderness, so we borrowed Ali's car to make life easier. It still took two trips. After all I'd already carried. We're SO gonna need the van to bring me home. I'll miss all of my housemates there, because they were fantastic, but I like having a smaller apartment with less people. Plus my bathroom in this apartment is gargantuan. After about three times of me saying, "Okay, that's it. ...No, wait! I forgot!" we finally got me all moved in and I could start UNpacking. Which took a lot of the rest of the day. What I was really uber-happy about, though, was that I could finally hook my system up to the TV and play video games. Yay Final Fantasy! ...No, seriously. It'd been almost four months. I was going through withdrawal.
Since then I've pretty much just been working and chilling out at my cozy new place (and I love that this bed doesn't creak so loud I wake up every time my foot twitches). Sunday's movie night had a population total of four (me, Dan, Jeremy, and Heather), so the boys had ordered pizzas and we sat and watched a couple episodes of the British 'The Office.' Monday night's game was The Simpsons Scene It. Craig is officially the equivalent of Heather and I with the Disney version. Tuesday was Heather's (attractions Heather, with the musicals, not aforementioned Heather) last day off before her last day of work today, so she wanted to go see the Welcome show at the Magic Kingdom one last time. I love Heather dearly, plus I'd never seen the Welcome show (ever, actually, that I can recall), so this was a great idea! Key word: was. I didn't think it was so great when I was trying to take pictures and couldn't because my finger was too cold to put enough pressure on the button! We had an absolute blast, though. Heather and I bought tiaras from the glass and crystal place, and all the cast members called us princesses all day. Mother, stop rolling your eyes at me. I can hear your "Oh Lord" from here. We also managed to get into VIP seating for the 3 o'clock parade, which was awesome because all the characters face us the whole time (since we're on one side of a bridge and there's no one on the other side), and I was bowed to and kissed by so many characters! Heather and I were like five-year-olds. Eventually it was time to go, especially since Heather was practically hacking up a lung by this point.
Today was another day in Magic Kingdom with Jess, one of the newest arrivals. I'd trained her on greeter. She's fantastic. Anyway, other than briefly with her arrival group, she'd never been here before, so once again I got to play tour guide. And I'd made reservations at Tony's again. Have I mentioned that I love that place? Sadly, mint cheesecake was gone, but the new flavour was chocolate raspberry, which was also pretty good. Jess and I had so much fun! Lines were surprisingly long, though, considering these are supposed to be our deadest weeks. So we fastpassed some stuff, waited in line for the stuff that wasn't that bad, walked onto yet other rides. And we finished the day off with Wishes. I love Wishes. And yes, I had my tiara back on. Don't judge. It's sparkly.
So now I'm sitting here, kinda freezing in my pjs. I think I'm gonna go get my flannel blanket.
(The rest of this was written on the Feast of Fools. For those of you who don't speak Hunchback of Notre Dame, that's January 6th.)
Okay, so after the parade I finally got into the shower and grabbed my cookies to take to the contest at work. Yeah, we were having a cookie contest. I made white cake mix-based cookies with crushed candy cane and red and green m&ms. I won for taste! Yay me! Mel and Ali won for presentation, because Mel was crazy enough to make sugar cookies in the shape of ornaments, decorate them, and then stick them on a small tree. Like, actually. I rode to work in the back of Ali's car, holding the tree steady so that it didn't fall over on me. After that, Mel and I went to her place to cook Christmas dinner. She already had the turkey stuffed and in the oven, so we made a game plan for cook times and then stuck on Love Actually for a while. Then it was time to start the potatoes, which was a mildly grueling ordeal because those things just did not want to peel! Eventually we got them, though (okay, Mel got them and I was put on jell-o duty because I fail just that epically, but whatever), and we put them on the stove to boil. We got the Pilsbury biscuits ready to bake, took out the non-turkey-stuffed turkey (made without chicken stock so that our vegetarians could eat it!), and started the veggies (microwavable bags - surprisingly very good). We also put on the cranberry sauce that Craig had donated to Mel's cause (which he'd had around since Thanksgiving when nobody ate it). By this time, people had started to show up, but since dinner wasn't going to be ready for a little bit, Mel had set up a cookie decorating station on the coffee table for them. She still had a few undecorated cookies from her massive sugar cookie bake, and some icing, so they had fun with that. Eventually the bird was done and we transferred it creatively to the cutting boards on the counter so that we could start on the gravy (my specialty!). I taught her to make gravy, and then she got down to carving the turkey, Commons style. Which means we totally didn't have a long serrated knife at all so it was mostly done with a fork and table knife. She did an amazing job, though. All in all, it was a great turnout, great food, and good drinks (unless you were Craig, in which case you were drinking eggnog instead of sparkling grape juice). Cookies were for dessert, as well as little pumpkin tarts that Desiree had brought, and ice cream! Unfortunately (or just humourously, depending on how you look at it) the ice cream also had to be consumed Commons style. See, we'd used almost all the bowls and spoons earlier for serving dinner. So ice cream was served in cups, and you had your choice of measuring spoon sizes to eat with. Allison claimed the smallest one, so she got to eat hers with a 1/8 tsp. We sang a few Christmas songs - like, the pop ones. Not the traditional ones. Mariah Carey, which was followed by NSync, and then somehow morphed into Sister Act (not quite sure how the transition happened there). I helped clean up as people began to disperse, pulling the rest of the meat off the turkey and removing the wish bone for Mel, which was much easier said than done (speaking of, I should ask her what happened with that...). We sent a couple people out the door with garbage bags, began a load of dish towels, and then kinda collapsed. Eventually Ali and I, the last ones there, decided we should probably go home. About ten or fifteen minutes later we actually made it up off the couch.
Saturday and Sunday were nothing particularly fascinating. I was seater, the parks were nuts, we move on. Monday and Tuesday (I'd been asked to come in again) I was assignor, and still nothing particularly fascinating happened. I missed Celine Dion using our break trailer washroom twice, and Toby Keith decided not to grace us with his party of 16 because the only time we could fit them in was too close to his dinner reservations at Italy. Thank god. I've managed to avoid assigning for major celebrities so far, and I'd like to keep it that way. Too much craziness to deal with.
Wednesday was fun because earlier in the week (Sunday?) I'd found out that Mel's French roommate had left, and there was a bed free in her apartment. I'd applied, and on Wednesday the lady called me to ask how soon I could move. Thanks to being called in on Tuesday, I now had Saturday off, so I told her so and everything was approved. Yay!!!! Only afterwards did I realize that phone calls would become a lot more confusing now, especially when one of us picked up the phone ("Is this Mel?" "...Well, it's one of them.") or if people were talking to us while we were both in the living room (this was bad enough on Christmas). That night, Selina and I went to see Avatar, which was SO awesome! Such a great movie! I mean, okay, the plot was like some strange hybrid child of Pocahontas and Dinotopia, but in away that made it even more entertaining. In other news, Sigourney Weaver is totally looking her age. She also kinda looks like Carrie Fisher. Whatever.
Thursday was kinda sorta Hell on Earth. My family may recall me mentioning over and over how much I'd love to be here at Walt Disney World for Christmas and New Years. I would like to amend that now, particularly with regards to the 31st. On New Years, I would like to be at the geographical furthest possible point from Walt Disney World. It is SO many levels of insane! The people! It's just madness! Originally I was scheduled to open popcorn that day, but Kari wanted to trade shifts to have the evening off, so I jumped at the chance to be PM greeter. I mean, New Years kinda stopped being a big deal to me after I started staying up til midnight regularly. Plus it meant that my shift didn't start at 9:30 in the morning. I got up to remote podium to start my shift and just kinda stared at the freaky sea of people. Surprisingly, though, I don't think I turned away any more people than usual (which is still a lot, really). I think people must've figured we were crazy-booked. Which we were. Just before midnight we all got to run up to the promenade to watch the special New Years fireworks, which was BEYOND awesome. After the normal IllumiNations run, the voiceover comes up and talks about how different countries are in different time zones, so they rang in the new year at different times. They start with when Japan and China celebrated it, and then fireworks started going off right above the Japan pavilion, when those were done, China started. And so on and so forth, until just before midnight, when Canada, the US, and Mexico "all celebrate the New Year" (despite the fact that we have how many time zones over here?), when the ten second countdown began. So there's 88,000 people plus cast members gathered around World Showcase all shouting numbers together, and then everything goes nuts. Fireworks are EVERYWHERE. It was crazy. Gorgeous, but still something I'd like to avoid in the future.
Friday I was really tired, but I dragged my butt to work anyway for a popcorn floater shift. In the cold and rain. Yippee. I probably should have started packing that night, but I didn't. I left it all for Saturday, after I'd gone to housing at 9 in the morning to pick up my new key. Having been driven here rather than flying, I didn't have rolling suitcases I could load up a few times and cart back and forth. No, I had to load all my hoarded stuff (I really should consider being less of a packrat) into a few travel bags I'd picked up at throwouts (Thanks Chantal and Greg) and my boxes, and walk back and forth for a really long time. Between noon and 1, Mel got back from horseback riding at Fort Wilderness, so we borrowed Ali's car to make life easier. It still took two trips. After all I'd already carried. We're SO gonna need the van to bring me home. I'll miss all of my housemates there, because they were fantastic, but I like having a smaller apartment with less people. Plus my bathroom in this apartment is gargantuan. After about three times of me saying, "Okay, that's it. ...No, wait! I forgot!" we finally got me all moved in and I could start UNpacking. Which took a lot of the rest of the day. What I was really uber-happy about, though, was that I could finally hook my system up to the TV and play video games. Yay Final Fantasy! ...No, seriously. It'd been almost four months. I was going through withdrawal.
Since then I've pretty much just been working and chilling out at my cozy new place (and I love that this bed doesn't creak so loud I wake up every time my foot twitches). Sunday's movie night had a population total of four (me, Dan, Jeremy, and Heather), so the boys had ordered pizzas and we sat and watched a couple episodes of the British 'The Office.' Monday night's game was The Simpsons Scene It. Craig is officially the equivalent of Heather and I with the Disney version. Tuesday was Heather's (attractions Heather, with the musicals, not aforementioned Heather) last day off before her last day of work today, so she wanted to go see the Welcome show at the Magic Kingdom one last time. I love Heather dearly, plus I'd never seen the Welcome show (ever, actually, that I can recall), so this was a great idea! Key word: was. I didn't think it was so great when I was trying to take pictures and couldn't because my finger was too cold to put enough pressure on the button! We had an absolute blast, though. Heather and I bought tiaras from the glass and crystal place, and all the cast members called us princesses all day. Mother, stop rolling your eyes at me. I can hear your "Oh Lord" from here. We also managed to get into VIP seating for the 3 o'clock parade, which was awesome because all the characters face us the whole time (since we're on one side of a bridge and there's no one on the other side), and I was bowed to and kissed by so many characters! Heather and I were like five-year-olds. Eventually it was time to go, especially since Heather was practically hacking up a lung by this point.
Today was another day in Magic Kingdom with Jess, one of the newest arrivals. I'd trained her on greeter. She's fantastic. Anyway, other than briefly with her arrival group, she'd never been here before, so once again I got to play tour guide. And I'd made reservations at Tony's again. Have I mentioned that I love that place? Sadly, mint cheesecake was gone, but the new flavour was chocolate raspberry, which was also pretty good. Jess and I had so much fun! Lines were surprisingly long, though, considering these are supposed to be our deadest weeks. So we fastpassed some stuff, waited in line for the stuff that wasn't that bad, walked onto yet other rides. And we finished the day off with Wishes. I love Wishes. And yes, I had my tiara back on. Don't judge. It's sparkly.
So now I'm sitting here, kinda freezing in my pjs. I think I'm gonna go get my flannel blanket.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
3 Days Til Christmas
So Wednesday Selina and I headed over to Magic Kingdom to have lunch at Tony's Town Square Restaurant. Entrees were really good, service was passable (not exactly the most personable server ever), but the dessert was fantastic! We both ordered the chef's cheesecake, which was mint flavoured. That intrigued me, because I'd never had mint cheesecake before. It wasn't a heavy cheesecake at all, and the crust was a chocolate cookie crumb crust, so that just made it more fantastic. Mom, seriously, you have to try this stuff. We ran around like small children and did a bunch of rides after that, including Space Mountain. It probably would have been more fun if Selina hadn't been threatening my death. ...She doesn't like roller coasters. We did Buzz Lightyear and I got 999,999 (max. score!). So take that, Mom! You can't beat me with your eyes closed anymore! And we rode Astro Orbiter, both of us for the first time ever. Let me say right now: for two grown people sharing one rocket, this is THE MOST AWKWARD RIDE EVER. Make sure you know your partner really well. I think we're over the awkward factor now. It was hilarious when we were up there, though. I got my picture taken with Peter Pan, who complimented my purse. ... Not touching that one. We stayed for Wishes, since Selina'd never seen it before, and then headed out with the massive hordes. The massive hordes all headed for the ferry and the express monorail, so we were smart people and hopped the much less crowded resort monorail, which stops at the Ticket & Transportation Center anyway. Except by this point we were already thinking of going to Downtown Disney, because I wanted to pick up The Princess and the Frog soundtrack and she wanted to see New Moon (to clarify: she was going alone. I wasn't going with her to that. Nasty, terrible thing that it is). So we got off at the Polynesian, because it's fantastic and I love it, plus I knew how to get to the bus depot. Well, it took at least a half hour for the bus to show up. When it did, it was full. The bus driver assured us another bus was coming right behind him, so we could hop that one, and off he went. There were actually quite a few people heading to Downtown Disney. So we waited. And we waited. It is now between 9:30 and 10 PM. Finally, after a half hour, that second bus shows up. Guess what he tells us? ...Yeah. We decided to say screw it and cram on the already full bus. We were NOT taking our chances. Still, by the time we got there, the Marketplace was pretty much closed down and she'd missed the last showing of her movie. So we turned right around and hopped the bus home.
Fast forward a few days because nothing interesting happened on them. I assigned my first Candlelight, and I lived to tell the tale, but there wasn't much of a tale to tell. No guests killed me, no servers killed me, life goes on. Anyways, we're fast forwarding to Saturday night, after I get off work. I'd been extended for a bit, because people called in sick, so as soon as I could I went backstage to change, went out the front gate (that bus appeared before the one that goes around World Showcase, which I could've just hopped to the UK, went out at International Gateway, and walked to the Yacht & Beach Club bus depot), and hopped a bus to Port Orleans so that I could transfer and get on a Downtown Disney bus. I was going to get that CD I'd missed out on the other night. Funny thing was, though, that World of Disney was sold out of them. So was Once Upon A Toy. Those are pretty much the only places to get stuff like that at Downtown Disney. Okay, fine. I get off work early yesterday and decide to head over to Magic Kingdom, because they'll totally have some at the Emporium (gargantuan shop on Main Street). Plus, the Once Upon a Christmastime parade has become the afternoon parade for the next week, so I can get some better pictures of that (I shot, like, the whole parade frame by frame, I swear. I have enough pictures to almost make a flip book of the parade). I get a spot on Main Street right outside the Emporium so that I can duck in as soon as it's done and avoid the hordes of people that inevitably come at the end of a parade. No dice. They don't have it either. PhilharMagic has a lot of CDs, though; I've bought some there in the past. Let's check there! The castle entrance to Fantasyland is closed at this point for the castle forecourt stage show, so I have to fight the masses through Liberty Square. All in vain, though, because PhilharMagic doesn't have it either. FINE. I'll go to Hollywood Studios. I know I saw it there before, in the Animation Courtyard. So I hop the resort monorail (again, express line was ridiculous), and decide to get off at the Contemporary on the off chance that they have it there. They don't. They did have a shirt that I'd been looking for, so that was awesome, but beside the point. I head down to their bus depot, and board the bus to the Studios. Briefly stop in Villains Vogue, mostly because I love that store, and then move on. Over to Voyage of the Little Mermaid, because that's where all the Princess and the Frog stuff had been before (don't question these things). Well, they were carrying it at one point, but they're all out. I should try Mickey's of Hollywood. Zilch. The nice people there direct me to Guest Services, because apparently they can call this central merchandise place or something and find out all the places that still have some. Awesome. So after standing in the Guest Services lobby like a moron for a while, during which time the GS dude had to clarify with the woman on the phone which CD I wanted, because there's also one that was released that's Princess Tiana and other princesses and is totally not what I'm looking for, Dude comes back. Emporium in Magic Kingdom has a couple (that's a lie). Contemporary has some, too (also a lie). But where they have the most is the Mercantile at Fort Wilderness. I clarify with Dude that it is Fort Wilderness, NOT Wilderness Lodge. He says yeah, it'll be to the right of where you go for the Hoop De Doo Revue. Okay, SO. I board the bus that goes to Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness. The bus stops at Wilderness Lodge, I stay on. The bus stops at Fort Wilderness, I get off. But see, the thing about Fort Wilderness is that it's a campground, so it's mega huge and really confusing and a gargantuan pain in the butt to navigate. They have three buses that run different routes to the main areas of this place, so I ask the guy driving one if he'll take me to the Mercantile. He's not sure what I'm talking about, but he's going up to the Settlement, where the dining and Hoop De Doo and stuff are. So I get on that bus, and away we go, through deepest darkest Africa. I get off, walk past the hall with the dinner show, and on my right is a Trading Post merchandise shop. This has got to be it. I go in, and ask the nice lady at the counter. The nice lady at the counter doesn't know what I'm talking about, because they've never carried that CD. Joy. She gets her manager involved, and then calls the lovely people over at Wilderness Lodge, who say that they have some, and are kind enough to put one aside for me. Wish I'd known that before, because then I wouldn't have had to walk through the cold to get to the furthest point in the campground (and yes, it was cold; for Florida, anyway). But there's a boat launch there, and there's a boat that goes to Wilderness Lodge. I'm gonna freeze to death on the water, but it's better than waiting for the bus, taking the bus back to the main Fort Wilderness depot, and then taking a bus to a park and transferring back to Wilderness Lodge. That would just be silly. So I go freeze. We pull up at Wilderness Lodge, I get a little lost, but eventually I make it to their merchandise shop which, funnily enough, is called the Mercantile. Huh. Imagine that. I go in, ask for Jenny as I've been instructed to do, and she presents to me the Tiana and her Princess Friends CD. Greeeeeeat. Thankfully, a guy happens to be walking by with a stack of the soundtrack just as I'm saying that's the wrong CD. So FINALLY I have my CD. YAY!!! ...And that is actually the end of the story. Like, it works and everything. And I didn't get stranded on the way home. (Though I did have to board the boat to the Magic Kingdom, and then take the ferry back to the TTC so that I could get on my bus.)
Tonight was our Gift Exchange at Games Night. In fact, the exchange WAS our game. It was Santa Steal or whatever it's called, where people go in a predetermined order and can either unwrap a present from the pile or steal what someone else has unwrapped. We had to wait for servers who got sat late, though, so we all crowded into Craig's apartment and sang Christmas carols and were generally rowdy in a holiday-ish way. So much fun! I went home with a really nice leather-cover photo album, which is good for me since I still believe in printing off pictures every now and again.
That should be it for now. Next update will probably come just after Christmas!
Fast forward a few days because nothing interesting happened on them. I assigned my first Candlelight, and I lived to tell the tale, but there wasn't much of a tale to tell. No guests killed me, no servers killed me, life goes on. Anyways, we're fast forwarding to Saturday night, after I get off work. I'd been extended for a bit, because people called in sick, so as soon as I could I went backstage to change, went out the front gate (that bus appeared before the one that goes around World Showcase, which I could've just hopped to the UK, went out at International Gateway, and walked to the Yacht & Beach Club bus depot), and hopped a bus to Port Orleans so that I could transfer and get on a Downtown Disney bus. I was going to get that CD I'd missed out on the other night. Funny thing was, though, that World of Disney was sold out of them. So was Once Upon A Toy. Those are pretty much the only places to get stuff like that at Downtown Disney. Okay, fine. I get off work early yesterday and decide to head over to Magic Kingdom, because they'll totally have some at the Emporium (gargantuan shop on Main Street). Plus, the Once Upon a Christmastime parade has become the afternoon parade for the next week, so I can get some better pictures of that (I shot, like, the whole parade frame by frame, I swear. I have enough pictures to almost make a flip book of the parade). I get a spot on Main Street right outside the Emporium so that I can duck in as soon as it's done and avoid the hordes of people that inevitably come at the end of a parade. No dice. They don't have it either. PhilharMagic has a lot of CDs, though; I've bought some there in the past. Let's check there! The castle entrance to Fantasyland is closed at this point for the castle forecourt stage show, so I have to fight the masses through Liberty Square. All in vain, though, because PhilharMagic doesn't have it either. FINE. I'll go to Hollywood Studios. I know I saw it there before, in the Animation Courtyard. So I hop the resort monorail (again, express line was ridiculous), and decide to get off at the Contemporary on the off chance that they have it there. They don't. They did have a shirt that I'd been looking for, so that was awesome, but beside the point. I head down to their bus depot, and board the bus to the Studios. Briefly stop in Villains Vogue, mostly because I love that store, and then move on. Over to Voyage of the Little Mermaid, because that's where all the Princess and the Frog stuff had been before (don't question these things). Well, they were carrying it at one point, but they're all out. I should try Mickey's of Hollywood. Zilch. The nice people there direct me to Guest Services, because apparently they can call this central merchandise place or something and find out all the places that still have some. Awesome. So after standing in the Guest Services lobby like a moron for a while, during which time the GS dude had to clarify with the woman on the phone which CD I wanted, because there's also one that was released that's Princess Tiana and other princesses and is totally not what I'm looking for, Dude comes back. Emporium in Magic Kingdom has a couple (that's a lie). Contemporary has some, too (also a lie). But where they have the most is the Mercantile at Fort Wilderness. I clarify with Dude that it is Fort Wilderness, NOT Wilderness Lodge. He says yeah, it'll be to the right of where you go for the Hoop De Doo Revue. Okay, SO. I board the bus that goes to Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness. The bus stops at Wilderness Lodge, I stay on. The bus stops at Fort Wilderness, I get off. But see, the thing about Fort Wilderness is that it's a campground, so it's mega huge and really confusing and a gargantuan pain in the butt to navigate. They have three buses that run different routes to the main areas of this place, so I ask the guy driving one if he'll take me to the Mercantile. He's not sure what I'm talking about, but he's going up to the Settlement, where the dining and Hoop De Doo and stuff are. So I get on that bus, and away we go, through deepest darkest Africa. I get off, walk past the hall with the dinner show, and on my right is a Trading Post merchandise shop. This has got to be it. I go in, and ask the nice lady at the counter. The nice lady at the counter doesn't know what I'm talking about, because they've never carried that CD. Joy. She gets her manager involved, and then calls the lovely people over at Wilderness Lodge, who say that they have some, and are kind enough to put one aside for me. Wish I'd known that before, because then I wouldn't have had to walk through the cold to get to the furthest point in the campground (and yes, it was cold; for Florida, anyway). But there's a boat launch there, and there's a boat that goes to Wilderness Lodge. I'm gonna freeze to death on the water, but it's better than waiting for the bus, taking the bus back to the main Fort Wilderness depot, and then taking a bus to a park and transferring back to Wilderness Lodge. That would just be silly. So I go freeze. We pull up at Wilderness Lodge, I get a little lost, but eventually I make it to their merchandise shop which, funnily enough, is called the Mercantile. Huh. Imagine that. I go in, ask for Jenny as I've been instructed to do, and she presents to me the Tiana and her Princess Friends CD. Greeeeeeat. Thankfully, a guy happens to be walking by with a stack of the soundtrack just as I'm saying that's the wrong CD. So FINALLY I have my CD. YAY!!! ...And that is actually the end of the story. Like, it works and everything. And I didn't get stranded on the way home. (Though I did have to board the boat to the Magic Kingdom, and then take the ferry back to the TTC so that I could get on my bus.)
Tonight was our Gift Exchange at Games Night. In fact, the exchange WAS our game. It was Santa Steal or whatever it's called, where people go in a predetermined order and can either unwrap a present from the pile or steal what someone else has unwrapped. We had to wait for servers who got sat late, though, so we all crowded into Craig's apartment and sang Christmas carols and were generally rowdy in a holiday-ish way. So much fun! I went home with a really nice leather-cover photo album, which is good for me since I still believe in printing off pictures every now and again.
That should be it for now. Next update will probably come just after Christmas!
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