Parks and Work

Animal Kingdom was a blast! We started out first thing with the 'It's Tough to be a Bug' 3D movie. ...I still hate it as much as I did when I was 11. I will fully admit to spending most of the movie staring at the floor. After that ordeal, it was over to Dinoland, USA. I complained that all my fears were the ones to come first (Rob and Carolane weren't overly keen on the idea of Everest), since I have a huge fear of dinosaurs that, yes, I realize is entirely unfounded and a little bit insane. So we walk up to the Dinosaur building, I look up on the sign for the ride that has that lovely little bust of the carnotaurus on it, and all of the bravery I'd built up on the walk (which admittedly wasn't much) immediately left me. I chickened out. I think I'm going to have to go back there one day by myself for the express purpose of riding Dinosaur. ...I'll let you know how that goes. Anyway, so now that the lands that housed all my fears were behind us, we went to Asia, and this is where the real fun started for me. We started out here on the Kali River Rapids, which is arguably one of the best rides in the park. Rob and Carolane were sitting next to each other, and ended up taking all the dips and turns backwards, which they weren't too happy about. I laughed. We were all absolutely drenched, which was actually my aim since it was ridiculously hot out and there was no breeze. I can't speak for the others, but I stayed cool the rest of the day. And because it was right there, we got off the rapids and took the Maharajah Jungle Trek. There was a tiger in the water! It was so cute! Also, I got some awesome pictures of the giant bats, because it was so hot that they all had their wings open to fan themselves. After that, it was time for Rob and Carolane to face Everest. I absolutely love this ride. I think it's my favourite ride on the Walt Disney World property, of the non-classic rides of course. But see, Carolane has, first of all, this thing about roller coasters; secondly, she has a thing about going backwards. I failed to mention that, so she didn't realize it until we were far enough up in the queue that we could see the trains being boarded. *Evil laugh here* I also failed to mention that you go backwards IN THE DARK. And then you go forwards and drop. Rob doesn't like drops. At least he knew this happened at some point. Man, the picture from that ride was hilarious! Rob and Carolane are looking terrified for their lives, and I'm sitting there like nothing's wrong and I'm barely even moving. They loved it when they got off, though. Both of them agreed that it's an awesome ride (I'm not sure how much it would take to get them back on it). Then we moved on to Africa to do the Pangani Trail and Kilimanjaro Safaris. The trail was nothing really special, except that a hippo came almost right up to the glass of the underwater viewing area, but the Safari ride was spectacular! I don't think I've ever seen more than a couple elephants hiding out in the background before, but we must've seen at least 10 or 12 on that trip! It was so cool. We actually saw a LOT of animals, considering how hot it was and stuff. I think there were more crocodiles than water in the croc area.

We were pretty much done everything we really wanted to do at that point, so we grabbed some burgers...or chicken...and I had a veggie burger, so count that as whatever you want. Anyway, I wanted to head over to Magic Kingdom after to do some stuff, since I'd only done the one ride there with Heather, and I've been here for a week and a half so that's just a little bit sad, but Rob and Carolane had to do a run to the store, so I went over on my own. Doing a Disney park by yourself is a very, very strange feeling. I felt extremely odd saying 'one' when they asked how many at the boarding point. Thankfully I didn't do too many rides, because it seems I was cursed to be stopped on every ride I went on! This didn't bother me too much on Buzz Lightyear, though, because it meant I had more time in front of the targets. ...Don't look at me like that, it's totally not cheating because I didn't stop the ride on purpose or anything! The Haunted Mansion stop was a little more annoying, because I was stopped right in front of the hitch-hiking ghost mirrors, and my ghost was sitting on top of me. I actually spent most of my time at the park doing the really long character lines, namely the princesses in Toontown, and Ariel in her grotto. So now I have a bunch of my princess character pictures taken care of (and only how many characters to go?). Then I asked a few of the parade setup cast members if they could tell me where the Fantasia float can open up, since it's so wide there are few places it can actually do so. It seemed like the Frontierland stretch was my best bet, so I parked myself outside the widest part of that road, opposite the Country Bear Jamboree (bet I would've had time to sit through the show, had I been so inclined, but I wasn't up for the torture that night). Closer to the parade start time, people really started filling in around me. This included a couple of girls who decided to bookend me, even though they were together, and lean on me (like, full-on, elbow on my knee kind of leaning) while playing with their toys and yammering to one another in Spanish. Then the lady with the stroller came up behind me, and the toddler decided it was a good idea to sporadically kick me in the back. I've decided I'm never going to a parade on my own again, if only to use my friends as crowd buffers. By the time the parade ended, there was 15 minutes left before Wishes, the fireworks show. I was right across from the path to Adventureland, so I figured I'd see how long the wait for Pirates of the Caribbean was, and I'd ride it if it was less than, like, 10. Well, it was 5 minutes, so I figured 'why not?' and wound my way through the queue (which is ridiculously long, by the way). Turns out it was a little less than 5, because I walked right onto the ride! It occurred to me after I'd boarded the ride that I was riding Pirates of the Caribbean on Talk Like a Pirate Day, so that was pretty cool... in my head, anyway. I'm not sure anyone else would've found it quite as amusing. I didn't mind too much when we were briefly stopped on this ride, either, because we were stopped right at the end in front of Jack Sparrow. So I got off the ride, made a beeline for Main Street, and got a really great place for the fireworks. I took a bunch of pictures, so I'll have to upload them at some point, once I weed out the blurry ones from the good ones.

And then yesterday I worked again. I had my stocker training shift, and was trained by David (the one from the Studios). I had a lot of fun with that, especially since I watched the bartender for a while so that I could learn to cover bar (which I'll probably avoid as much as possible, because there's no way I could be as fast as the bartender is, and then the whole restaurant would be backed up because of me). The night was mostly bussing tables, folding napkins, and restocking silverware and glassware, but I had fun. Though it seems that something goes wrong every time I'm at work. The first day, it was that insanely large party that we had to figure out how to accomodate (not such a huge deal, really); the second day, the buses stopped running for a while, so all our reservations were backed up by about 40 minutes (but when people came out of the restaurant they said it was well worth the wait!); and yesterday, the system crashed and we had to switch to manual for seating. Apparently that wasn't much fun, so I'm glad I wasn't actually dealing with guests then.

Carolane and Rob and I decided to go swimming after work, which felt amazing after the running back and forth for eight hours. I think I'm going to make a habit out of swimming after work. I seem to sleep better. And now today is my last day of training (I'm on PM seating), and then I'm on my own (which is really, really scary). Hopefully all goes well. I have no idea who's training me.