Saturday, October 3, 2009

SOMEONE IS BEING A SLACKER....

...and the slacker would be me... :)

wow these past 40 days have flown by! Everything is going amazingly well.

I work in Tomorrowland Attractions, at the Stitch complex, which is Stitch's Great Escape, Astro Orbiter, and Tomorrowland Transit Authority. I honestly LOVE working here. Everyone in Tomorrowland is amazingly awesome and nice!

Where do I start??
Well check-in went very smoothly, I got the 2 bedroom in Chatham Square just like I wanted. The apartment is really nice. Worth the 80 or 90 something I pay a week, maybe not, but still really nice. Everyone with Price Management has been really nice so far with everything, so I guess no complaints. One tip I have for future CP's. BRING A SLEEP MASK. My bedroom windows are right next to a light that shines into my bedroom everynight so sometimes because of that it is kinda hard to fall asleep. But the mask does wonders. :)

Traditions was amazing, honestly made me proud to work for Disney. 90% of it is amazing and then they ruin it with the sexual harassment video. haha But they really make you happy about joining the company. I even won a little plastic Pluto figurine for being the group leader on an activity where you name the most Disney Characters. My group was in second place. With like 30 something I think. The day of Traditions is pretty awesome for one reason - YOU FINALLY GET YOUR FREE PARK ADMISSION!! :) I have taken full advantage of this benefit! (hence why there has not been an update in so long)

Then the next day or so, I being a Magic Kingdom Cast Member, got to go to "Once Upon a Time... is now" Which is basically when you go and learn about the Magic Kingdom and a lot of the services they provide, and about the park, and so on. I'm not sure what the other parks or areas do for theirs but I think @ least the other parks have a similar day. We got to ride Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (the most popular ride in the resort, BTW) and The Haunted Mansion. I found the hidden Mickey in the graveyard scene that I have not been able to find (I took the Keys to the Kingdom tour back in 2006 and our guide mentioned it, but I had never been able to find it) Then after a short tour of the underground tunnels we got to meet the people who gave us a tour around Tomorrowland. We got to ride Buzz again, and then watch Stitch's Great Escape. The one person who gave us the tour, Jason told us about some of the big point targets, so now when I ride, I actually get a halfway decent score!

Training went pretty flawlessly. The only thing is that there is A LOT of stuff to remember, at least in Attractions. Evac procedures, just basic operations of the attractions, and everything else, OH MAN! By assessment day your head will be spinning! Luckily I passed my assessments on Stitch and Astro Orbiter. The Tomorrowland Transit Authority didn't reopen until a few weeks ago so I just recently got trained on it. It is my favorite ride to work on (except that the other day they implemented new audio on the ride, and it is terrible :( I do not like it at all!) I liked the fact I didn't get trained on that til a bit later though, at least I didn't have to remember 3 attractions for my original assessment! But now everything is going pretty great.

One bit of advice, you are going to run into bad guest experiences. Don't let them get you down. Because then someone later that day will help turn it around. Honestly. I had a guest tell me that they were going to guest relations to complain about what I did (which was, MY JOB) and then later that night, I had the best time ever, and it made me practically forget the whole encounter. I've had guests hug me because of something I have done for them. I've had guests tell me to enjoy the rest of my life! Try to remember positive experiences, they may not happen EVERY SINGLE DAY but they are definitely what you want to walk away from the program with.

My best guest encounter was this one time on Astro Orbiter. Wishes (the fireworks @ the Magic Kingdom) started at 10PM that night. These four men, I honestly think I made their night. It was like 9:58 and they kept telling me to go slow loading, so they could see the start of the fireworks. I told them I couldn't promise anything but then people were actually having trouble with the seat belts. It held me up a bit more than it normally would have. So I got back to my console at like 9:59:30 and the music started. Which meant Wishes was starting EARLY! Like 30 seconds but whatever. All the sudden I heard screaming and "THANK YOU KELLY!!!!". Then their flight was done but there was only a few people waiting (the last group for the night) so we sent them up again after the other people had loaded. Their flights were done, and so we decided to let them all stand up there after because at that point Wishes was just ending and then after Wishes ended they all started hugging me and some other dude shook my hand thanking me. but the 4 guys as the elevator was closing were like "WE'RE GONNA COME BACK AND SEE YOU!!!" and I yelled out that I had to leave in January and they were all like "OH NOOOOO!!!" It was amazing and funny and great. I will remember it for a VERY LONG TIME. You just feel so good about yourself that you could do something that nice for someone, and have it not be a problem. We really do have the freedom here to make people happy. Which is great.

What I am trying to tell you is to try to make the glass half full. If you keep looking at it as half empty, I swear you are going to have a hard time enjoying your time here.

I am seriously at this point considering extending my program, and then going seasonal thereafter. I am that in love with working here.

Til next time!! (hopefully sooner rather than later!)


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