Just Living the Dream

When you work at Disney, and someone asks "Hey, what's up?"  or "Hey, how are you?"  The correct response is, "Just living the dream."

The good news is I picked up a shift so I got to work Thursday!  More hours!  But the bad news is that means I only got one day off this week.  Which means only one day to catch up on sleep.  And instead of catching up on sleep yesterday (and laundry, and groceries, and cleaning) I woke up at 7am again and went to the parks with some friends.

I know it's pathetic, but despite having worked here for the past two years, there were still some attractions I'd never been on, mainly because I had decided they were boring and lame.  So I never did them.  Yesterday, Chelsey made me do the ones in MK that were like that.  So I went to Tom Sawyer's Island, watched the Country Bears show and did the Hall of Presidents.  Surprisingly (actually, I really shouldn't have been surprised, this is Disney after all) I really enjoyed all of them.  Especially Tom Sawyer's Island.  I couldn't believe I'd never been there and now I really want to reread the books.

After MK, we went to Blizzard Beach and met up with the boys.  I did the Summit Plummit twice, which is why I'm bruised all up and down my right side today.  I think somehow I accidentally slammed my body into the right side of the slide at the bottom.  It hurts!

After that we ended up at EPCOT after a lot of confusion and meeting people and, of course, the daily thunderstorm.  We went on Soarin' and watched IllumiNations, which is basically one of the best shows ever.

Such a great day!  Unfortunately I only have pictures from the morning since I didn't have my camera in the water park and later it was pouring rain.  But take my word for it, it was fun!

So then today, I had to work at 8:15am.  But due to rotten bus schedules I got to work at 7:30am.  Meaning I left at 7am.  (I'm not complaining about getting to work early because A, I have a car and B, I work with really fun people who also get to work early and we all have fun hanging out)

I opened a truck which I haven't done since training, but I did just fine.  And I only got one ride around before being bumped for my first break.  Then, later I did a round and I came back to pick up my next group of guests and a trainer jumped into the front seat next to me.  I was in the middle of spieling and doing the ride, so I didn't really have time to ask him what was up, or why he was there.  I just kind of went with it and did my spiel.

We went through the whole ride with him and his clipboard taking notes.  I was thinking the whole time trying to figure out if I was in trouble, doing something wrong, had someone complained about me?  I had no idea!

Finally at the end I let the guests off and turned to the trainer to ask what was up.  He was doing "show control."  Apparently, it's a common thing for trainers to randomly do rides with us and listen to our spiels making sure we're still doing it right and we're not veering too far from the script and driving correctly, remembering speed limits and such.  He said I did everything just fine and complimented me.  He said the only negative thing he had was that I sounded kind of nervous, however I was still able to sound energetic and happy... just a little nervous.  Not sure how those go together.

Well of course I was nervous, I thought I was in trouble!  Although it did make me think, because while I was nervous, I thought I was doing a really good job completely hiding it, but apparently not.  Anyway, I need to work on stage fright, I guess.

Later I got to work Departure 2, which is just about my favorite position out of all of them.  It's the one where you ask how many and then assign guests a row.  It's like a never ending tetris puzzle, where the pieces are constantly not going where you want them to go, jumping out of line, or where a piece says it's a blue rectangle when in fact it's a square.

I'm not even kidding.  I would ask people, "How many in your party?"  And the first person would say three so I'd put them in a row and it would turn out there were six people.  I can understand a party of five saying they are four because one is a baby or something.  But really?  Three people being five adults and a child just doesn't make any sense to me.  And it happened a few times.

I would also tell people "Row 4" and they'd go to row 3 or something.  At one point I had assigned them to row 8 and went to the next guests to tell them where to sit, when I turned around again I found that every member of that party had happily decided they would each get their own row, taking up row 3-5... but nobody in the one where I had put them.

But it's fun.  It's like a never ending puzzle that's constantly changing and needing to be fixed.  I have to be constantly thinking and figuring stuff out and fixing things which is fun for me.  I totally love that job, as frustrating as it may be sometimes.

Anyway, I'm still living the dream!  Still loving life!  (and taking more pictures to post on here shortly!)