Disney's New Art of Animation Resort!

My roommates and I were allowed to go to a "test night" at the new Disney's Art of Animation Resort this past weekend.  It doesn't open until the 31st to normal people, so this was really, really exciting that we go to be the first people to be there!  We even got the first test night, too!

I have to say, I didn't think Disney could blow my mind anymore.  But really, when it comes to staying in a Disney resort as opposed to some other hotel around property, it's totally worth it.  Despite the higher price.  Although our price was free, so I can't really judge. :)

 

Elizabeth, standing outside the Animation Hall (the main building where you check in).  It's incredibly colorful, and all about ART! 

John Lasseter himself signed one of the paintings on the chandelier.



 The resort consists of four "sections" of buildings you can stay in.  Currently, the only set opening is the Nemo building.  So we stayed in Nemo.  Cars will open next, then The Lion King, followed by The Little Mermaid themed section.  Of course, I can't wait for The Lion King to open.  But that won't be until August, just days after I leave.  I'm terribly offended by this.

However, the food court still have a Lion King themed section you could sit in.  This worked for me!  I made us sit here as we ate our meals.  Which also happened to be free!

We then proceeded to the room. The room keys had the little chips in them so you don't have to swipe.  Just hold your key up to the door and it clicks open!  And there's a "hidden Mickey" on the lock.

I had never gotten to use an Inova bed before.  So this part was pretty cool.  And actually, this was the bed I slept on.

I LOVE the picture of sleeping Nemo on the inside.  You can only barely see it in this picture, but there are some LED lights above and a little dial where you can turn off the lights and such without getting up and without taking up space on the nightstand!  And in this picture you can sort of see into the master bedroom.

 This is the living room.  I love how ocean themed it is.  Every detail is just so well thought out it blows my mind!  And below is the master bed.  We decided it was kind of small.  We don't get why this bed isn't King size...  It was still nice, though.  And, of course, no Disney room is complete without a Mickey Mouse towel!

 One of the two bathrooms.  Notice how the mirror says "Fish are friends..."  They were going to put "not food" except that they serve fish in the food court... so that wouldn't have really gone down very well...  So they just stuck with the first half of the quote I guess.









Back in the living room.  The TV was great and the drawers were nice and big.  That orange chair looks really cool... but I found it incredibly uncomfortable.  My roommate liked it though.

 Just another part of the theming.  I just love Disney and their creative towel pet things.  We had stuff like this at Pop Century too. 

 This is the other bathroom, I think.  We were literally the first people to ever stay in this room.  Ever.  That said... we did have some trouble turning on the shower for the first time.  It was stuck really tight.  We eventually got it, though.

 They gave us free popcorn to "test the microwave with."  Really awesome, but it smelled kind of funny!

 Next Elizabeth and I visited the arcade.  We got there way earlier than our other two roommates.  I totally beat the snot out of her at air hockey.  Actually... I think it was a close tie.  Whatever.

A storm was coming, so I didn't really get a good photo of the pool area.  Which is lame, because the pool totally rocked!  It's the biggest pool on Disney property.  And it has underwater speakers.  It was possibly the coolest thing ever to listen to Hannah Montana above water and then old country music below water.  Loved it!  Plus there's a kid play area around there too.  And a pool bar called "The Drop Off."

 This was our building.  There was talk about how often the seagulls are going to go off saying "Mine!  Mine!  Mine!"  At first they were going to have it going all the time.  But then they decided that would get annoying to the lifeguards and those in the pool.  So then they considered once an hour on the hour.  And even that seemed like too much.  But for now they said they're going to leave it at every hour and go from there.  They were completely turned off for our stay though.

 This is long enough.  But stay tuned for the photos of the Cars building!  We got to take the tour in there.  Even though it's not opened, we were allowed to do a walk through.  It's so stinking awesome! This was the best 18 hour vacation of my life!

Loving Safaris and DAR

I haven't worked at Safaris in a while.  Since I last worked, they've gotten three new lions (cubs... sort of... more teens in lion years), baby warthog piglets, the pregnant rhino had her baby, and there's a new reticulated giraffe.  And there is no longer Wilson which means it's the new spiel.  And some minor operating changes (particularly the new Fastpass stuff, yeah, it's been a while).  I've been trained on all of this, but have yet to have actually practice any of it.

I've been wanting to pick up shifts there for a while, but it just hasn't worked out.  But today, I finally found a 10.75 hour shift on EHH.  And I definitely just picked it up.  Bring on the extra hours!!!

And, bring on the Safaris!  I have no idea what's going to happen next week when I work this brand new safari with a totally different spiel!  But I am sure it'll be awesome!

You know what else is awesome about next week?  My roommate, who is on the opening team for the new DAR (Disney's Art of Animation Resort) gets one free "test" night to stay in a room with some friends (and apparently "test meals" are included too, but we're not sure that all four of us will get to participate in that just yet).  And so the girls of our apartment will be chilling in the new resort next week for FREE before it's even opened!

Oh, and I just paid for my plane ticket to China today.  Just throwing that on top there as well.

I have the best life EVER!

Lessons Learned

We had a meeting today.  It was actually incredibly informative.  And it made me feel really important, you know, being a meeting and all.  It was complete with a Powerpoint presentation.  However, there were only four slides.  And one of them was the intro slide that just said something like "Ops Meeting, May 5, 2012" or something.

I've really been learning a lot lately about companies and how they're run.  And how everything is interconnected. I mean, just how the simple act of dropping a position for a few hours could affect that area's workload for a year from now!  There is so much detail and research done to figure out things like budgets and workloads and efficiency it blows my mind!  I've been learning about budgets and how money is spread throughout organizations.

I've learned how much our department depends on other departments.  We are all so interconnected.  The front line workers really depend on our department to get things right.  When other places make mistakes, it messes us up.  And when I make mistakes, it messes them up.  We all really, really depend on each other.

We looked at some charts and graphs in the meeting today showing trends in our area.  The goal was for the red graph to show a downward trend, and the blue one to go upward.  As they showed us certain areas that were doing better than others, I was surprised that no individual names were mentioned.  While Disney certainly has enough research to pick and choose names of the individuals making these graphs worse, the leaders didn't do that.  They simply pointed out that, as a team, we are improving, but certain areas are struggling more than others and we need to continue to work hard to get these numbers in the right directions.  It made me realize how I really am part of a team.  And that as much as I can succeed individually at what I do, and even get recognized for it, the team as a whole needs to be successful.  And if the team isn't successful, then my success isn't really even there.

I've learned about being detail oriented.  It's oh so easy sometimes to try and change a CMs shift as quickly as I can and skip over important steps.  Like in some situations it is kind of annoying to take those extra steps to recalculate someone's breaks.  But, if I skip it, first of all that's illegal because that person's getting paid incorrectly and could go to the union and create all kinds of mayhem.  But second of all, chances are I'll get a call a few hours later from their leader telling me to fix it anyway.  Or I'll just be creating more work for someone else.  It's best just to do things right the first time and not try to skip steps because I think I'm in a hurry.

I learned a lot about people working as a front line Cast Member.  But now, I'm definitely grateful for the experience of working in an office.  It's not something I want to do long term, that's for sure.  But for now I'm really learning a lot and loving every minute of it.  Even if it gets stressful at times.

Also, I've learned about Murphy's Law.  And how it applies.  Every single time I choose to answer the phopne, my radio will go off as soon as I pick it up.  Every time.

Dumb Technology...

Technology has not been on our side this last few days.  On Sunday (or maybe it was Monday... I don't actually remember), the radios decided not to work.  Like, the signal just plain wasn't there most of the day.  And in the rare case that it was there, it would cut out in the middle or we had to keep saying "10-9?" "What?"  "Repeat please?"  So weird!  However, I learned it was much easier to deal with that, than the problem we encountered the next day.

We had CDS issues next.  They "updated" it.  I came into work Tuesday and stood by the guy whose radio I was taking.  "How's it been?"  "Terrible."  Now, the people in my office have gotten into the habit of lying to me because they think my gullibility is funny.  So this time I didn't believe him.  And this time, he was telling the truth.

I sat down, logged in, got some calls, and began working on it.  I clicked on the box where we open up the tree to go to a specific location.  Except that the tree was no longer there!  "What?  No tree?"  I exclaimed.  The guy beside me snickered.  "Yeah, that's a new feature."  No no.  It was supposed to be there.  Just it was broken and only showing me Dinoland Ops.  And I needed Future World.

Then I finally got the location to pop up (had to memorize the name and just type it in) and I clicked to open it.  "This is taking forever!"  I said.  "That's a new feature too!" He told me.

I finally got the location to open and clicked the CMs name who I had to change.  Loading.... loading...

and then CDS crashed and logged me out.  "New feature!"  The guy beside me said happily after I yelled "NOOOOO!" at my computer.  "Now it randomly logs you out throughout the day!"

Then, apparently (I didn't work yesterday, but heard from one of my friends), they undid the update. Needless to say, work has been exceptionally stressful these past few days.  It's reeeeeeallly hard to do my job when the systems aren't working right.  Not only hard, but stressful.  Because the people who aren't using the systems and are asking for help aren't necessarily patient and don't necessarily understand what's happening on our end and how it's not my fault!

On a happier note I still love my job.  Most of the stress has just gotten to the point that I just laugh.  That's all that's left for me to do.  I can laugh, or get angry.  I choose loopy laughter.  Really, there's nothing much to get angry about.  Fortunately, I work in a place where my bosses are wonderful.  The other day I was telling a manager about my fears of getting bad feedback for a certain situation.  She laughed at me and told me what someone else told her.  "Babies are not dying if you don't do your job correctly."  It's just not a big deal.

Thank.  Freaking.  Goodness.

I've learned a lot since working in an office environment "backstage."  I've certainly learned that offices are breeding grounds for gossip.  But also, from what I've heard, this Disney office is apparently one of the best offices to work in compared to a lot of "outside" offices.  Sometimes our bosses even give us free pancakes!  Well... that was just the one time.  But I still like it!

I really love my job.  I'll be sad to leave in a few months.  But I'm so happy for this experience and wouldn't change it for a second.  And, I can't wait to come back already!