So I know I have not blogged in what seems like forever. I have now been moved into Chatham Square 18202 for 2 weeks and a day now. It seems wayyy longer than that though! I'm going to try and give whoever is reading this the best description of the program so far in the shortest way. The first few days before check in went pretty close to what I had planned. Everything went well. So the big part:
Check In Day:
(you can also refer to my vlog at: http://youtu.be/eiRNCgMwQdg)
We arrived at Vista way around 5:30am and there were already a good 30 people in line ahead of us. By 6am the line started to wrap around the street and by 7am it was almost across the entrance for the buses as you can see in my vlog. We started getting into Vista at around 7:50am if I remember right. When we got to the Welcome pavillion we did a little paper work and headed inside to get our housing assignement. Since I had all my roommates reselected, Katelyn took all our program guides to a lady who would sign them and give us all our keys. We got into a 3 bedroom Chatham Square like we wanted yay! After going through there and signing a few more papers, Katelyn and Hailey had to fill out some papers for their cars and then we were giving a Casting bus assignment. Our Casting bus left at 9:30. When we got there around 9:45 we were given our locations right away. Tara- DHS right block/icon merchandise, Katelyn- Epcot Towers&Glow merch, Haley- Contemporary merch, Hailey- DHS Hollywood Hills merch, Kaylee- All Star resorts arcade (recreation), Bridget- Character Performer "Friends with Pooh". The rest of casting is just a big boring maze of paper work. We were given a schedule for our Traditions class and first 2 days of training. We finally finished around 11:40, but didn't get on a bus back to Vista until 12:15. We all arrived at our new home around 12:30ish. We live in Chatham building 18 apt. 202 (second floor) our place is very nice although it lacks some essentials (ice cream scooper, toaster, plunger &more). (Apt Tour Vlog: http://youtu.be/GcpqkitX74M). We started moving in and unpacking. We had a housing meeting at 3pm at The Commons. The housing meeting is quite boring, but there are some things they tell you that you will need to know, like how to sign visitors in and stuff. After that we had the night to ourselves.
Traditions:
There are two sets of Traditions: Morning- 8am and Afternoon-2pm at Disney University. Bridget,Haley, and I had the aternoon session. When you arrived you are prearranged into groups. Luckily, Bridget was in mine. Throughout the beginning it's pretty boring. You go over a few online things and answer questions as a class for about a half hour. Next they start to go over the 4 keys- Safety Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency. Then comes the cool part. The class room gets split in half into 2 groups. everyone gets handed a ear pieced radio to hear our teacher through. We left Disney University, walked over to West Clock(which is the bus stop to take Magic Kingdom castmembers to the utilidors for work) and got on a bus. For those that don't know, Utilidors are the underground tunnels under the Magic Kingdom that Walt decided to build so that the magic would stay alive and guests would not see say a Fantasyland cast member walking through Fronteirland to their work location. We headed inside the Utilidors which was so cool.We saw Belle on the computer and a few heads to the characters. We stopped at one point and our teacher told us we were directly under the castle. We eventually went up some stairs and came out onto Main Street USA. The feeling of walking out there and seeing the castle was unreal. It was weird, I had seen the castle atleast 30 times before, but this time was different. Maybe it' because it was my first time as a cast member? Who knows! All I know was that it was one of the most amazing feelings I've ever experienced. We walked down Main Street and around through Tomorrow Land. The entire tour we went over examples of the four keys we had seen. We finished our tour and went back down the to the utilidors through Tomorrowland. During the last hour or so of class we finished the 4 keys. We also had a surprise visit from our boss, the mouse himself! He brought us a present which we soon found out was our name tags. At the end of class we all went up to the front of the room to grab them and we all put them on together as a class for the first time. We ended class around 6:30pm.
After Traditions:
I had Saturday and Sunday off. My mom was flying back home Saturday afternoon, so I spent the day shopping with her before she had to leave. She left around 2pm, but all the girls had already headed out to the parks. Bridget had training until 5:30pm so when she got home around 6, we headed to the Magic Kingdom to meet up with Hailey and Katelyn. Sunday Hailey, Bridget and I went over to Animal Kingdom for most of the day.
Training:
I started my training on Monday. Monday was called "On With The Show". We started by going on a huge tour of park. We got in before the park opened which was pretty cool. After that it was time for classroom work. We watched some videos and went over the 4 keys and the Disney Basics (I project a positive image and energy. I am courteous and respectful to all Guests, including children. I stay in character and play the part. I go above and beyond.) Mainly more boring stuff. As you can tell I'm more of a hands on person so videos and speeches are not fun for me. After that was over we split into groups based on our role and met with someone from our area. Mine was Laretta and she was ironically from Chicago. She walked us over to costuming where we were shown the costume we would need and tried them on for size. After that we were done with training for the day.
The second day was Teir 1. We wore our costumes and each had our own trainer. It was pretty simple. We did some E-Leaning online and did a walk through of our shops. We also had lunch in Take Five which is the cast only dining (we ate there Monday too). Take Five has a Subway as well as other food they make there like Pizza, actual meals, and a la carte items. I had a strawberry smoothie which was quite good. Teir 1 was very easy going. We were given our pin lanyards and traded alot with guests.
Wednesday was Merchantainment training at Disney Unviersity again. We did some more E-learning and then headed to lunch for an hour. After lunch we went into another room and started learning how the "Cash Wrap" (cash register area) worked. We did some hands on stuff since they had mock registers. It was very similar to the register I used at jcpenney. We also did some role playing. We were put in pairs and one person was the guests and had cards to read off of to act out situations while the other person rang them up.We watched a few more videos and that was it for the day.
Teir 3 & 4 were both pretty easy. We went over cash wrap situations and learned how to do various types of things like package pick up items, returns, voids, and such. We started working with actual guests too.
We had Saturday off and Sunday we had stroller training. We did more E-Learning and learned everything about renting strollers,wheel chairs, and ECVs. We also learned to clean,stack, and park all of them. The last big thing we had to do was our assessment. We had a stroller assessment and a general merchandise assessment. I passed both! With a total of 73/75. I am now an official cast member!
From then on I have been actually working various locations, but mainly Oscar's (strollers,wheel chairs, and ECVs).
The Social Aspect:
I haven't done toooo much since I feel like I have been swamped with work. I went to a paint party at Bar One with my friends Vinny and Katie and their friends which was awesome, although I sliced my finger open since there was glass on the floor I didn't see and I touched the floor. I also went to Bliss last Friday for ladies night. Bliss was really cool inside altough the dance floor was kind of small. We ended up in VIP upstairs where there was more room to move around. Last Tuesday I took the bus to Miami. The weather wasn't too great, but it was a good time. We walked by DASH (the kardashian's store) and got some gelato from Lecca Lecca (the place the Jersey Shore cast worked at). They say you get the most burnt in over cast weather, well that was proven! My entire back side got fried! I had to go buy from yoga pants from one of the gift shops because there was no way I was gunna had a 4+ hour ride home in jean shorts which a burned behind. Since then, I haven't done much since I have had mainly mid shifts at work and I'm usually too tired to do anything after. I did go see The Women In Black the other night after work with Hailey and Bridget, although I slept through most of it which I'm kinda happy about because I hate scary movies and judgeing by what I could hear, it was bad haha.
