Magic Kingdom

So last night was another amazing night at MK. April and I got there around 915 at night. Well, we got some food at Kasey's Korner and then watched the summer nightastic fireworks at 10:00. After that we went and rode pirates and haunted mansion and got fastpasses for splash mountain. We watched the 11:00 parade which wasn't very crowded at all. It's so cool when the characters in the parade actually interact with you specifically. After the parade was over we still had 2 more hours until the park closed for the night. So we went on our own private splash mountain boat and hopped on thunder mountain railroad. Then we made our way over to fantasyland and got on peter pan's flight in no time at all. We ended the night with a nearly empty show of Philharmagic, where the doors open AutoMagically :)

I definitely plan on checking out mk late at night again this summer. Best ever!! :)

Summer Nightastic

Well I have finally passed the halfway point in my program (I think). Yay! I was pretty down for a little while there but now I've gotten myself in a good rhythm and am enjoying what I do. I don't know if I told you we had 2 more cps leave us :( When I got here in March, there were 9 cps and now we're down to 5 (we got 1 new cp last week). I really hope we get some new people in the restaurant soon because most of the exciting people left.

Anyways, summer Nightastic has begun at Disneyworld! So the fireworks/parade at MK are now different, DAK stays open an hour later, Epcot has a concert series, and HS has a dj at night and tower of terror got an update. So I went to MK the other day to see the new excitement and I have to say that I love the new parade! It's a lot better than the spectromagic. I did also like the new fireworks, but I'm a big 'Wishes' fan so it's hard to say that I loved it. It starts out kinda lame but the middle is really cool.

I've kinda gotten back in the habit of going to the parks on all of my days off. Which is fine except for the fact that I desperately need to go grocery shopping and I've been getting behind on my laundry again.

Lots of new people are coming soon!! YAY!! Can't wait for you all to get here, and have fun at checkin. Be sure you have all your paperwork and the proper ids so that checkin goes smooth. Also try to decide which apartments you would like to live in and how many roommates you're willing to deal with :)

TTYL :)

Caribbean Beach :)

Well my mom and sister were here for a few days. It was really nice to see both of them and take them around all the parks. My scheduler hadn't given me any of the days I requested off but I was able to give away a couple of my shifts to 2 really nice people I work with. We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort which was really nice. It's really close to the Studios and Epcot which was very convenient. It was a huge resort (as in it had like 7 pools), and it was so pretty. And for $100 a night, we were all happy.

I was pretty exhausted after they left on Wednesday, but of course I had to go to work :)

A lot of new cps have been arriving the past couple of weeks. There's been lots of pool parties and traditions groups around. I'm always disappointed because I'm usually working whenever the housing complexes have their welcome parties. They usually have free food and a couple characters. I heard the one here at patterson the other day had mickey and stitch. Kinda sad I missed out.

So, thank you Abby for posting a question! Yes there is a hostess stand outside, that's where one person checks people in and where we have people wait to be called to their table. At the H&V there are a few different "jobs" you could be doing as a seater throughout the day. 1) Greeter: this is the person who stands outside with the computer and checks guests in. 2) Seater: the ticket prints out at the inside computer with the guest name and the table # and you go outside and call the guest etc. 3) Buffet Line: you basically wipe down the buffet line and make sure it stays clean. 4) Desserts: we are in charge of the desserts so we have to go to the kitchen and replace them when they get low, and we have to keep refilling the ice cream machine. Those are the 4 basic jobs for seaters. There are 2 more jobs that you have to be trained extra for: GT and Assignor. The GT is in charge of the money for the night, they deal with the servers throughout the night and bank them out at the end of their shifts. The assignor is the one who walks around the restaurant and assigns the parties waiting outside their table. This person has to make sure that each table they assign is clean, set for the correct number of people, and is ready for the guests.

That was kind of a long answer to your question abby but there it is! Well got to go! I have some homework from my College Program class, I'll talk about it next time :)

Sad Good-byes

So yeah, it's been like 10 days since I've updated this.....sorry bout that :) I don't have an excuse for you, oh well.

Anyways, this week was kind of sad because we had a group of cps leaving. We lost 3 great people from the H&V and we all already miss them. That's one of the tough things about being a cp, there are constantly people leaving and arriving. 5 months really isn't that long and it goes by really quickly. I can't believe I've already been here close to 2 months.

Well, this past week has been a lot of parks and work (as it should be). I kinda went to epcot way too many times. A cast member in mexico started to recognize me.....not a good thing. So my goal this week is to stay out of epcot entirely. We'll see if I can do it.

My mom and sister are visiting next week! yay!! I can't wait to see them and spend some time with them. We're going to stay at the Caribbean Beach Resort with my 50% off discount! I love that cast members get such a great discount on hotels. It's only gonna cost about $100 a night. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like my scheduler gave me the days I asked for off. (Even though I requested them a month ago) So I'll be hanging out with them in between going to work......not exactly the best thing. Hopefully I can find somebody to take a couple of those shifts for me but if not......I'm gonna be exhausted from running around like crazy. It'll come down to me getting them in the park in the morning, spending a couple hours with them, going to work, and meeting them at the hotel at night.

Well that's all for now. I feel like I never have anything new to talk about on this thing. If any of you future cpers have questions about the program, feel free to ask them. I need something to talk about! :)

DAY OFF!!!!

Yay! It's finally my day off :) Yesterday was absolutely insane at the H&V. It was a Fantasmic night (of course) so we were busy busy the entire night. At one point we were 30 minutes behind on reservations and had an hour wait for walk ins. That's definitely the craziest I've ever seen it.

Last night was the cp spring formal at the Coronado Springs Resort. I couldn't make it since I worked until 11:15 but I heard it was a lot of fun. Free food, DJ, and there were characters there all dressed up for the dance. My roomie was really excited to see Minnie and Mickey all dressed up. There were also characters from Ratatouille and Mary Poppins was there. You never know who you'll run into at cp events.

I can't believe I've already been here for more than a month. Time really does fly by. Some cps I work with are already going home next week :( Then we'll be getting new cps the week after that (I think). I'm really gonna miss some of the people I work with that will be leaving. They're all great people that I enjoyed hanging out with.

Well not much else has been going on lately. I've been working a lot, I took my Safety in Motion class for work (very exciting stuff). A couple days ago after work I ran over to epcot to meet up with my roommates to ride soarin' and watch illuminations. It was way too hot/humid that day, so we were glad to get into the land. Illuminations is definitely my least favorite nighttime show here at disneyworld. The giant globe is cool and all, but there's like 10 minutes of just showing pictures which gets kinda boring when you're hot, tired, and ready to go home. I finally figured out where the cp bus drops you off at epcot. It's really confusing to get to the front gate, so I think I'm gonna stick with going to the ttc and taking the monorail to epcot.

I'm having a very exciting day off today. I went to wal-mart this morning and I think I might do a little laundry now. It's nice to have a day to relax, but I don't know if I'll be able to stay out of the parks completely today. Magic Kingdom anyone?

A Valuable Lesson

If you even remotely think that it is going to rain in florida.......bring an umbrella/pancho with you to work. :) Wanna know why I know this? Because I failed to bring an umbrella last week to work one day. And when I got off from work, it was pouring. As in torrential downpour that gets you soaked through in 30 seconds or less. Well what do cps do when its raining outside and we just got off work? We run to the bus of course. I literally felt like I had jumped into a swimming pool by the time I got to that bus. I was dripping wet. So learn this lesson.......umbrellas are your friends.

Lets see.....what else has been going on in florida? Well I spent a very magical day in Magic Kingdom with 2 fellow cps I work with, Vern and Drew. Definitely a lot of fun. We spent the day running around the park riding space mountain, splash mountain, haunted, jungle etc etc. Then since the park closed at 7:00 because of grad night we decided to go to downtown disney for some food. We met a dragon along the way :)
Oh hey, did anybody know that some schools have their proms at Disney World? Isn't that crazy?? A school had their prom in the Indiana Jones theater last night. I have to admit, I was kinda jealous.

Well that's it for now! Hopefully I'll be able to start posting these with pics more often :)
Have a Magical Day!!

Cast Adventures

So yesterday was one of my days off. One of my roommates, Becca, and I decided to go over to the Cast Connections store and Property Control. They are right next to each other and right across from Disney University. Definitely 2 really awesome places. Basically Property Control is full of merchandise that is broken/defective/too specific to sell to guests. For example, I saw a lot of shirts that said "Joe's 25th Birthday Celebration". Obviously if they put that in a regular Disney store it would take forever to sell. But anyways, they have some good stuff in there. I got a picture frame for my sister for really cheap because it was kinda faded. Everything in there is 75% off for all cast members. You have to show your id to get in and then they swipe it when you pay. They have a little bit of everything: hats, sweatshirts, t-shirts, jewelry, sunglasses, toys, etc. Also they are constantly changing what they have, so I think I'm gonna go back in a couple weeks to see if I can find anything else I want.
Cast Connections is right next door and is also a cast discount store. Stuff is a little more expensive in there because they don't carry damaged goods. I think it's just a lot of leftover merchandise from the parks/Disney stores. Disney is constantly putting new t-shirts/sweatshirts/everything into their stores and the old stuff has to go somewhere. I'm pretty sure it sorta just ends up in cast stores.
Well after our cast discount shopping adventure, Becca and I were going to go to Blizzard Beach. Right now cast members can go to the water parks for free!! (Until June I think) Unfortunately, we got there and the park was full to capacity. Weird right? I don't think that park is very big. So we decided to go to Typhoon Lagoon instead. My other roommate Tara works at Blizzard so she was disappointed we couldn't come visit her. But we had fun at Typhoon. I hadn't been there since I was like 7 years old so it was cool to go back. My favorite slide was by far the Crush 'n' Gusher. But we also did the 3 raft rides they have, their lazy river, and the wave pool. I wanted to go snorkeling too, but by that time it was getting late in the day so we skipped it.
After that we went over to Vista Way to sign up for CP classes. I signed up for the Experiential Learning class because it sounded the most interesting. I was really disappointed that they weren't offering the Exploration Series classes. I really wanted to take the Marketing class because that would pertain to my major. Oh well.
Then we went home and had a family meal with Danica. It was kinda cute to sit around the table and eat real food. Well we had chicken, tator tots, and green beans :) That counts as a real meal.
And finally I ended the day with the Great Movie Ride and Fantasmic. That was a lot to fit into one day, but it worked :D
It's so easy to find something to do here at Disney, and it's even better when you have someone to go on adventures with you! (Not that I haven't gone to the parks by myself multiple times).
Well, I've got work in about an hour and a half, so I'll try to write later this week.
Have a magical day!