Taking It For Granted

We are told so many times not to take anything in life for granted, because you never know when it's going to be gone. When I lived in Hawaii for those two months (those two times) I know for a fact that I took it granted. I told myself, "eh, I won't go to the beach today, because I can always go tomorrow." Yup. Bad news. And obviously, after I left I would sometimes give anything to be back on a Hawaiian beach.

So, before I came here I made it a goal to never take living so close to Disney World for granted. So far, I feel like I've done pretty well. I don't think there has been a day where I've done absolutely nothing. I've always gone out and done something that I normally can't do back home. But in other ways I have taken it for granted. For example, I want to go to Magic Kingdom, but I really don't want to ride the bus for 40 minutes to get there. Yup... That sentence came out of my mouth. Please don't judge me. One of my coworkers actually said this, "Yeah, my friends want to go to Epcot today, but I think I might just stay home and play video games or watch TV." ... but really. #disneyproblems. I know that I'm not the only one who has a problem with this!

But then, I go to Magic Kingdom and see the castle, and it literally puts my life into perspective. I live at DISNEY WORLD. The place people travel thousands of miles to visit just for a few days. I mean, when you see this... how could you take it for granted?


(Picture found on Google)

Really though.

So as I continue my adventures in the happiest place on earth, I will try my best to live every day to the fullest. And don't worry, I'll be sure to write it all down. :)

People Are Amazing

I realize that I haven't written in awhile, but it's been pretty crazy here at Walt Disney World. And I convince myself that there is nothing to blog about because all I do is go to work everyday, but in reality, every single day is different. You have different people coming to the park with different experiences. You work with a different combination of people every shift, and you really never know what's going to happen.

First of all, can I express how much I love my job? I LOVE MY JOB! I truly believe that I have the best job in the world, (although if you ask most CPs that, they are going to say the same thing about their job, haha). I get to interact with people from all around the world and I am constantly growing and learning everyday through people I meet and the people I work with.

At on position I work, if it's not too busy, you're able to talk to the guests that are waiting in line. I talked to a family just yesterday about their Disney World trip. They were all wearing "Family Vacation 2013" shirts, so I asked them if it was their first time here. They told me it was, and they've traveled a pretty long distance to get there. I asked them where they were from, they answered, "Israel." Seriously. I meet people from the four corners of the world. How amazing is that?!

I love hearing people's stories, their life stories. I find it so interesting. Yesterday, I met an older man and his wife. They were from Philadelphia, and he had just retired from the army so they had taken a trip to Disney World to celebrate. Knowing that, made me really notice them as individuals, and not just a line of people I have to get on the ride as fast as possible. I love the opportunity I have to meet so many people, even if I'm never going to see them again.

People are amazing. Especially at Disney World. They can come from all over the world, with different backgrounds, and all have fun and make memories in one little place in Florida. I'm so grateful that I can be part of the company responsible to making people happy and help create unforgettable memories.

I've never been happier. :)

Training at GMR: Top Ten Phrases

So much has happened in the last week, I'm not sure where to begin. Training at The Great Movie Ride has been awesome. However, it is so much work mentally that most of the time, I feel way over my head. Memorizing the spiel, and driving the vehicle at the same time is difficult, but then you get to do it facing backwards, because you are talking to your audience. Yikes. Haha!

But really, I am super excited that I got The Great Movie Ride (or GMR) for my attraction. It's very unique, and people love it. I love all the guest interaction I am going to get, and I love how many co-workers I have. I always have somebody to talk to if I need anything.

Speaking of that, my co-workers are absolutely amazing. I never feel insignificant or belittled by them if I ask them a question. They always are happy to help me and am trying to make sure I don't feel too overwhelmed. They are always offering me tips and suggestions to make working at GMR a better experience, which I really am thankful for.

My trainer's name is Melissa. Melissa is great, she knows what she is doing, which is great for me, because I know that if I do exactly what she tells me to do, I'll be doing EXACTLY what I need to.

Yesterday, I did my first live show, I felt like I was going to throw up I was so nervous. Melissa was sitting in the front row, so she was right next to me. Whenever I got a scene absolutely perfect (which was only one or two of them), I could hear her mumble a little "YES!" under her breath. Haha! She's so awesome.



I thought a fun thing to do would be to do the top ten phrases that I've said or heard someone say to me during my first week of training at GMR. So, in no particular order, here they are!!

1. Melissa: "Don't forget to shift to four at the creepy curtain."

2. Melissa: "No, it's Ingrid BERG-MAN, no, no, not birdman, BERGMAN. No, You're saying BerDman, it's BerGman." Me: "You're saying exactly the same thing! BEERRRRGGGMMMAAANNN"

3. "Alright, we're going with our red's." "Okay we're going with our gray's."

4. "Alright, watch your elbow, I'm shutting the door. Watch your elbow, watch your elbow, watch your elbow, watch your elbow, watch your elbow, watch your elbow."

5. "I almost feel off my vehicle in Musical Street again."

6. "What day of training are you on?"

7. Melissa: "And... breath." "Breath, Anna." "Don't forget to Breath." "Just breath." "I'll tell you a secret on how to get through your first show... breath."

8. Melissa: "Alright, I can see that your brain is on overload, let's take a break."

9. Melissa: "and that's it! Any questions?" Me: "..yes."

10. "...What's my next line?"

Hope you've enjoyed! I'll talk to you later! :)

Orientation!

Today was my first day of training, which was Orientation. I had to get up at 5:30am in order to catch the bus at 6:30am that would get me to Hollywood Studios by 7:30am, which made me about 15 minutes early for my shift at 8am. Welcome to the life of a CP. haha! If you have a morning shift you have to wake up AT LEAST two hours before your shift starts. It's a party. :)

Anyway, Orientation went really well, like Traditions, I'm not sure how much I can say about it. But I am so excited to work in Hollywood Studios, it is my favorite park. I just love the concept of Hollywood, and how we treat all of the guest like stars. I love it!


(Found image on Google)

Also, I found out where I am working!!!!! EEEEKKKKKK!!!

Can you guess??

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THE GREAT MOVIE RIDE!


(Found image on Disney world's website)

Yay! I'm so excited!! I can't even tell you. My training for the ride starts Tuesday, so I had two days off before my five day work week full of eight to nine hour shifts of training. So exciting! I know it's going going to exhausting, but I feel like it's going to be fun. I'm a bit nervous about memorizing scripts, but I know it will all work out if I put work into it. :) Anyway, I was beyond excited when I found out (and obviously still am very excited.)

After Orientation, I waited for Katelyn to come home, and then me, Katelyn, and Kimber met up with Doug, Dan, and Clint and went to dinner at Steak N' Shake. Even though it took more than an hour for them to get our food to us, it was still really fun. Then we went to their apartment and listened to Brain Regan's new CD. Good times. :)

Anyway, this next week is going to get really crazy, so I apologize in advance if there is a sudden lack of posts, but I'll try my best.

Until next time!

Traditions & Magic Kingdom

Traditions was the first day of my orientation. Unfortunately, I can't say what exactly went on during Traditions, but it was a really awesome experience, and if anybody is going to do the Disney College Program, you'll like it. It's a good time. :)

After Traditions, we all took naps, haha, we were exhausted. When we got up we headed to Magic Kingdom because we had our Cast Member passes! Yay! Magic Kingdom was awesome! And the fact that I'm going to be here for the next five months, I definitely don't feel rushed for getting anything done, which is really nice.



Aww the Castle. It is so much bigger than the Disneyland one. This was the first time that we went inside the parks, and it made the whole "working for Disney World" a little more real. I'm so excited for what's to come. :)

Space Mountain was the first roller coaster I went on during this program!



Me in front of the Castle!


Funny Story: There's a monorail that runs in between Magic Kingdom and the big resorts, resorts like the Grand Floridian, the Polynesian, and the Contemporary. After we were done with Magic Kingdom, we hopped on the monorail to go to one of the resorts so we could catch one of our buses back to Chatham.

We were sitting on the monorail, and we noticed that it was skipping all the resorts. We just said that we would get off whenever they did stop at a resort. Then the voice on the speaker phone told us that if we wanted to get to a resort that we needed to go on a different monorail. So we all hopped up fast and Natalie and Kimber jumped off the monorail, but right when I was going to go out too, the doors slammed shut.

You can probably imagine my panic. This is like a little child's nightmare to be separated from their friends/family, in my case: roommates. haha! I could here Kimber screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!! ANNNAAAA!!" on the other side of the door. Haha! It was a moment of terror. But thankfully, Disney is awesome about that kind of stuff, so they opened the doors up for me again. haha! Scary moment though, for sure!

On that happy note, I'll talk to you all later!!

Housing Meeting & Boardwalk

For the first half of the day, I was in bed. It's funny, you would think that I would get up early because of the time difference, but I keep sleeping in till noon. Haha! My body is totally confused.

At four, I had a housing meeting. I texted a girl named Katie that I met on the bus from Casting. We found out that we live in the same building and that we had the same time for our house meeting. So I met up with her and made our way to the Commons, where the meeting was held.



When we got there, it was very different that I was expecting. They had colored lights flashing and music blaring. It was like entering a dance. Haha! They told us a lot about what was not allowed and what the rules were, but they tried to keep it as fun as possible. It was a pretty long meeting though, about two hours.

After that, I headed back to Chatham, Katelyn, Kimber, Natalie, Bri, and I decided to go to Boardwalk. It was so pretty at night!



We went to the Disney Store there and looked around for a bit, then we headed towards the Yacht Club Resort. That was pretty fun, I must admit that it wasn't as impressive as the Grand Floridian or the Polynesian, but I think I might have spoiled my expectations by going to those two first. Haha! Nevertheless, it still was really fun to see the inside.

Katelyn at the Disney Store!


We came across this little ice cream parlor/ restaurant. It's called Beaches and Cream, they do something called the Kitchen Sick, where they bring you an actual kitchen sink with eight scoops of ice cream and all the toppings in the house and a whole can of whipped creme. We didn't do it last night because none of us were hungry. But it's definitely on the bucket list!





After that we just headed back to our apartment. It was really low-key which was probably a good thing, so we can kind of catch out breath. Katelyn and I stayed up to about two in the morning, just talking. I'm so happy to have my roommate back.

Casting & Wishes

Hello everyone! Yesterday was my second day here in Walt Disney World, and it was definitely a fun one! I was able to relax in the morning and sleep in, which was awesome, because I was so tired from check-in the day before.

I had Casting at two so at 1:45 I headed to the bus stop. Thankfully, I was able to find my bus and get on it without a problem. There was a guy named Ryan that was kind of like our mentor throughout the whole thing. He stood up at the front of the bus and talked about what was going to happen once we got to Casting. He was absolutely hilarious! He got off topic pretty easily, which was funny. He went from talking from Family Guy to watching characters fall on Youtube. Haha! He was really an awesome guy and he made me ten times more excited for my experience here.

Once we got to the Casting building, they gave us our Traditions schedule, our training schedule, and other information. Even though it was just waiting in lines to get forms filled out and such, it really wasn't that bad. The Disney employees tried to make it as fun and as exciting as possible, which they did a good job with. :)

The Casting building! (PS. feel free to click any of the pictures for a bigger, better view. :))



I thought the doorknobs at Casting where adorable. :)



Here's a sample of what the Casting building looks like in the inside.



After Casting, I took the bus back to Chatham.

A few hours later, one of my friends that I met back at BYU-I, Doug, asked me and my roommates if we wanted to go to the Polynesian resort to watch Wishes (the firework show that Magic Kingdom puts on every night) on the beach. We, of course, agreed and he told us to meet him and his roommates at the Grand Floridian Resort.

We made our way there and was absolutely amazed. I have never been to any of the Disney resorts, and the Grand Floridian blew my mind! It was so big! And so beautiful!

Here's a picture that I just found just on google of the outside of the Grand Floridian Resort.



Just look at it. LOOK AT IT. It's so huge! and ridiculously pretty.

When we were walking towards the entrance of the Resort, Katelyn turned to me and asked, "Will they let us in?" And about three seconds later, a worker standing by the doors turned to us and said, "Hello! Welcome!" and directed us towards the door. Haha! I love Disney!!

When we walked into the resort I couldn't believe my eyes.



The picture totally doesn't do it justice. It's amazing.

Anyway, we waited there for the boys to show up, they had a live band playing so a lot of little girls in princess dresses were dancing around. It was cute. :)

The guys came and we started to head for the Polynesian which is just across the lake from the Floridian. The Polynesian was like a small bit of Hawaii in Florida. We passed polynesian dancers, and we walked on the "beach" next to palm trees, it was amazing.

We got to the Polynesian and wandered a bit, but then went to go get Dole Whips. When I went to pay for mine the cashier there looked at my wallet and his face lit up. He was like "AH!" and pointed to my wallet, I looked down at it then back up at him, having no idea what he was trying to tell me.
"You go to BYU-I?" he asked me.
"Yeah."
"I do too! I'm Mormon." He told me.
I told him that we were all Mormon in our group, and we figured out that we are all in the same ward, the cashier was so happy. Haha! It's a small LDS world after all. :)

I tried to show off my Dairy Queen skills when I got my self-serve ice cream, but the consistency was very unlike Dairy Queen's and I just failed miserably. It was bad. Haha! Everyone, guest and employees where literally staring and laughing at it, it was that bad. Haha! Well, I'm glad I could make people's days brighter! Dough informed me later that the manager of the restaurant, was looking at me nervously. I guess he didn't want to clean up my disaster when it fell. Ha!

After everyone had gotten their ice cream we headed towards the beach, we actually ended up sitting on the grass behind the beach, because there were no seats left (other than the sand), but it worked out perfectly.

They play the wishes music from the beach and so we were able to witness the whole thing for free! Music, fireworks, and a view of the castle! So fun! Watching Wishes really made it real to me that I'm at Disney World. That was the first time that I really saw anything Disney since I got here, and it made me super excited for what's to come. :)

Well, that's about it! Can't wait for the posts to come! :) Talk to you soon!