Epcot Food and Wine Festival

Days off in Disney are the best. I started my so called weekend by attending this raging club on Wednesday night. Thats right Buffalo Wild Wings, apparently that is where all the college program members go and get rowdy, it was pretty cool, bizarre because I was in a Bdubs but all the same it was fun. Next morning I woke up and worked out, as usual I was the only guy in the gym, which I have no problem with. Then I went and swam at the pool and tanned a bit with my girl friends. Then I had to leave because I got hungry. Last week I told you I tried to cook some food, and lets just say then I wasn' the greatest cook. Well this week was a much better story. I tried to make eggs, I didn't want to burn them so I had it really low and it took awhile but I finally got my eggs. Then today I made eggs again and made great eggs in 1 minute, I think I've progressed myself on to some omelets now. Also I bought some brats and wanted to make some great tasting beer brats, only problem is I had no beer. So like all brilliant college kids I added some lemon lime flavored four loco. Let's just say my brats turned out LOCO. Well after my chef experiences we decided that we wanted to experience some chefs from around the world, and some drinks too. We headed over to Epcot's Food and Wine festival. The festival was pretty cool, they had drinks and food from around the world. Mom I know I'd make you proud. The only food ate was an American funnel cake. Yeah I ventured out, actually I just really wanted one so I had to get it, also I had some french wine, German Beer and my souvenir beer mug and a mexican margarita, I was considering a Japanese sake shot, but I decide against it. After, the drinking and eating around the world, we stayed and watched Illuminations. This is Epcot's awesome firework show that they put on. It was cool, I've seen it a few times, but each time seems different. Then we get back to the apartment and its around one in the morning and my friends and I are chilling on the couch. We get this phone call saying we have an anonymous tip that there is alcohol in your apartment. Sure enough my roommates panicked. After nervously running around we got this dreaded knock we were waiting for. Good thing we had no alcohol in the apartment though. We open the door and sure enough it was our girlfriends, they prank called us. Payback is hell...

Character Dinner

I've been waiting to work the character Dinner the entire time. And tonight was finally the night. The dinner is a 650 person show where they get food, a live country performance and get to sing and dance along with the characters. Each person pays about 73 dollars and the place is full every time. You do the math they make a lot of money on these shows. So work started of by leaf blowing the entire pavilion, which took about an hour. The rest of the time I was told to sit back and enjoy the show. The show was great, especially because I get to meet all of the stars in it. It's a real eye opener when Mickey Mouse comes back stage and pulls out a cigarette. Anyways, it was all good fun, especially watching the little kids get so excited about seeing the characters and dancing around with them. Thats one of the coolest parts of my job, just getting to see these cute little kids go absolutely insane over meeting one of my friends in there costumes, but they don't know that. The show ends with the character forming a conga line, out of the pavilion and everyone in the place walks out with them. Then my work starts up a little bit more, we picked up the trash in the entire pavilion and then checked the bathrooms. I was told that the works not hard, its just about making the work look harder than it actually is..... Good to know. After that the bus boys pulled a cart of the food out into the court and allowed all the cast members to come and feast on it. It had ribs, chicken, burgers, hot dogs, corn bread, mash potatoes, and corn, so it was a great change from my normal cereal or things. I also got to take some home for my roommates. This job was pretty nice considering I got to see a show, eat and barely clean. Also the CEO of the Dinner shows, saw me and gave me a personal invite to come sit down with him. I was told by a few cast members that it was a pretty big deal. Must be my handsome face.....

Night Shift

I just finished my first night shift ever. I was always wanting to do one, but never got the chance cause I always worked mornings. Seems glamorous getting to sleep in, but its not due to the transportation system I lose my night and my day. Anyways, night inside my resort is very dark. I mean like no lights, its like being in the country. Our job was to go around and collect all of the bathroom sheets. It so far is probably the most work I've done out of any job, but the work is not there's hard just always something to do. Anyways I drive around in a company vehicle that has air conditioning and my trainer turned up the music. Basically I put a 103 miles on the van and jammed out to some music. Not to bad. Heres the funny thing. It started to rain early in the day. So I had to get a rain suit, but we were to late for the store hours. The lady was nice enough to let us in and get me a suit if I promised I would hurry. Well I grabbed a large because thats my normal size. Cardinal rule of Disney though, is that everything is 2 sizes to small. I put the pants on and the coat and I started to sing fat guy in a little coat from Tommy Boy. Anyways I go to jump into the van, and my pants ripped. I was mad, because I most likely have to pay for these cheap things and it will cost me like 50 dollars. Oh well. I walked around with my ripped pants and had much more breathing room now. I completed my shift and it was nothing big. I get on the bus that was supposed to come pick this girl up 40 minutes ago and it took 20 minutes when I got there for it to come, so it was late. Turns out we had a new bus driver, exciting!! Story is he has no idea what the route is. You would think the have some sort of GPS or navigational system in these busses, nope they just hire clue-less bus drivers. I guess thats what you get for getting picked up at 1 in the morning. Anyways I became Bryan 2000 and turned into this wonderful turn by turn GPS system for the guy. I finally got us home.

Thanks for the ride!

While sitting in the Cafeteria talking to my mom about how I need a car, randomly after my phone call a coworker began to talk to me. No doubt this is probably the most sketchy coworker I have, he sounds like a mexican merriachi band singer with his deep voice, despite that he also looks like he is in the Mexican Cartel. Casually he said Hey Bryan, do you need a ride tomorrow? Confused I asked him what for. He said , because I am training you and we start at 6 am. Normally I would have to call a special bus to pick me up, which entails me waking up at 4 in the morning. Not wanting to wake up that early I quickly jumped on the idea and said yes. He picked me up at Walgreen's after a few interesting conversations we had on the phone. We get to work and were assigned the Marina area. We pulled a few trash cans, realigned the chairs and blowed the sidewalks. That was it for the morning. We then spent the rest of the morning picking up breakfast, and talking to a bunch of other workers that he knew. It was probably the best day I've had at work so far. After lunch he proceeded to show me good hiding spots to take naps, watch fireworks, where to take nice drives in the golf cart and a bunch of other valuable information. Then he showed me the best way and easiest way to leaf blow the bigger sidewalks. Its a back pack type leaf blower so he put it in the back of the drivers side. Then he took the hose and brought it up towards him, turned it on and proceeded to drive back and forth while blowing the sidewalks. We got comments from guest like, "well someone doesn't want to work" or " thats my type of job!" Either way I learned a lot that day, but not to much on work!

Another Fun Rant

You would think being be yourself with out any family members sounds great, well my sister found out the hard way. Turns out being home is not so bad after all, I say this because I get meals cooked for me and I have laundry done for me. I would like to say that I am a fairly independent person and not a awful cook, so I was thinking that cooking wouldn't be a problem. First off, when I get home from work the first thing I want to do is cook, actually thats probably the exact opposite. So when this lovely person called Mom was around I have a fair decent meal most of the time. Except the 90% of the time when I either complain or its burnt, but either way I need this person back for cooking purposes. When I get off of work, I usually will make a sandwich to fill my hunger, but Im getting very sick of eating sandwiches to the point where Im done with it. So on my day off I decided to get wild, and try to make me some good old flap jacks. These things Im particularly good at yelling at my mom for. So I made the batter that came in the box, turned the stove on and put the skillet on high. At this point I realized I had no cooking spray, so I used butter because Im smart like that. Well anyways, I mentioned the stove was on high right, well I put the butter in the skillet and it instantly turned into a black cloud of smoke, before you knew it the air tasted like butter and I was venting the entire apartment out in fear that the fire alarms would go off. After a couple minutes clearing the room out, I put the batter in, ( stove still on high), I heard this sizzling noise, I managed to burn my batter within the first touch of the skillet. So I turned it down, made some more batter and cleaned my skillet off, and tried again. Second time was a success, oh wait it wasn't any better. So I made more batter, cleaned it off and turned it down, thinking I have it this time I poured it into the skillet. This time it burnt again, so I repeated my typical process and really turned it down. I pour my batter in and all was going well this time, one problem I forgot the butter, my pancake  was glued to the skillet. So I took it off the stove and scrapped it in the garbage and started fresh, with butter. After about two hours, a huge mess in the kitchen and 3/4 the box pancake batter gone, I had made my two pancakes. At this point I was so disgusted with the entire process I was no longer hungry for pancakes......
So, now its laundry day, typically in college I save my laundry so I can bring it home to this person called Mom. Well here in Disney Im stuck to do it by myself. It has a few direction on the machines outside my apartment I figured it couldn't be that bad. I go and put my two weeks worth of clothes in the washer and start to pour my soap in. Before I go any further, Im not that stupid, where I don't know not to split my clothes from whites and colors. Anyways I pour my soap in, then maybe I figured I have a large load, I'd best to pour more soap in. I turned the machine on and left. I check back to my machine 30 minutes later and there is a maintenance man cleaning my machine, I asked him what was wrong. He replied that someone put to much soap in and it was bubbling up out of the machine and he was cleaning the bubbles away. Before admitting to him that I was that idiot, I went into my room and  looked at my detergent, It says on the bottle that it can be used for 24 loads. No way in hell thats happening for me, after one load I had used half of the bottle..... OOOOPPPPSSS. I take my clothes out and they appear to be covered in this thick film of soap so I put them through another cycle, oh joy, just how I want to spend my day off. I take them out again, and there still extremely soapy. Enraged I threw them in the dryer and I guess now, I will A- either smell really good every day. B- get a rash from sweating soap. C- A combination of both and I will just end up dealing with it. As for now thats, all, but I've concluded its nice to have someone that will do these treacherous things for me in the future.

Is this really work?

My actual first day of work, or so I thought was a tour of the campgrounds, then my actual first day was basically me watching a senior employee teach me the job. Now, I understand the point behind cheap labor methods and all, and I have nothing against it, but usually in the custodial department it brings in a lot of foreign labor. My first teacher, her name was Gloria, now I say foreign labor because I am the only one who speaks non-fragmented english. Also I noticed I am the youngest person there by at least 40 years. ( more on this later.) Gloria and I were assigned Pool 2. I'm thinking oh great, I have to clean the entire pool. It starts off by the coordinators giving you a list of the items you need to finish by the end of your shift, then you grab your radio and keys and head out to your locker. Inside her locker she had basically the janitors closet plus some. We grabbed our essentials and she handed me a picker, then we walked over to the golf cart. Its about 7:30 in the morning and the heats about 79 degrees and we are all in long pants and blue shirts. We start driving around and she is talking to me, and Im doing my best to understand her and just shake my head and agree at times. We arrive at the pool and she gives me the run down. We start in the pool bathrooms and basically all she does is sprays the toilets with some chemicals. Then we go and fill out a sheet saying we did the bathroom. The purpose behind this is, I guess a few years ago some guest filled a law suit against Disney and Disney had no proof that they weren't in the bathroom. Gloria, heads back to the golf cart and grabs the leaf blower, I was told to blow a few sidewalks, no big deal took all of five minutes. I strutted over to her, kinda showing her that I finished early and she said, Bryan in the future you may want to go slower, much slower to kill time. I took mental note of that. After that we moved a few pool chairs and we were done with the pool area. Then we went to our 30 minute break, which seems to always turn out to be a 45 minute break. Then we drove the golf cart to our next area. But, before getting there we had to take a few detours and talk to a few of her friends then after driving thru the park a couple of times we arrived at the Chip and Dale bonfire pits. She walks over to the hose and tells me to watch. Basically in 30 minutes she just sprays the chairs with the hose. We were done for the day, yet we still had 5 hours left. So we took a few more detours, then it was lunch. To my saviour they have a grill for cast members with a cook on duty everyday. I was set for lunch now. After an hour and a half break I finally went back to work. The end of our day entailed filling out the bathroom sheet a few more times after pretending to look in the bathrooms. Now, I make this seem very easy, it is. The reason behind this is they are in a slow season and nobody is in the park, so there is no real reason to clean because it never gets dirty, until it is being used. Maybe in a few weeks my story will become a tragedy, as for now its lovely, also we are having unseasonably hot weather and with the 100% daily humidity you sweat, standing outside.

I need a Car!!!

Let me start this off with a rant about Disney's bus system. In general Disney owns four major bus companies that are in charge of Driving and picking up everyone on Disney Grounds. Well, the one that belongs to the cast members I would say is very inefficient. I have to be at the bus two hours before work just so I can arrive 20 minutes in time at my job. This is very annoying, one because it adds three hours on to my work day, and when you have to get up at four A.M. it gets bad. Also, in the event that you miss the bus like my first day of work, you end up having to wait two hours just to catch the next bus. So a little tip to future members if you have a car, its very beneficial to bring the car. It will save you a lot of trouble. Just like three days ago, my alarm didn't go off. I woke up 30 minutes before my work and I had no ride. I called my best friend and she got me there 15 seconds before I was late and would have had a point on my record. Needless to say I need a car!!

Working?

Well, I have my costume now, and I've been to my first week of actual work or training they call it. It was kind of interesting in the beginning because I met my manager on the first day and he was telling me how strong I was and how I need to have the best clothes, that way I look the best for the guest. Interesting, I guess I have to get used to Disney's way. Anyways on my first day of work, I basically got a tour of the Fort Wilderness Campground, mind you that there is a campground and a lodge which is very confusing in the beginning of it all. So as were getting this tour, I start to realize that there aren't that many other College Program members getting a tour with me, actually only one. I soon found out later that I am the first member to their resort in something like 8 years. Now, this resort is the largest resort and one of the nicest resorts that Disney has on property. It basically is a very large RV park with a marina, its own lake, a few Dinner shows, a campfire meet and greet with Chip and Dale, and several mini log cabins. After mentally getting lost in the campgrounds several times the tour ended. I went back to the cast members area and I received my ears training badge, and a certificate to work in the campgrounds.

Welcome to the Disney Family

 Its been about a week since my last post, and it seems like more events happened than a weeks amount of time allows. The first big thing that happened would have to be me completing traditions and officially becoming a Disney cast member. In order to complete this we had to take a number of classes based on Disney company policy, how not to break character around guest, and a number of assorted Disney rules and guidelines. Upon completion I was able to receive my costume, mind you that most people are afraid of what costumes they might get. I was not afraid, I just didn't want long sleeves and long pants, because it is sooooooo hot here. To my luck I got both.
After getting my costume, I had a day off to myself.  My apartment and some off my other friends decided to head over to Epcot. This is a pretty special deal, because we get all the parks for free. We ventured around Epcot for the entire day with little wait in lines. Then we saw Duffy, Duffy is Mickey Mouses' Teddy Bear, and that made us decide that we wanted group pictures with all the Characters. So we hunted them down in the park and got great pictures with all of them. Tigger was my favorite, because I walked up to him, and he held his hand up high, like to give me a high five, then he pulled it away from me as soon as I tried it. Also Goofy made us spell out Goofy with our arms in one of the pictures.

Welcome Home!!

The first couple of days have been a little hectic. First day you stand in line and who you are standing in line with becomes your roommates, given that they are of your age. Next you herd through a series of booths and collect your info and take your Disney ID.( That was exciting) Next, you pick which apartment complex you want, we picked vista way, which has two pools, two hot tubs, a basketball court right next to  my room, racquetball courts, beach volleyball courts, tennis courts and a work out facility. I was not expecting this many amenities from this place. Now considering there are 7200 people all here with me at the same time. We have people in the international program as long as the professional and culinary programs. Needless to say this place is like a resort for teens, pools are packed till closing and courts are busy being played on until lights turn off. This is really cool, as long as you want to do something you can always find someone to do something with. Also this is just in my complex there are 3 others just like this but they are not as big. As of now things seem to be awesome, of course I haven't started my actual job. Cool thing about my job is that I will be working at Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, which is said to be one of the nicest. TBC