To sum up this past week in one word: TRAINING!
Finally I've been able to start my training after everyone had almost finished with theirs I had finally started mine.
Thursday June 5th I finally got to go somewhere other than Disney University for training and this place was... Magic Kingdom! My class this day was called Once Upon a Time... Is Now! It started off with a 4 hour in-depth tour of Magic Kingdom which was really cool but really tiring. It was a lot of stuff I already knew, but there were some new things that I learned. We also got to ride the Haunted Mansion and skip the line, so that was pretty cool as well. After our tour we got broken up into groups in regards to our role and our location. I was in a group of nine people who would all be working Fantasyland attractions! From there we went back out into the park and walked around Fantasyland a little more and talked about certain attractions there. Then we went to lunch and then came the highlight of my day (and you know it's good because I got paid to walk around Magic Kingdom already) I got my costume!!
Friday June 6th was another training day but it was still group training, not on the job so I didn't get to wear my costume this day. This training day was called For Our Guests and I don't know why it was called that because all we did that day was ride almost every ride in Fantasyland. It was an absolutely amazing day of training, if you could call it that. Along with riding rides we got to see all of our backstage areas we would be going to, we didn't see much of Mine Train because it was so busy. But we saw everyone else's areas and got to go a little more in-depth in some of the positions of the attractions. It was a really fun training day, who gets to say that they were being paid to go on rides all day??
Saturday June 7th was my first day of on the job training! In my training group of nine there was one other girl who was also going to be working the Seven Dwarves Mine Train and she had the exact same schedule as me! So I didn't feel all awkward and alone my first day since I got to do everything with her. Our shift started at 6:45 am, that was quite the change for me. We met our trainer who is AMAZING he is the greatest guy I've met at Disney, he should be much higher up in the company. He just has such a fun personality and he is great at his job, so many people love him and I am so grateful to have him as a trainer. Such a great guy, he made us feel so comfortable on our first day. We started out with a track walk, at Mine Train everyone gets a separate area to open in the morning so things get done faster, we picked up walking and resetting the track, it is very tiring. Obviously you have to walk the entire track which is quite the workout. Also at Mine Train you can't cross the track in the station, you have to climb a flight of stairs, cross over from above, then walk down a flight of stairs. That alone is a workout, and we have to do that many times a day. I was not prepared for all this physical activity and I came home that day extremely tired. We also got to experience an Evac (on our first day! Unheard of!) so we had to go back out onto the track and get guests off a train. This involves things called lock and leveling devices, since the Mine Train's cars rock back and forth it would be dangerous if a guest were to get out while it was rocking. With the lock and leveling devices it locks the cars in place so that they can't rock. Day one of training was just to get our feet wet, we mostly observed our trainer and got a feel for what we'd be doing in the next few days. It is very fast paced, but I think I'm really going to like it.
Sunday June 8th was another 6:45 am shift, everyone complains about closing, but I'd much rather go to bed at 3:00 am and sleep in than wake up early. This day we opened tower, which is like the control room of the ride. There are a lot of rules to follow here and you have to have your eyes glued to the screen. A lot of things have been going wrong on the Mine Train so tower position scares me the most, I feel like I'd panic in a situation where the ride has to be stopped or something like that. I'm sure I'll become more comfortable with it in time, but for now it still scares me. After we opened tower we got a little more involved in some of the other positions. We got to load guests into trains, "please pull up on your lap bar" and unload them out of trains, "please exit to your right--ma'am your right, right, thank you". Guests sometimes don't listen or have a hard time understanding, I don't know what it is but you'd think I was speaking a different language when I say some of these things to them.
Monday June 9th yet another 6:45 am shift (the last one) this was our hump day of training.We opened tower again this day, I am starting to get a little more comfortable with it. We also got to go through many more positions this day. We did station assist: the person who tells people which rows to sit in, grouper: the person who sends about 20 people to station assist, and merge: the person who merges the standby and fastpass lines together. These positions are very fast paced and you need to be very attentive, these are major areas where guests either don't understand what you are saying or they completely ignore you. It is easy to mess up in these areas, but you have to just let it go and move on. After this day I felt really confident about working in the mine. It is a fun, fast paced work environment and that's what I do well in.
Tuesday June 10th I worked from 6:30 pm to 3:00 am and I guess these hours are something I'm going to need to get used to because full time cast members joke that CP (college program) actually standsfor "closing person" because all cps get the closing shifts, but I am so okay with that, I don't like opening or waking up early. Today was our fourth day of training, we did more of the fast-paced positions again and we got to do tower during the day while the ride was running with guests on it. The park closed at 1:00 am, so for the last two hours we were supposed to mess around with the lock and leveling devices and practice evacing the ride. However we had to actually evac guests at about 11:30 for a real issue so we got out of doing it later. We were supposed to leave early since we no longer would be practicing evacs but we had to stay since there were still trains on the track. We were supposed to store them once maintenance was finished but they took too long so we left at our scheduled time.
Wednesday June 11th was my first official day off! I slept in until 1:00 pm, I never do this. I was so tired from the previous night, I probably could have slept longer. Today was my productive day, I went grocery shopping at Publix for the first time and I did all of my laundry. When some of roommates got home we even went to the outlet mall and Target. I found a Disney look watch but I am still on the hunt for Disney look sunglasses. It was a boring day but I got a lot done.
Thursday June 12th I woke up really early, at like 8:00 am and I don't even know why. I lounged around the house for a bit, took my roommate Charlotte to pick up her car, went down by the pool for 30 mins (left early because a ton of internationals were smoking-gross), went do Downtown Disney and bought anything Mine Train related I could find. After that Celine came home and we decided to randomly go to Magic Kingdom JUST BECAUSE WE CAN, we did like all of the boring or over-looked attractions there. Then we came home and had a roommate meeting because we needed to figure out a cleaning schedule, we'd been putting it off for a while now and it was seriously time to change things. Everything went well and we have a bunch of stuff in order now which is great!
Tomorrow is my last day of training, I am so excited but also pretty nervous. After tomorrow is my assessment and then I am on my own! It is still all so surreal to me and I don't know that it will ever hit me that I am living and working in Disney World, it is just crazy!
Thursday June 5th I finally got to go somewhere other than Disney University for training and this place was... Magic Kingdom! My class this day was called Once Upon a Time... Is Now! It started off with a 4 hour in-depth tour of Magic Kingdom which was really cool but really tiring. It was a lot of stuff I already knew, but there were some new things that I learned. We also got to ride the Haunted Mansion and skip the line, so that was pretty cool as well. After our tour we got broken up into groups in regards to our role and our location. I was in a group of nine people who would all be working Fantasyland attractions! From there we went back out into the park and walked around Fantasyland a little more and talked about certain attractions there. Then we went to lunch and then came the highlight of my day (and you know it's good because I got paid to walk around Magic Kingdom already) I got my costume!!
Saturday June 7th was my first day of on the job training! In my training group of nine there was one other girl who was also going to be working the Seven Dwarves Mine Train and she had the exact same schedule as me! So I didn't feel all awkward and alone my first day since I got to do everything with her. Our shift started at 6:45 am, that was quite the change for me. We met our trainer who is AMAZING he is the greatest guy I've met at Disney, he should be much higher up in the company. He just has such a fun personality and he is great at his job, so many people love him and I am so grateful to have him as a trainer. Such a great guy, he made us feel so comfortable on our first day. We started out with a track walk, at Mine Train everyone gets a separate area to open in the morning so things get done faster, we picked up walking and resetting the track, it is very tiring. Obviously you have to walk the entire track which is quite the workout. Also at Mine Train you can't cross the track in the station, you have to climb a flight of stairs, cross over from above, then walk down a flight of stairs. That alone is a workout, and we have to do that many times a day. I was not prepared for all this physical activity and I came home that day extremely tired. We also got to experience an Evac (on our first day! Unheard of!) so we had to go back out onto the track and get guests off a train. This involves things called lock and leveling devices, since the Mine Train's cars rock back and forth it would be dangerous if a guest were to get out while it was rocking. With the lock and leveling devices it locks the cars in place so that they can't rock. Day one of training was just to get our feet wet, we mostly observed our trainer and got a feel for what we'd be doing in the next few days. It is very fast paced, but I think I'm really going to like it.
Sunday June 8th was another 6:45 am shift, everyone complains about closing, but I'd much rather go to bed at 3:00 am and sleep in than wake up early. This day we opened tower, which is like the control room of the ride. There are a lot of rules to follow here and you have to have your eyes glued to the screen. A lot of things have been going wrong on the Mine Train so tower position scares me the most, I feel like I'd panic in a situation where the ride has to be stopped or something like that. I'm sure I'll become more comfortable with it in time, but for now it still scares me. After we opened tower we got a little more involved in some of the other positions. We got to load guests into trains, "please pull up on your lap bar" and unload them out of trains, "please exit to your right--ma'am your right, right, thank you". Guests sometimes don't listen or have a hard time understanding, I don't know what it is but you'd think I was speaking a different language when I say some of these things to them.
Monday June 9th yet another 6:45 am shift (the last one) this was our hump day of training.We opened tower again this day, I am starting to get a little more comfortable with it. We also got to go through many more positions this day. We did station assist: the person who tells people which rows to sit in, grouper: the person who sends about 20 people to station assist, and merge: the person who merges the standby and fastpass lines together. These positions are very fast paced and you need to be very attentive, these are major areas where guests either don't understand what you are saying or they completely ignore you. It is easy to mess up in these areas, but you have to just let it go and move on. After this day I felt really confident about working in the mine. It is a fun, fast paced work environment and that's what I do well in.
Tuesday June 10th I worked from 6:30 pm to 3:00 am and I guess these hours are something I'm going to need to get used to because full time cast members joke that CP (college program) actually standsfor "closing person" because all cps get the closing shifts, but I am so okay with that, I don't like opening or waking up early. Today was our fourth day of training, we did more of the fast-paced positions again and we got to do tower during the day while the ride was running with guests on it. The park closed at 1:00 am, so for the last two hours we were supposed to mess around with the lock and leveling devices and practice evacing the ride. However we had to actually evac guests at about 11:30 for a real issue so we got out of doing it later. We were supposed to leave early since we no longer would be practicing evacs but we had to stay since there were still trains on the track. We were supposed to store them once maintenance was finished but they took too long so we left at our scheduled time.
Wednesday June 11th was my first official day off! I slept in until 1:00 pm, I never do this. I was so tired from the previous night, I probably could have slept longer. Today was my productive day, I went grocery shopping at Publix for the first time and I did all of my laundry. When some of roommates got home we even went to the outlet mall and Target. I found a Disney look watch but I am still on the hunt for Disney look sunglasses. It was a boring day but I got a lot done.
Thursday June 12th I woke up really early, at like 8:00 am and I don't even know why. I lounged around the house for a bit, took my roommate Charlotte to pick up her car, went down by the pool for 30 mins (left early because a ton of internationals were smoking-gross), went do Downtown Disney and bought anything Mine Train related I could find. After that Celine came home and we decided to randomly go to Magic Kingdom JUST BECAUSE WE CAN, we did like all of the boring or over-looked attractions there. Then we came home and had a roommate meeting because we needed to figure out a cleaning schedule, we'd been putting it off for a while now and it was seriously time to change things. Everything went well and we have a bunch of stuff in order now which is great!
Tomorrow is my last day of training, I am so excited but also pretty nervous. After tomorrow is my assessment and then I am on my own! It is still all so surreal to me and I don't know that it will ever hit me that I am living and working in Disney World, it is just crazy!
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