Yet more training...

I've just had my first day in costume! But more on that later...

The rest of Sunday was spent park-hopping. I met Nick and we went over to Hollywood Studios mainly because I wanted to ride Star Tours with him as it's been massively revamped since I worked there last summer. Now it's all fancy 3D and stuff! Actually, it was totally awesome and I was flown by Tyler who was one of my managers last summer too and still works at the attraction so that was fun. We managed to do Toy Story Mania, Tower of Terror and Rock 'n' RollerCoaster over the course of the hour after that... (it's not what you know, it's who you know!) and then we went to Magic Kingdom as Nick wanted to see the lighting ceremony for the Christmas lights on the castle. We grabbed pizza at Pinocchios and then watched the lighting ceremony, did Philarmagic and then watched Wishes. It wasn't very good because the wind was blowing towards us so therefore all the smoke blew towards the audience and the visibility was really bad. Then almost on cue, as soon as the last firework had gone off it decided to downpour! We navigated the crazy crowd out of MK and walked to the Contemporary to get the monorail round to the Grand Floridian as Nick wanted to pop in there. Whilst on the way I met a couple of kids on the monorail who wanted to show me their flashing buzz lightyear and tinkerbell drink toppers! So I showed them my glowing ice cube which happened to still be in my bag... I may have found some left over Disney Store stickers too ;)

After all that, we got the car and went to Celebration to meet one of his friends. We had a drink then he dropped me at Vista Way and I crashed out. On Monday was our "onboarding day" which was fun - another early start but we got taken around the UK pavilion and met one of our managers Whitney who was really nice. We got some fish and chips too which were realllllly good! So at least I can tell the guests how yummy they are! We got given our pre-service packs which is cool because it means we can start learning the menus straight away... we are due to do our pre-service test in 90 days I believe which is the beginning of February - scary stuff! So yes, lots of information thrown at us but all interesting stuff. After we finished, we met up with the Canadians and the 9 of us went over to Hollywood Studios. We did Tower of Terror as it was a walk-on and then 7 of us queued for Rock 'n' RollerCoaster for about 20 minutes which wasn't bad either. We went to see Fantasmic at 8pm and the weather conditions were perfect so that was brilliant as well and then we headed home  because the park was closing...

Now, Monday night is the traditional "going out" night for the UK Pavilion as they have something called Lads & Lasses. Basically all the boys meet up at one apartment and all the girls at another... then they meet people from the other pavilions. And get wasted, basically. So two of our boys from the arrival group went along to Lads.... fast forward to Tuesday and it's Discovery Day! So it's another 8am start - Tom was totally hungover and Paul was still drunk!! Much hilarity ensued for the rest of the day as Paul joked around... until he started to feel like death come lunchtime! Needless to say, both boys suffered for the whole day, much to the amusement of our trainer who was taking us around the park. As for Discovery Day itself - I won't say too much because again, it will spoil it for those who haven't done it, but there's loads of fun stuff and loads of walking around. No e-learning (yay) and my advice is wear flat shoes! We went into the Rose & Crown, Chippy and the merch shops learning all about the imagineering and things like that. Then we went to costuming to get our costumes - typical Disney sizing, I ended up with a shirt that's two sizes smaller than my skirt and the skirt itself is equivalent to a UK size 22!! Rediculous! So yeah, any girls out there reading this who will soon be at Disney Costuming - don't feel like you're fat because the sizing is TOTALLY OFF!

After Discovery Day was over, I went back to Vista and changed. Then I met up with Steffie, Ty, Clare and Paul (he's hardcore.. was still hungover!) and we went to Planet Hollywood for dinner. I had a yummy chicken caesar salad, fries and a blue coloured cocktail... also love the 20% cast member discount and priority seating... yeahhhhh! Then Steffie, Ty and myself got a guest bus over to the Boardwalk and went to Jellyrolls! It's a piano bar where there's two grand pianos that duel each other... the music is great - from Sweet Home Alabama to Lady Gaga to Queen to the Beatles to the Black Eyed Peas... just really fun. We left at 1.30am and got a ride home from one of Ty's friends which was nice of him.

And that brings me to today! Sorry for another epically long blog post it's just I want to explain everything and once I get into regular shifts and stuff there'll be less rambling!! Today was my first day in full costume... luckily I actually met my trainer on the bus (she was called Sam) and Sophie was training with me too. We were training as Rose & Crown (R&C) Seaters today. Basically this job means that you stand at podium (where the guests come to make reservations for the restaurant or see if we have any space as a walk-in) and wait for a little ticket to print out which lists the details for the next group of guests to be seated. You get the appropriate menus, ensure the table is equipped (i.e. it has high chairs or booster seats etc) and then activate the buzzer that the guest has got somewhere in the UK Pavilion... they come over and you take them to their seats before moving onto the next group. It's pretty easy. We also learnt how to bus tables and do some guest interaction by drawing a big hopscotch on the pavement! All in all, it was a fun day but a lot of information to take in! I felt I did a pretty good job - I didn't screw up any seating or offend anyone anyway! The hardest part about it was learning the table numbers off by heart straight away.

Tomorrow I have another OJT day (On The Job Training) and it's in Greeter which is the person who talks to the aforementioned guests about their reservations or sees if there are tables available. It's another 11-7.30pm shift so I think I need some sleep!! At some point I need to do laundry, a Walmart trip and find out about when I'm moving with housing... because obviously I'm still at Vista Way. But, tomorrow is "my Friday" and so I then have three days off! I also want to hit up the Food & Wine Festival before it finishes on Sunday, go to Animal Kingdom because I haven't been yet, go to Cast Connection, buy some stuff at Company D and go Christmas Shopping! So just a few things to do ;)