See ya real soon!!!

So I didn't want to just leave the blog off where I did so one last post is in order.

I couldn't be happier with the way my internship worked out. I made amazing friends, had some amazing times and learned (only a little, don't get nervous). I really enjoyed working, even though I was cleaning up after people and learned a lot there about life and the way people can be snotty, no matter what they do or where they are from. People can also be extremely nice and generous and that's good to know.

Disney was an amazing experience and I will hopefully return to work there at some point in some capacity. Thanks to all four of my loyal blog readers, I appreciate your patronage. I'm making a new blog because I really enjoy it (although my stories are going to get less interesting as Champaign is only full of about half the weirdos as Disney) but feel free to check it at http://lifeafterdisney.blogspot.com.

See ya real soon!!!

Have a magical year!!!!

Wow, the last week has totally flown by. Scott and Joni stopped in to take me out to lunch on Saturday and then I had to go to work at 7 so that was a good day. Work wasn't that bad that night, it was EMH but it went pretty well. New Year's Eve was a total mess. I got to work and it wasn't that busy by the hat where I was working but around 6 they started a dj who was just loud and annoying. THEN, because they were trying to annoy the hell out of all the cast members, we gave our those party horns that sound like an angry elk and are just terrible to listen to. They started handing those out pretty early, so all I heard all night was "honnnnkkkk". Ugh, horrendous. Then I had a continual trash run from 9-12 (eeek) but after about 11:15, there was no way at all I was going to be able to get in there so I just stopped. It was literally shoulder to shoulder people watching the awesome midnight fireworks but it was great because I got to celebrate the new year with my friends by my side. (Well, close enough!). After the fireworks were over, I only had about 45 minutes of work left and that flew by. I found Autumn and Sean at the park and we hung out for a bit and then drove home. It was a pretty good night but just kind of crazy!!

The last few days of work have been good. I got over the exhaustion of working so many days in a row and just kind of had a burst of adrenaline knowing I was leaving so soon. I got to be on the streets a lot talking to people and worked in Fantasmic tonight so that was really nice to see part of the show one last time. Last night, we went to the Ale House for ladie's drink free until 1 am night and that was a blast. Then, Kris and I dragggged out of bed at 8:30 and went to Epcot to play. We went on Soarin', Spaceship Earth, the Living With The Land boat ride (which I have never been on but loved) and then ate lunch at Chefs de France which I LOVED. We had a great time and got a picture with Dopey so all was well. I had work at 3:30, my last closing shift and Shan and I were together in Fantasmic so that was awesome. We worked hard though and it was really really cold today (for Florida at least). I was wearing my heavy work coat which is a nice black pea coat, gloves and a hat. I was pretty bundled up!! I have funny picture I'll post soon. We had a good night and it went by fairly quickly. I have an opening shift tomorrow morning (ahhh I need to sleep!) and then I am going to go home to pack a little before I head to pick up Dad at the airport. We're going to go for dinner and play time at MGM, one last time.

It's so bittersweet to be leaving! I am really excited to see Lane, Mom and Lori and the doggies and all my friends but I am really going to miss it here. I'm going to totally miss working for Disney and playing in the parks whenever I feel like it and just the program in general. I made amazing friends, made some really good connections and I just have so many amazing memories from the last 5 months. I'm really hoping to stay in touch with some people from here because really it has been quite an experience.

All sentimental and I haven't even left yet. :-) But I can't wait to be home.

Arrrghhhh . . . . . . Soooo tired!!!!

So after Christmas is supposedly the busiest time here. They don't lie!!! It's been pretty hectic at work and everyone's been really cranky because of that so it's been pretty stressful overall. I have had some good times with the roomies though and we're planning on having at least a few more so that's pretty good. Basically, I have six more days of work and then I leave the day after that but luckily I have two six hour shifts and then an opening shift which is nice because I'll be done early and then dad will be here. Joni and Scott are here now and I'm about to leave to go meet them for lunch.

I had a mini meltdown last night to one of my managers because I'm so tired and stressed out from working so much and I really would like a day off this coming week. She let me come in two hours late today so I don't have to work until 7. Then I have two more days of 8 hours, two days of 6 hours and my last day of 8. I think I could handle it if I needed to but I'm just tired. :-/ Hopefully it'll be a little better at work today. Happy Friday to all!

I SURVIVED CHRISTMAS EVE . . . And all I get is a tiny paycheck.

So I survived Christmas Eve. It was a bit crazy at times and almost impossible to get through certain places at certain times but overall not to terrible.

I did cause quite a commotion at work. When I got to my locker, my pan and broom is missing. I get pissed off and think that I left it in Fantasmic the other night. But I'm pretty diligent about my pan and broom. I clean it every day and I put it in my locker at the end of my shift (cuz otherwise people steal them). So then I go back to my locker and see that NO, I didn't forget to put my stuff away. Someone RIPPED open the metal locker. It was a little broken before, but seriously someone tore apart the locker. I was so pissed off and felt totally violated. I went to the manager because it didn't matter that my pan and broom were missing but someone ripped my locker open. My manager Kendall brought security over and the detective came (who knew we had a detective!?) and they took down my info and stuff. Luckily, the pan and broom thief did leave my jacket and rain gear and such in the locker so that was nice of them. But now, I don't have a locker to fit my pan and broom in for the next ten days. :-( I did however, find my pan later in the day stuffed into one of the storage rooms and someone had PULLED THE STICKER OFF OF THE BOTTOM!!! I had another sticker on the inside though (and some rude gum that I can't get off) and I KNOW it's mine. It made me very sad at the rudeness of people. I left a note on my locker notifying whoever did it that it was extremely rude and disrespectful. It was a bleak day for humanity. The rest of the day went okay, I extended for 2 hours so my friend Erin could go to midnight mass at church and it was pretty uneventful for the rest of the time.

Then Christmas Day came and everyone was in pretty high spirits at work. People were all happy because it was Christmas but the guests all thought they could be RUDE for some reason. My goodness!! They were just rudey mcrudesters. But then by around 6:30 (my shift started at 3 pm) my friend Erin wanted to stay because she didn't want to go home and be alone on Christmas so I graciously gave her the rest of my shift (yeah right I was giving it to her on a silver platter!). I went home, worked out, made dinner and watched Elf in honor of Christmas and then Kristina got off work early too and came home! We watched Love Actually and drank champagne and just had a dandy good time. We enjoyed ourselves.

Yesterday at work was just scary. Well, I thought it was going to be way worse than it actually was. We had extra magic hours which are normally horrendous anyway but they have been telling us horror stories to scare us into working super hard yesterday about how busy it would be and such. Honestly, it was no busier than it had been on EMH when I first got here so I wasn't really overwhelmed. The only real difference is that they had people on continuous trash runs for 2 hours at a time (ewww that sucks). They did put me in 2 bathrooms for almost 5 hours but then Xavier my manager got someone else to come to help me so that was pretty awesome. And my friend Lisa was in the other bathroom so we helped each other out. It was good. I met some people from Buffalo Grove who literally live six streets away from me (so weird!) an their son goes to Stevenson and such. It was pretty funny. I also met lots of people from the North Shore and it made me really excited to go home!!!! I can't wait. I've had so much fun here and really enjoyed myself but I'm definitely ready to go.

So now I have work at 3 o'clock today. I am going to go get lunch and do some homework before work. Today is supposed to be the second "terrible" day so it should be interesting. If it's like yesterday, we'll be good. :-) Happy Thursday!!!

The Calm Before the Storm

So this week at work wasn't too incredibly terrible. There were a few hellish times but I got to create a few magical moments like getting a gun to this little guy's hotel because the strap broke and they could only find this certain kind in MGM. That was fun. :-)

Thursday morning Kristina and I saw National Secrets: Book of Secrets and LOVED it!! It was awesome. Then Thursday night we went to Pleasure Island with the roomies and that was a really good time as well. Today was my last day off before 11 days of work (and my last days!!) and I took advantage of it!! Kristina decided to stay home from work so we went to Raglan Road for lunch and yummmm. It was great. It was one of the places I have wanted to go to before I left and the food was awesome. Then we saw Alvin and the Chipmunks and it was hillarious!!!! We loved it. I got laundry done, did some cleaning and packing and then we went out for dinner to Giordano's for pizza. Yesss delicious. Now we're watching The Incredibles and going to sleep soon so I can get up in the morning and do some more packing and maybe some homework. It's going to be a crazy 11 days. I can't wait to go home!!!!!!!

Livin large.

Awww Sully and Mike!!!

Remy, my fave rat.

Me and Kris with Frozone.

Me being really excited to sit in the front of the monorail.

After dinner, I know . . . I'm so mature it hurts.

So yesterday was just so action packed that I had to write another post about it by itself. Jess, Kris and I had planned on going to MGM in the morning to play and try to do everything there that we have wanted to do that we haven't done yet (it has actually started to kick in that we're leaving really soon and we're scrambling to have as much fun as possible before we leave). So the day started off great, we got there on time and went straight to the Tower of Terror so Jess could put her stuff away and we could ride it. After that we saw Beauty and the Beast which was great since I haven't seen it since 1998 when I came with Mom and Dad. After that we wanted to get some food but instead of going to a quick service we just figured we would see if they had any openings anywhere sit down so we could use one of our 50% off coupons (the block out dates start the 22nd). So we got a reservation for the Hollywood Brown Derby and ate there. Since we had our 50% off, I got a beer, an awesome appetizer of coconut fried shrimp in some really tasty sauce, a New York strip steak with three sauces and mashed potatoes and we all split this dessert that I don't remember the name but was basically banana heaven. It was absolutely delicious, the rolls were hot and fresh and Kris and Jess got this margarita that's a Christmas special that they used freshly squeezed cranberries in. It was a fantastic lunch, the service was great and the food was excellent. We really enjoyed it. Then we went to the Backlot Tour and did some shopping afterwards. We hit the Magic of Disney Animation where Kris and I watched the show, met Frozone (from the Incredibles), met Remy and drew a picture of Scrooge McDuck (special for the holidays!!). After we did a little more shopping and headed to the apartment where we left one of our cars, picked up our graduation ears and headed back out to the Magic Kingdom. We saw Wishes (probably for the last time :-( ) and got our ears stitched for free because they are our graduation ones. That is absolutely amazing how they do it!! They have an embroidery machine that they actually write with to stitch the names on. It's awesome and ours came out really well. Then we headed back to the Polynesian where I had parked (how naughty) and we decided to just see if we could eat at 'Ohana instead of waiting around for our reservation at Boma. We got a pager and a 45-1 hour wait which was fine since we were still good from lunch and sat at the bar. We had a ball, the food was as always awesome and we enjoyed the atmosphere. After dinner we went and sat on the beach in the resort and waited for the Holiday Wishes. While we sat there the water parade came and entertained us and then we saw the Holiday Wishes fireworks show which is really just awesome. You can hear the music there too because they play it outside at the resorts that you can see the Magic Kingdom from. So up until then it would have been the most fun day ever but then we did more!! We went back to the apartment, hung out with Jess and Autumn for a few minutes, heard about the guy that died on Expedition Everest yesterday (ehhhh still don't know the whole story, evidently it was really sucky, Autumn works in the gift shop there) and got ready to go out. We went to the Orlando Ale House for Ladies Nights (Sean drove) and we got free drinks until 1 am. Not crappy free drinks but decent free drinks. We sat there until 1:30 or so and just drank and the rest of them got food. It was really fantastic. It was just a spectacular day. :-) Enjoy the pictures!!!

It's actually COLD here!

AHHHH BEST PICTURE!!!

Our Christmas card picture.

At the Polynesian.

Me and Kris doing a magical moment.

Wow! It got really cold here!! Well really cold being between 60-70 during the day and chillier at night but hey. So today is my day off and boy did I need it. I am exhausted from working. Last night was EMH and I got to create a magical moment for a mom and daughter. The daughter, a little girl about 5 named Haley had an accident and she needed new pants and I happened to be in the restroom when this all happened. I offered to get them some new clothes, the mom was ECSTATIC and we got her a really cute pair of pants and it just made their day. The rest of the night wasn't too bad either, not anything like last week. (The calm before the storm, right?!)

Today has been pretty awesome too. I went to Magic Kingdom this morning to get Jennie and her beau Justin into the park. It was really great seeing someone from home and good to just see Jennie since I haven't see her in a while now! Then I had a meeting with a very nice manager named Sean who works with entertainment who basically told me that if I audition for entertainment, get a part and can come down for about 3 weeks to train and work that I can stay seasonal as a character and come down whenever I have a chance. :-) I'm stoked.

Then I hung around Magic Kingdom for a bit with some free popcorn and did some more shopping. There was a marching band sort of group playing Christmas carols and they were AWESOME so that was really fun. Then I did some more shopping at lots of places including an awesome Borders outlet store where I got three cahiers by Moleskine my obsession and 4 books all using my gift card from Joni for Chanukah. QUITE a deal. I got some new blank dvd's to, uh, play with and finished my Disney shopping for friends and the fam. Tomorrow I'm going to MGM with the roomies to play and do the rest of the things we wanted to do there and then Wednesday we're going to the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Review!!! Yayyyy. $30 for dinner, entertainment and Bud drafts and sangria. I'm really excited. It's going to ROCK.

I'm scheduled for 47 hours next week so that is going to be crazy. I think I'm also going to try to pick up extra hours during the week so I leave with a massive paycheck. I'm excited. It's going to be intense because I'm trying to pack, be sane, do more of my online class, work 60 hours and do the things in Disney that we still want to do.

Soooo much fun to come. :-) Enjoy the pictures!!!!!