The Disney Dream Life Continues!

Hello, hello, do you remember me?? I am so sorry for disappearing while I have been down here in Disney! There is just so much to do here and so little time to sit down and write! However, due to super long lines and no available fast passes at EPCOT this morning, here I am, finally with a few spare minutes to talk about my past three weeks lifeguarding. 

So as I think I have mentioned several times now, I am lifeguarding at Disney's Pop Century and Art of Animation Resorts. So far, my work experience has been fantastic. For our work day, there are three possible shifts we can work: AM, PM or Super AM. The Super AM shift is 6:30-4:30, AM is 8:30-4:30 and the PM shift is 3:45-11:30. Since I am an ICP, I usually work the PM shift. The joke around here is ICP stands for "I close" and CP (College Program) stands for "Closing Position" because CPs and ICPs always work the night shifts. However, I really like it. I get up and go to a park in the morning, go to work, go to bed and repeat. Work is super fun too. I normally start at 3:30, have a meeting with all the lifeguards and then join in for the first dance at the resort's daily dance party. So far, I have done the Cha Cha Slide, the Cupid Shuffle, the Mississippi Stomp, the Ice Cream Freeze and the YMCA. When I work at Pop, we have to wear a funky wig while we dance and at Art, we wear Finding Nemo fish hats. It is my favourite part of the shift. After we dance, we go on stand and we rotate through 7 guarding stands throughout the night. We get two half hour breaks as well. I love when I am on stand at the main pools because the Children's Activity Cast runs activities all afternoon, such as Disney Trivia, Don't Forget the Disney Lyrics and Notable Quotable. I get to test my Disney knowledge and learn tons of new facts. For example, did you know that when the Magic Kingdom opened, an adult ticket cost $3.50? And every night at 9pm, they show a movie on the pool deck. I love when they play movies with songs so I can listen and sing along (while watching my water of course). At 11pm, we close the pools, clean the pool deck and call it a night. If I'm lucky, one of the other guards will offer me a ride home and sometimes, we go out for a late night snack. McFlurries are my preferred post-work snack choice.  

 

Me in costume! 

At Disney, we have what are called "Magical Moments," which is when you have a great guest interaction. I had 2 magical moments in these past two weeks. The first one was when I overheard these two boys and their grandparents speaking in French in my pool so I struck up a very basic conversation with them. It turns out they were from Montreal and were excited to learn that I live in Sherbrooke for school. One of the boys told me that he is in the middle of his own lifeguard training so I said that he could do my job one day. It was so much fun to talk to this family and great to practice my French. I hope that for them it was nice to talk to someone in their first language while they were here. At the very least, I hope they enjoyed our chat. I was very thankful that they pardoned my horrible accent and talked slowly for me. My second magical moment happened over the course of 4 nights. At Pop, there were 4 girls who were cousins and were on vacation for the week. Somehow, each night they ended up tracking me down and would always come to swim in my zone of the pool. They would ask me questions about myself, where I lived, about Canada, my roommates, etc. Mainly, they asked about my job - specifically about why I was moving my head so much! On their last night, two of the girls decided that they had observed me for long enough and wanted to try guarding. They hopped out of the water and stood on the pool deck beside me, imitating my actions. Since they were wet from swimming, they kept hopping back in the water to warm up before coming back "on stand." They thanked me for letting them guard with me and hugged me before they went to bed that night. Their vacation is over now but I want to thank those girls for making my nights last week so fantastic. After this, I really understand why we use the term magical moments. 

Besides work, I have also been keeping busy during my time off. During the first week of June, I returned to both water parks and spent a good chunk of my time in the lazy river. All cast members got blocked out of the water parks on June 8th to prepare for the busy seasons so I wanted to make sure I did all that the water parks had to offer. One day when I was at Typhoon Lagoon, the park shut down 2 hours early for a private event that night. We found out later that the National LGBT community had rented out the park from 7pm-3am! I do not even want to know how much it costs to buy out a Disney park for a night...

Our first Dole Whips! (Pineapple Soft Serve Ice Cream and Dole Pineapple Juice!)

Before the kickball tournament, Sam and I hit up the EPCOT Character Spot! 

Winter Garden Farmer's Market

Other than the water and theme parks, I have also made two trips to Downtown Disney. The first time, I went with my friends Ashley and Sam on a Tuesday morning. Our main reason for going  was to use our 10% off Cast Member discount at the Starbucks, which we all took full advantage of. We also learned that we are all small enough to wear the child sized princess dresses so we had a fashion show in Once Upon a Toy and enlisted a store employee to be our photographer. I also went into the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique and got "pixie dusted" (aka they poured sparkles on my head). I tried to convince the Fairy Godmothers in Training to sell me some pixie dust, but was unsuccessful in my bartering attempts. 

The second time I went to Downtown Disney I went with Sam to see Malifecent at the AMC Movie Theatre. At the movie theatre, they have this really cool option called Fork and Screen, which is pretty much a restaurant and movie theatre combined. You go into the theatre half an hour before the movie starts and order a meal off a full menu. Then, right before the movie starts, your waiter brings you your food which you enjoy while watching the show. You can also get bottomless drinks and popcorn and throughout the movie you just push a button for a refill. In addition to all this, you get to sit in a huge leather chair. Sam and I had so much fun and ate so much popcorn. Oh, and the movie was great as well!

A few days later, Monday, I was doing some errands and the day was off to a pretty good start but when I was walking home for the grocery store, all of a sudden the left lens of my prescription sunglasses popped out! My sunglasses are a part of my costume so I was freaking out. I ran over to the outlet mall with my groceries in tow but the sunglasses stores there were unable to help me. Luckily, I found a pair of “frame floaters” at the drugstore to wear to work that night. The next day, I made my first trip to the Florida Mall. The mall is sooo fantastic but I was on a focused mission to find someone to fix my sunglasses. After visiting every glasses store and jeweler in the mall, I finally found a person who had a drill small enough to fix them. Unfortunately, he needed to keep them for a few days so I had to wear the frame floaters for a little bit longer. Double unfortunately, the bus to the mall only runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I was stuck with the frame floaters for an entire week.

Two days later, on Thursday of that week, there was a Property wide recreation staff kickball tournament and I decided to join the Pop/Art team. The event was held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, which I now know is HUGE! They have a baseball stadium for the Braves there, which is pretty neat. We did not get to play on their field but we did get to walk by it. There were teams from all the different recreation regions, including the other resorts, ESPN and the water parks. We had the largest team by far, to the point that we had to split into two teams because one region did not have enough members show up to play. We tried to balance our teams out but in the collective 4 games, we only won one. Our managers were not impressed. We ended the night with a Pop/Art vs. Pop/Art match and it was by far the best game. Throughout the night, our head manager Robin provided us with snacks and Powerade to fuel us for our games. Despite our lack of success, it was a really great night and I am really happy I decided to go. 

I worked an AM shift that Friday and then met my friends at the Magic Kingdom but I did not stay for too long as I had my first in-service training the next morning and had to be at the pool by 6am. At training, we practiced our basic rescues and basic first aid and then our coordinator set up mock situations that we had to respond to. He pulled out all the stops, using a golf cart, test dummy, fake babies and a fog machine in his scenarios. Despite it being so early in the morning, we had many guests watching us from their balconies. I thought they would be annoyed by the noise we were making but they seemed to enjoy watching us. A good number of them commented that they were happy to see that we took our training so seriously. I actually get this comment quite a lot and I am always proud to be part of a team that works so hard each and every day and night. 

Last Monday, I went with my friend Terry (from Thailand) to EPCOT. Terry is a lifeguard at Animal Kingdom Lodge but he has been deployed to Pop and Art for longer than I have worked there. He has been here in Disney for almost 4 months now and had not yet been to EPCOT so I told him he absolutely had to go ASAP! We had a bit of a late start to the morning so we only made it through World Showcase but we had a lot of fun! We started in Mexico, had caramel popcorn and chocolate covered marshmallows at the Werber's Factory in Germany, had green tea ice cream in Japan and finished our tour in Club Cool. Interestingly enough, Terry’s favourite soda was the one from Thailand, which also happens to be my favourite too. We then boarded our respective resort buses and headed to work for the night.

Tuesday I went back to the mall to pick up my sunglasses. While I was there, I did a lap through the food court and sampled about 8 different kinds of chicken. I also got to try hot dog wraps from Auntie Anne’s, candied cococunt, some kind of smoothie, and coconut and birthday cake flavoured M&Ms. Be proud of me folks – I did not spend a dime at the mall that day, which is a major accomplishment for me. On the other hand, on Wednesday, my wallet took a hit on my first trip to Walmart, which was a long bus ride away but definitely worth going to because now my food shelf is fully stocked.

Thursday, I went for brunch with my roommates to the Wave, a restaurant at the Contemporary Hotel. It is one of the restaurants we get 40% off at and it was sooooo, soooo good. They had Mickey Waffles, biscuits and gritz, smoked salmon, fresh fruit and really good iced coffee. After brunch, we went to EPCOT and got photos with Belle and Aurora before I had to leave to go to work.

Friday and Saturday were my days off: I spent Friday with Ashley and her two friends from home at EPCOT and Magic Kingdom and on Saturday, Sam, Ashley and I went on a day trip to Winter Gardens, a city about half an hour away from our housing complex. The town was super cute and we spent majority of our time there at the Farmer’s Market, sampling everything from hand soaps to plantain chips to homemade salsas and dips. We also went to a store that had 62 flavours of popcorn! That night, we went with Ashley’s friends to a restaurant at the Yacht and Beach Club called Beaches and Cream for a Mickey’s Kitchen Sink. The kitchen sink is 8 scoops of ice cream, brownies, angel cake, strawberries, bananas, cherries, a Milky Way bar, peanut butter and chocolate sauce and a whole can of whipped cream all piled into a kitchen sink. We split it between the 5 of us and still had a hard time finishing it! I have never eaten so much dessert at one time in my entire life. We then went for a walk on the Boardwalk to digest our ice cream - I don't think I could have gotten on the bus right after finishing the ice cream! 

So far this week, I have been taking it easy with only a trip to EPCOT so far. I have been catching up with friends from home and have been a little bit sad because the summer camp where I worked the past two summers started their staff training on the weekend and I am sad not to be there. However, I have still having an awesome time here and wouldn’t trade this for the world! My next goal is to get to Universal Studios and go to Harry Potter World – I just need to find someone to go with! I also need to eat a giant turkey leg and go to the Be Our Guest restaurant! I’m running out of time to accomplish all of my Disney bucket list items! Anyway, by now, I am sure your eyes are getting tired from staring at your screen for so long so I will bid you farewell and wish you a magical day!!

More to come soon, I promise!

All my love, Erica xoxoxoxoxoxo   

Living the Disney Dream - Weeks 2 and 3

Good morning everyone! Hope you are enjoying Mother Nature's beautiful sunshine wherever in the world you happen to be! Oh and happy June!! Can you believe we are in the first month of summer? I also just want to take a minute and think back to what I was doing this time last year - I was most likely somewhere in the Ancaster-Dundas area wearing cargo pants, a green t-shirt and steel toed boots digging around in a garden and now I am working in the place where dreams come true! It's crazy how much can change in a year but I am so thankful for all the opportunities that have come my way and for all the fun that I am having this summer. 

So these past two weeks have been all about preparing me for my job as a lifeguard at Disney's Pop Century and Art of Animation Resorts. Disney's lifeguards are all trained by an external company called Ellis and Associates so I spent last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Mickey's Retreat doing 9 hours of lifeguard training each day. We practiced CPR, choking procedures, water rescues and scanning the pool. They really push scanning here and they call it the "10/20" scan, meaning we have to be able to scan our entire pool area in 10 seconds and be able to identify any problems within 10 seconds and respond within 20. To practice this, they have Vigilance Awareness Training. For this, during our training, the trainers would drop plastic babies or long silhouettes on the ground of the pool or they themselves would fake drowning and we had to respond to whatever they threw our way. At each of our pools, we have 12 VAT tests each month. Monday and Tuesday were all about training and then Wednesday was all testing. We had a written first aid test, a CPR test out and a group scenario. My group had to rescue a drowning child. After three long days, I am happy to say that I passed and graduated on to the next step on my training. Oh, and I got perfect on my CPR test and my written test so I got a special Ellis and Associates pin for my hip pack!

After training each day, I was always exhausted but on Tuesday I went with my roommates to a Lilo and Stitch themed pool party at Chatham Square put on by the housing team. There were hot dogs and chips and pop and dancing and swimming! It was so much fun! We were disappointed that no characters made an appearance though :( We hung out with some other Canadian ICPs and had a lot of fun doing various line dances such as the Macarena and the Cupid Shuffle. On Wednesday, Anne, Mercedes and I went to another housing event called grocery bingo. This is exactly what is sounds like. At least 200 CPs and ICPs showed up to the Chatham Square field to play bingo to try and win groceries. We unfortunately did not win but the girls in front of us did and let me tell you, they do not cheap out on the prizes here. The girls walked away with 2 full bags of food and a bag of sundry items such as toilet paper, paper towel and cleaning supplies. We were so jealous! I really hope they do another bingo before we leave. 

Thursday, all the Canadian ICPs had to go to apply for US Social Security numbers and our bus left at 6 in the morning. Needless to say, we all fell asleep on the bus on the way there. We got to the office by 6:30 and were done by 9am. While we were waiting, the officer on duty was asking us Disney and USA trivia questions and awarding Disney character figurines as prizes. He asked us what EPCOT stands for and one girl said "every pay cheque comes on Thursday" and was dead convinced it was the correct answer. In case you are wondering, it actually stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. She did not win a figurine. After the appointment, I had the rest of the day off so my roommate Mercedes and I went to Typhoon Lagoon. It was a lot of fun! We went in the wave pool, the lazy river, on all the slides and through Shark Reef, which is my absolute favourite part of the water parks here at Disney. It is a little salt water pool with real sharks, fish and sting rays swimming around and you snorkel through and look at them.  It was a super hot day, perfect for the water parks and we had such a great time. After Typhoon, we got a text from our two roommates who work at Magic Kingdom saying it was the last day for cast members to ride the unopened new ride The Seven Dwarfs' Mine Train, which is in the new part of Fantasyland so we went down to MK and rode the ride 3 times in one hour. The animatronics on the ride are unbelievable! You literally feel like you are in the movie with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All of the jewels sparkle and the music is right from the movie and it is just fantastic! I am so glad that cast members got to try it out before it opened to the public. Talk about cast member perks!

Mercedes and me at Typhoon Lagoon! 

I also had Friday off so my friend Ashley and I went to Disney's Animal Kingdom for the day. DAK has a new activity taken from the movie Up! in which you can join Russell (the main character) as a Wilderness Explorer and do activities around DAK to earn Wilderness Explorer badges. Activities include going on certain rides such as the Kilimanjaro Safari and Expedition Everest, going on the different nature trails, identifying certain animals - the list goes on. Throughout the day, Ashley and I earned 22 of the possible 30 badges. After Animal Kingdom, we went to EPCOT to see Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, which is the EPCOT fireworks show. After the show, Ashley took me to Club Cool, a store where you can sample different kinds of soda pop from around the world. My favourite was the Fanta Melon Frosty, but I cannot remember which country it was from. To end the night, there was a huge dance party in Future World complete with a DJ and a stage!

The Wilderness Explorers Gang!

Saturday, I went back to Animal Kingdom but this time went with my roommate Sam and Ashley's twin brother Daniel and a few of his friends. While there, we saw the Jungle Jammin' Parade and did rides such as Dinosaur, Primevial Whirl and Kali River Rapids, Sam's favourite. Around dinnertime, Sam and I left DAK to go to EPCOT where we walked through some of the world showcase before watching Illuminations (again). In the Norway pavilion, there is a Frozen exhibit which has examples of the inspirations for the movie, such as the palace that Ana and Elsa's palace is modelled after. After Illuminations, Sam and I decided to try and make it to Magic Kingdom to see Wishes so hopped on the monorail to make our way over. While on board, we saw the Star Wars Weekend fireworks at Hollywood Studios and made it to Magic Kingdom just in time for the first fireworks. We went on a few rides after the show and watched the electrical parade before catching the bus home. 

Sunday was my final day off before work training and Mercedes, Anne and I wanted to go to Blizzard Beach but right before we got on the bus, we found out that cast members were blocked out that day, meaning we could not get in for free. Instead, we went to EPCOT for the afternoon. That day, I also received my official acceptance to study abroad in France in the fall (YAY) so we all got ice cream in the French pavilion to celebrate. I had an early night as I had my resort orientation for Pop Century  early Monday morning. At the orientation, we learned about the resort's theme and story (the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s) and got a walking tour of the resort. At the end of orientation, I finally received my costume!!!

Tuesday and Wednesday I had training, one at Pop and the other at Pop's sister resort, Art of Animation. Tuesday I was by myself with my trainer at Pop and Wednesday I was with my friend Porter at Art. My trainers, Katie and Raul were fantastic! Tuesday afternoon, there was an event for all Pop and Art recreation cast members at which we were all paid to watch the movie Cars. Art of Animation is based on 4 Disney movies, Cars being one of them, so once a month, one of the movies is shown to keep the cast members up to date on the resort's themes. I believe we will be watching Little Mermaid in June. Wednesday morning I also made my first trip to Cast Connections, the cast member discount store. I got some super cheap produce and checked out a bunch of the other discounted merchandise. I did not have a lot of time there so I will have to go back and check it out again. 

Thursday I had my resort orientation at Art of Animation and made friends with two other recreation team cast members, one who works in the arcade and one who is a children's activity coordinator (aka my dream job). Art of Animation is themed around four movies: Cars, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King and Finding Nemo. The resort is divided into 4 sections, one for each movie. A fun fact about the Nemo section is that the everything is designed to scale as though the average size guest is the size of Nemo the clownfish. After my orientation, I had my KAPA - Knowledge and Performance Assessment for lifeguarding. It took 4 hours. I had to go around to each of my 6 pools (Hippy Dippy, Bowling Pin, Computer, Big Blue, Flippin' Fins and Cozy Cone) and explain the guarding procedures for each one. I also had to demonstrate being guard on duty at each guard stand at Pop Century. At the Hippy Dippy pool, one of my coordinators dropped a silhouette in the pool and I had to identify and rescue it, following the 10/20 standard I described above. I also had to do a written test and a CPR test out. Finally, after 2 long weeks of training, I am happy to report that I am officially a working lifeguard. 

Friday, after finally dragging myself to the grocery store, I had my first shift guarding at Pop Century. I was on duty from 3:45 until 11:30pm. I was both nervous and excited for my first shift but all of the other guards were very friendly and helpful. Since it was raining and thundering when we started, I spent my first two stands at the rain location which gave me a chance to get to know some of the other guards. All in all, it was a great first night on the job!

Saturday I had the day off, so Ashley and I went to Blizzard Beach. My highlight of the day was ordering a sand pail, which you can see a picture of below. Essentially, it is an ordinary plastic sand pail filled to the brim with soft serve ice cream, cookie pieces, waffle cone pieces and chocolate sauce and topped with whipped cream, sprinkles and a cherry. No, I did not eat the whole thing myself...Ashley and I split it. After a fun day on the "slopes," Ashley and I met up with her brother and his friend Courtney and Ashley's neighbour at Hollywood Studios to watch the Star Wars Weekend fireworks. They were amazing!! The finale was unreal!! After the fireworks, we also saw Fantasmic, which was so much better than I remember it being. Then it was time to come home and rest up for my second day of the job! 

So I will end this post here and bring you all the details on my first full week of lifeguarding at the end of this week. In case it isn't obvious, I am having the time of my life down here and cannot believe that 3 weeks have already gone by! I am trying to make the most of each and every moment I have left because I know every day is going to fly by. Lifeguarding is awesome and I have a great team that I am so fortunate to be a part of. My roommates are great, my job is great, Disney is great - it is going to be so hard to return home in 2 months! Anyhow, it is off to bed for me now as I have another day of work ahead of me. Wishing you all a magical week!

All my love, 

Erica xoxoxoxoxoxoxo