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!
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| 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!
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| 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
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