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.
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| 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...
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| Our first Dole Whips! (Pineapple Soft Serve Ice Cream and Dole Pineapple Juice!) |
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| Before the kickball tournament, Sam and I hit up the EPCOT Character Spot! |
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| 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
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