My First Week

Well all the craziness of the first week is settling down so I thought I'd spend some time and tell you all what's been going on. My mom and I got on the plane on Tuesday with no troubles and got to Orlando in perfect time completely uneventful trip down. We went out to eat at one of our favorite Disney restaurants, Earl of Sandwich. After a little napping and relaxing by me and working by my mom back in the room we decided to go out and experience some of the Disney nightlife since this was my first time being in Disney World as a 21 year old. We went to downtown Disney and spent most of the night at one of our other favorite Disney spots, Raglan Road, it's an Irish pub and that night they had live music and Irish dancers which was pretty cool. It was a very enjoyable last night with my mother. Wednesday morning at 7 AM all the excitement really started, we headed over to Vista Way, my new place of residence, and started the check in process. The lines for check in were so long it was like I was waiting for one of the rides. When I finally got through all the hours of waiting in lines and riding buses and waiting in more lines and getting poured on I had my new living location apt #1803 Vista Way and my work location which was the most exciting part! I'm working at Old Key West Resort and Saratoga Springs Resort as a dispatcher. It was really exciting for me to get these two resorts in particular because Old Key West is our family's favorite resort and for the majority of our vacations that's where we stayed. It's customary to welcome people to the resort by saying "Welcome home" and for me it really was like I was coming home. The next day we had our "Traditions" class, it's a class that all Disney employees take just to orient themselves with the traditions and customs and history of the Walt Disney World Company. During the class we took a brief tour of part of the Magic Kingdom and let me tell you, it's very weird to enter as a cast member through some back entrances. In order to get to where we were going we got to walk through the Utilidoor or the secret tunnels under Magic Kingdom. Now if you don't know when Disney World was being built the land was to swampy to dig and build in so they built a "basement" level and Magic Kingdom is actually on the second floor. My one goal for this semester was to go in the secret tunnels under Magic Kingdom so this was super exciting for me! However the highlight of my day was definitely getting my official Disney name tag. I was officially a Disney employee. That night we went to Epcot just for a couple hours because we could. It was a very cool but also surreal feeling to just walk in for free for a couple hours just for fun. We got something to eat and watched illuminations and then left, no stress, no long lines just a very enjoyable Epcot experience. I don't know if I'll ever get used to that. The day after Traditions I had a general Old Key West and Saratoga Springs training session with some other people that were working at those resorts. Some of them were here on the College Program (CPs) but some of them were just new employees. We got our costumes (Disney talk for uniform) and found out our schedule for the week (lots of early mornings). It was mostly just an informative day on the two resorts, it was kind of a long and tiring day but it was still Disney so I enjoyed it. Yesterday was my first official day of on the job training as a dispatcher at Old Key West. I'm gonna take some time now to explain exactly what I do as a dispatcher. At the bell services desk people are arriving from the airport with their luggage, checking in checking out, going to the parks and needing to store their luggage, having packages delivered to their rooms etc. We have a very expansive property and only a few bellman so while they're off running jobs I stand at the desk and organize and send out new orders for them. I basically just run the "office" operation of the bell services and I'm also there as an information resource for the guests. As my mom likes to say, I stand there and tell everyone else what to do. I think I'm going to like it a lot. Old Key West is a pretty relaxed place and it's fun to work there. I didn't do a lot of work yesterday but the little work that I did do I really enjoyed. I hope to be able to cross train a little bit and pick up shifts as a front desk worker to just really further my knowledge and experience in the Hotel and Resort Industry. I just have a feeling that this experience is going to far exceed all of my expectations and CAN'T WAIT to see what the Lord has in store for me here at Disney this semester. Hopefully soon I'll have up some pics of my costumes and maybe a video of what my apartment looks like. Until then