Sunday, June 26.
Off.
HARRY POTTER. Not much happened, we once again went later in the evening, this time Laura, Cristina and me. The park hours had changed to closing time at 22:00 instead of 21:00 so it gave us an extra hour. I bought a Butterbeer (in a keepsake mug), a Hufflepuff t-shirt and a Hufflepuff little banner/flag thing. I have to say, I have yet to buy anything Disney but I'm all over this Harry Potter stuff. The money I make at Disney is going to Universal, kind of sad when I think about it.
Off.
HARRY POTTER. Not much happened, we once again went later in the evening, this time Laura, Cristina and me. The park hours had changed to closing time at 22:00 instead of 21:00 so it gave us an extra hour. I bought a Butterbeer (in a keepsake mug), a Hufflepuff t-shirt and a Hufflepuff little banner/flag thing. I have to say, I have yet to buy anything Disney but I'm all over this Harry Potter stuff. The money I make at Disney is going to Universal, kind of sad when I think about it.
 |
| Cristina and Laura. (photo from Laura) |
We went to the Ollivander's show and Cristina was picked to receive her wand, it was pretty amazing. They have you try a few wands to see which one pics you and magical things happen, just like the books/movies.
 |
| Ollivander's a creeper. (Photo from Laura) |
That was obviously the highlight of my day off =D
Monday, June 27.
Camp Minnie-Mickey.
14:30-21:00
Any College Program participant (or anyone under 50) will tell you that working Camp is the most boring place on Earth, they'd rather work Dinoland. I didn't really believe them after like both Dinoland and Everest. It turns out it's pretty boring. Not that it's a bad place to work, it's magical like the rest of the park, but there is a very limited number of things to do. The main things there are the Meet and Greet with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and the Forest Friends. And the Lion King, let's not forget that. That's probably what keeps Camp alive. Five to six times a day the area is flooded by disoriented guests looking for the show, asking if you need fast passes, etc. Also, there's a smoking area and a funnel cake kiosk. That's it. Seriously. There's no trash to pick up and the trash run at the end of the day is easy.
Actually, when I got to my post I found an older gentleman who was doing his trash run to show me around, before taking me to the break area (that is far, far away) he had me double bag the cans he was working on so I wouldn't have to do it on my run, it was pretty smart and awesome. He then showed me a small custodial closet near the restrooms and where to empty the banana boat (across the street, how safe is that?) and then took me to the "real" custodial closet and the Camp break room. Having that kind of help is great, it's a little scary to work a new area without even knowing where to put your lunchbox.
The guy that did the 16:30 trash run is from Washington State University, it's pretty awesome.
This is also the day I got addicted to Jeopardy, I happened to have my break at 19:00 and that was the start of jeopardy... i now try to have my breaks around that time, hoping to have a good break room that plays jeopardy.
Tuesday, June 28.
Restrooms Asia
12:30-20:30
(Or so it said on my schedule. What happened was this:
12:30-14:00 - Restrooms Asia.
14:00-14:30 - Restrooms Flametree.
14:30-20:30 - Restrooms Africa.)
This was a weird day from start to finish. I came into the office ready to work Caravan and Kali restrooms again, although a bit confused about starting at 12:30 instead of 9:00, and was told that I would just be covering them for Carridad until 14:00. At that point my brain went "durp" and I asked Bernadette why I was only working for an hour and a half. She looked through the schedules again and told me she'd figure it out by then and have me somewhere else. So I went. I took care of the two restrooms for an hour and a half; it was easy enough, they were clean when I got there, Carridad is a pro at this, so I just had to keep them at that level of cleanliness. At 13:50 another coordinator found me and told me that I would be covering Flametree's guest restrooms for half an hour (someone's lunchtime) and so I rushed over there to try and not be delayed. Flametree's restroom is huge, lots and lots of stalls, sinks and wet floors. But for half an hour it was an easy job, at least I was ready for future encounters with that set of restrooms.
After dealing with those restrooms, I made my way back to the main entrance to grab the Africa Restrooms radio from the girl before me. I made my way back up to Africa and had the pleasure of staying there until the end of my shift. There are two restrooms to take care of in Africa, the main one in Harambe and the ones in the back of Tusker House restaurant. The second set is not used much so it's easy to clean. The main ones have more than twenty stalls, it's intense, but once again, it feels good to stay busy. I went back and forth for the next few hours, one restroom than the other, over and over again. Not that difficult. The best thing about restrooms? Air Conditioning.
Wednesday, June 29.
Off - Universal Studios with Ricky, Laura, Cristina, and her family visiting from Puerto Rico.
Cirque du Soleil with Ricky, Laura, and Lynn.
We left for Universal before noon, it felt very nice to know we'd have time to walk around and see more than the world of Harry Potter. Cristina went with her family a little earlier so they could all get their tickets, Laura, Ricky and I met up with them there. Ricky was debating between buying a one-day ticket and a season pass, he opted for a season pass in the end, we're here for six months, what are the odds of him not going back?
Cristina's family is pretty awesome, crazy like her, but very nice. We started with Harry Potter since Cristina loves it and her sister's boyfriend do as well. It started to rain a little as we were making our way over there so the line for the rides were actually getting smaller. We started with the Dragon Challenge, a rollercoaster where the guests get split up in two teams and each goes into a different set of seats. They then proceed to go on a normal rollercoaster ride and almost crash into each other before continuing on their way, pretty sweet! We then went to buy Butterbeer so Ricky could taste it (he had me buy one to share and then drank it all). After that we continued our tour to the Castle Ride that I had already done with Laura and Cristina and I enjoyed it once again. It really is a wonderful ride.
We then left Hogsmeade and made our way to Jurassic Park to ride one of the water rides. To go through faster we decided to ride as single riders, considering there were eight of us it was more practical. I ended up being placed in the front row where I got soaked like no other. After getting out of there I figured it was time for a restroom stop, get ourselves in order and five minutes later we came out of the restroom to find that it was pouring out. And not a thin rain; it was a full out storm. But we were already soaked so we didn't really care, we went for it and ran to a restaurant a little ways away. Cristina and family refused to go in because of the ice cold air conditioning. Laura, Ricky and I were starving so we went in and had a delicious lunch. I got the Turkey Leg, 'cause they're always delicious and I won't have them anymore when I go home in January. By the end of our meal Cristina found us again and we all decided to leave.
Driving back home we decided to change really fast and then make a quick run to Wal-Mart for a few necessary food items.
We came back to the apartment, changed into more appropriate clothing to go back out - so out of super comfy pants to jeans. Lynn then drove Laura, Ricky and me to Downtown Disney where we went to La Nouba, the Cirque du Soleil show because for the month of June we got half-off tickets. I have no pictures I'm sorry to say; it was raining outside and we were to enthralled to take any inside. We did not have the best seats in the house so we probably missed a few things, but it was wonderful. A bit different from watching on TV but I almost wonder if you don't see more when watching on TV, there's just too much going on all at once, I only have ONE pair of eyes!!!
After the show Laura and Lynn went to an Irish Pub, Ricky and I walked around Downtown Disney for a little while and then decided to try and catch the bus back. We made it to the bus stop right on time but it was packed. Needless to say, we didn't make it on. So we decided to walk home (as we drove over we realized it wasn't that far - how delusional). It turns out it's not that close, but the positive thing is that after walking to Crossroads, a little center with shops and restaurants, we went to MacDonalds. We tried the Mango Pineapple Smoothie thingamajiggy and it was delicious, I was surprised since I'm usually the first to refuse mango. At that point we decided we didn't really want to walk all the way to the apartments, we'd only made it halfway in a little under an hour. So we went to the bus stop in front of a grocery store and waited there for a long time, one of the buses apparently wasn't running. By the time it got there my feet were dead, I was tired and in a bad mood (sorry Ricky), but we made it home! Did I mention that the bus system sucks?
Because of the poor weather I'm sorry to say there were no photos for that day. Sorry for the block of text!
Thursday, June 30.
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
13:00-15:45
Training - The Basics.
15:45-18:00
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
18:00-21:30
The training they call training should really be called "Review" or "Brainwashing Part 2". When it's in the middle of the day it sucks. When it's pouring outside it sucks even more. I rode the bus both ways this time though.
So. My day started well, not too early, not too late. I got to the office where I was told to just go and sweep Bus Side until my training ("clock out at 15:45, training starts at 16:00). Easy enough, I went and did that. I don't recall who was doing Bus Side with me that day, this is probably why I should keep up on my blog. I received the radio at 13:00, I gave it to Benela at 15:00, when he looked at me like I had a third head. I had to explain to him that I had training and would get the radio back from him or from the office at 18:00. Turns out training took us all the way up to 18:02 so by the time I got back to the office Benela had given the radio to someone else so it was up to me to find it. He told me that he had given it to the "Asian guy", who was actually Haitian, but Benela's own Haitian accent didn't work out to well with my lack of understanding. The rest of the day was pretty simple, you know, just a trash run under the rain, the usual.
The training itself was interesting-ish; there were about twenty of us (not just custodials) and one lady to talk to us. We were to go over the Disney Basics (you'll recall what they are by going back to my Traditions days). She went over each of them, gave examples, had us apply them, work in groups, present, discuss, look at images, give our opinion, etc etc etc. And then we were done. That's all we did, it's what Disney calls "constant training" or something along those lines.
Friday, July 01.
Africa - Pangani.
14:30-21:00
Straightforward day, I got to work, I worked, and I did my closing trash run. Easy, easy, easy.
Saturday, July 02.
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
13:00-20:30
I was hoping to get to work Medical Side again, but NOPE, apparently I'm doing a great job for them to keep me on Bus Side all the time.
I worked with Greg that day, before I got there he actually asked Ladonna if he could take one of my two trash runs so instead of having a 14:00 and 16:30 trash run I only had my 14:00. I also had the radio for a minimal amount of time, it was pretty great. We had to split the 14:00 run in two because of a Track Talk we had at 14:30. We started our run again after half an hour of Managers talking at us. Greg was putting in two bags while I did my run so he wouldn't have anything to do later on. Halfway through we realized the radio I had wasn't working when Benela came up and asked if we'd taken care of the Code V in one of the buses. Greg was nice enough to go with him so I triple bagged the cans I emptied while he was gone. By the time we were done with that trash run we took our lunch and off we went again. This time I just swept while he pulled the cans, we raced with Rafael from Puerto Rico who was doing Medical Side (we won by a minute or so, he still had to double bag everything). I forgot to grab one of the cans on my run so Greg emptied it and I was in the process of putting a clean bag in when the manager in charge of the CPs showed up and called us (me) out for not wearing gloves while touching the trash bags and trash cans. I added the "me" in there because seeing her coming I told Greg to put his on, I didn't actually realize that when putting a clean bag in an empty can I needed to wear gloves. As Bethany said "it's gross". How gross is a clean trash bag? I guess some people just never take out their trash.
Also the day the Gatorade disappeared very early. In a few of the custodial closets we have Gatorade to keep our electrolytes replenished. Apparently, they only leave it for the warmest part of the day, until 17:00 or so. Greg and I made it to Discovery Island before we realized it was gone.
Monday, June 27.
Camp Minnie-Mickey.
14:30-21:00
Any College Program participant (or anyone under 50) will tell you that working Camp is the most boring place on Earth, they'd rather work Dinoland. I didn't really believe them after like both Dinoland and Everest. It turns out it's pretty boring. Not that it's a bad place to work, it's magical like the rest of the park, but there is a very limited number of things to do. The main things there are the Meet and Greet with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and the Forest Friends. And the Lion King, let's not forget that. That's probably what keeps Camp alive. Five to six times a day the area is flooded by disoriented guests looking for the show, asking if you need fast passes, etc. Also, there's a smoking area and a funnel cake kiosk. That's it. Seriously. There's no trash to pick up and the trash run at the end of the day is easy.
Actually, when I got to my post I found an older gentleman who was doing his trash run to show me around, before taking me to the break area (that is far, far away) he had me double bag the cans he was working on so I wouldn't have to do it on my run, it was pretty smart and awesome. He then showed me a small custodial closet near the restrooms and where to empty the banana boat (across the street, how safe is that?) and then took me to the "real" custodial closet and the Camp break room. Having that kind of help is great, it's a little scary to work a new area without even knowing where to put your lunchbox.
The guy that did the 16:30 trash run is from Washington State University, it's pretty awesome.
This is also the day I got addicted to Jeopardy, I happened to have my break at 19:00 and that was the start of jeopardy... i now try to have my breaks around that time, hoping to have a good break room that plays jeopardy.
Tuesday, June 28.
Restrooms Asia
12:30-20:30
(Or so it said on my schedule. What happened was this:
12:30-14:00 - Restrooms Asia.
14:00-14:30 - Restrooms Flametree.
14:30-20:30 - Restrooms Africa.)
This was a weird day from start to finish. I came into the office ready to work Caravan and Kali restrooms again, although a bit confused about starting at 12:30 instead of 9:00, and was told that I would just be covering them for Carridad until 14:00. At that point my brain went "durp" and I asked Bernadette why I was only working for an hour and a half. She looked through the schedules again and told me she'd figure it out by then and have me somewhere else. So I went. I took care of the two restrooms for an hour and a half; it was easy enough, they were clean when I got there, Carridad is a pro at this, so I just had to keep them at that level of cleanliness. At 13:50 another coordinator found me and told me that I would be covering Flametree's guest restrooms for half an hour (someone's lunchtime) and so I rushed over there to try and not be delayed. Flametree's restroom is huge, lots and lots of stalls, sinks and wet floors. But for half an hour it was an easy job, at least I was ready for future encounters with that set of restrooms.
After dealing with those restrooms, I made my way back to the main entrance to grab the Africa Restrooms radio from the girl before me. I made my way back up to Africa and had the pleasure of staying there until the end of my shift. There are two restrooms to take care of in Africa, the main one in Harambe and the ones in the back of Tusker House restaurant. The second set is not used much so it's easy to clean. The main ones have more than twenty stalls, it's intense, but once again, it feels good to stay busy. I went back and forth for the next few hours, one restroom than the other, over and over again. Not that difficult. The best thing about restrooms? Air Conditioning.
Wednesday, June 29.
Off - Universal Studios with Ricky, Laura, Cristina, and her family visiting from Puerto Rico.
Cirque du Soleil with Ricky, Laura, and Lynn.
We left for Universal before noon, it felt very nice to know we'd have time to walk around and see more than the world of Harry Potter. Cristina went with her family a little earlier so they could all get their tickets, Laura, Ricky and I met up with them there. Ricky was debating between buying a one-day ticket and a season pass, he opted for a season pass in the end, we're here for six months, what are the odds of him not going back?
Cristina's family is pretty awesome, crazy like her, but very nice. We started with Harry Potter since Cristina loves it and her sister's boyfriend do as well. It started to rain a little as we were making our way over there so the line for the rides were actually getting smaller. We started with the Dragon Challenge, a rollercoaster where the guests get split up in two teams and each goes into a different set of seats. They then proceed to go on a normal rollercoaster ride and almost crash into each other before continuing on their way, pretty sweet! We then went to buy Butterbeer so Ricky could taste it (he had me buy one to share and then drank it all). After that we continued our tour to the Castle Ride that I had already done with Laura and Cristina and I enjoyed it once again. It really is a wonderful ride.
We then left Hogsmeade and made our way to Jurassic Park to ride one of the water rides. To go through faster we decided to ride as single riders, considering there were eight of us it was more practical. I ended up being placed in the front row where I got soaked like no other. After getting out of there I figured it was time for a restroom stop, get ourselves in order and five minutes later we came out of the restroom to find that it was pouring out. And not a thin rain; it was a full out storm. But we were already soaked so we didn't really care, we went for it and ran to a restaurant a little ways away. Cristina and family refused to go in because of the ice cold air conditioning. Laura, Ricky and I were starving so we went in and had a delicious lunch. I got the Turkey Leg, 'cause they're always delicious and I won't have them anymore when I go home in January. By the end of our meal Cristina found us again and we all decided to leave.
Driving back home we decided to change really fast and then make a quick run to Wal-Mart for a few necessary food items.
We came back to the apartment, changed into more appropriate clothing to go back out - so out of super comfy pants to jeans. Lynn then drove Laura, Ricky and me to Downtown Disney where we went to La Nouba, the Cirque du Soleil show because for the month of June we got half-off tickets. I have no pictures I'm sorry to say; it was raining outside and we were to enthralled to take any inside. We did not have the best seats in the house so we probably missed a few things, but it was wonderful. A bit different from watching on TV but I almost wonder if you don't see more when watching on TV, there's just too much going on all at once, I only have ONE pair of eyes!!!
After the show Laura and Lynn went to an Irish Pub, Ricky and I walked around Downtown Disney for a little while and then decided to try and catch the bus back. We made it to the bus stop right on time but it was packed. Needless to say, we didn't make it on. So we decided to walk home (as we drove over we realized it wasn't that far - how delusional). It turns out it's not that close, but the positive thing is that after walking to Crossroads, a little center with shops and restaurants, we went to MacDonalds. We tried the Mango Pineapple Smoothie thingamajiggy and it was delicious, I was surprised since I'm usually the first to refuse mango. At that point we decided we didn't really want to walk all the way to the apartments, we'd only made it halfway in a little under an hour. So we went to the bus stop in front of a grocery store and waited there for a long time, one of the buses apparently wasn't running. By the time it got there my feet were dead, I was tired and in a bad mood (sorry Ricky), but we made it home! Did I mention that the bus system sucks?
Because of the poor weather I'm sorry to say there were no photos for that day. Sorry for the block of text!
Thursday, June 30.
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
13:00-15:45
Training - The Basics.
15:45-18:00
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
18:00-21:30
The training they call training should really be called "Review" or "Brainwashing Part 2". When it's in the middle of the day it sucks. When it's pouring outside it sucks even more. I rode the bus both ways this time though.
So. My day started well, not too early, not too late. I got to the office where I was told to just go and sweep Bus Side until my training ("clock out at 15:45, training starts at 16:00). Easy enough, I went and did that. I don't recall who was doing Bus Side with me that day, this is probably why I should keep up on my blog. I received the radio at 13:00, I gave it to Benela at 15:00, when he looked at me like I had a third head. I had to explain to him that I had training and would get the radio back from him or from the office at 18:00. Turns out training took us all the way up to 18:02 so by the time I got back to the office Benela had given the radio to someone else so it was up to me to find it. He told me that he had given it to the "Asian guy", who was actually Haitian, but Benela's own Haitian accent didn't work out to well with my lack of understanding. The rest of the day was pretty simple, you know, just a trash run under the rain, the usual.
The training itself was interesting-ish; there were about twenty of us (not just custodials) and one lady to talk to us. We were to go over the Disney Basics (you'll recall what they are by going back to my Traditions days). She went over each of them, gave examples, had us apply them, work in groups, present, discuss, look at images, give our opinion, etc etc etc. And then we were done. That's all we did, it's what Disney calls "constant training" or something along those lines.
Friday, July 01.
Africa - Pangani.
14:30-21:00
Straightforward day, I got to work, I worked, and I did my closing trash run. Easy, easy, easy.
Saturday, July 02.
Main Entrance - Bus Side.
13:00-20:30
I was hoping to get to work Medical Side again, but NOPE, apparently I'm doing a great job for them to keep me on Bus Side all the time.
I worked with Greg that day, before I got there he actually asked Ladonna if he could take one of my two trash runs so instead of having a 14:00 and 16:30 trash run I only had my 14:00. I also had the radio for a minimal amount of time, it was pretty great. We had to split the 14:00 run in two because of a Track Talk we had at 14:30. We started our run again after half an hour of Managers talking at us. Greg was putting in two bags while I did my run so he wouldn't have anything to do later on. Halfway through we realized the radio I had wasn't working when Benela came up and asked if we'd taken care of the Code V in one of the buses. Greg was nice enough to go with him so I triple bagged the cans I emptied while he was gone. By the time we were done with that trash run we took our lunch and off we went again. This time I just swept while he pulled the cans, we raced with Rafael from Puerto Rico who was doing Medical Side (we won by a minute or so, he still had to double bag everything). I forgot to grab one of the cans on my run so Greg emptied it and I was in the process of putting a clean bag in when the manager in charge of the CPs showed up and called us (me) out for not wearing gloves while touching the trash bags and trash cans. I added the "me" in there because seeing her coming I told Greg to put his on, I didn't actually realize that when putting a clean bag in an empty can I needed to wear gloves. As Bethany said "it's gross". How gross is a clean trash bag? I guess some people just never take out their trash.
Also the day the Gatorade disappeared very early. In a few of the custodial closets we have Gatorade to keep our electrolytes replenished. Apparently, they only leave it for the warmest part of the day, until 17:00 or so. Greg and I made it to Discovery Island before we realized it was gone.
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