Tuesday (1.19.10) I FINALLY got to see my true new home for the semester, Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. And it is beautiful! If you haven't already I highly recommend just stopping in there to look at the beautiful lobby and the animals that surround it and if you can splurge the extra money (it is quite expensive) stay the night. I would say it's definitely worth it (although I may be a bit biased) lol. So yesterday I had my property orientation which is pretty much a "Welcome to where you're going to be working" day. We got a tour of both Jambo House and Kidani Village which opened in September and is brand new. We got to see the whole hotel including all the restaurants and the savannahs that surround the hotel. They are so cool. Guests walk outside their balcony and come virtually face to face with giraffes and okapi and flamingos and a whole host of other animals. We also had to take a safety in motion class which was soooo boring. It's all about how to move so you don't hurt yourself and was taught by a crazy woman who thankfully kept us laughing. After we took the class and got our schedules for the week our trainer for the day drove us over to costuming to pick up our costumes. If you’ve ever actually taken time to look at the costumes in Disney, you’ll soon discover that they’re actually quite ridiculous. Thankfully, mine isn’t all that bad. It’s a gray skirt, cream colored blouse with a gray safari type jacket over it and an African like printed tie that goes around my neck. It isn’t really terrible; it’s just really heavy so thankfully I’ll be inside for 99% of my day. Once that was over I was allowed to go home so I boarded the J bus back to Chatham. When I got home Jen and Lo were back so we went out because they needed some stuff from the store and I needed to buy my shoes for my costume. The rest of the night we all just spent hanging around and then I went to bed on the earlier side because I was very sleepy.
Yesterday (1.20.10) I was back at Disney University learning more stuff to help field guest questions at the front desk. Today was all about the Disney Vacation Club. Although I did learn a whole lot I didn’t know about DVC, I wished I would have been back at the lodge actually at the front desk. They’ve been feeding me so much information and taking it all in is tough. And I can’t imagine how much information I would have to remember if I didn’t know so much about Disney. Then I’d seriously be overloaded with information. But it’s all good, I’ll be at the lodge soon enough. =) After a full day learning about DVC, I can back home and hung out until Jen got home from work at around 6. When she got home, she got dressed and we drove over to Illuminations to meet the other girls and watch Illuminations! We walked over to Test Track to meet Laura, Ren and Meg and then got to ride it (because it was finally not closed for refurbishment). It was soooo funny riding it with people who had never been on it (everyone but Meg) because they didn’t know what to expect. With lots of screams of “I don’t want to die” from Jen we exited test track laughing hysterically. Then we made our way over to World Showcase where we had dinner in the China Pavilion after watching the amazing Chinese acrobats. Once we had finished dinner, we walked around the world to France so everyone could get some French pastries for dessert. I was so full from dinner that I didn’t get anything but the crepes and croissants and pastries were incredibly tempting. We sat around in EPCOT and waited for Illuminations to start. I love Illuminations. It’s such an amazing show. I could watch it every day and never get bored. When it was over we walked back towards the entrance where we surprised Lo outside her merchandise shop saying good-bye to everyone as they left the park. We stopped and talked to her and then left the park to come back home. That’s about all the fun stuff I have to say about the last 2 days. I have today and tomorrow off and then my first official day of work bright and early Saturday morning. Until Then…
Love,
Jess
P.S. For those of you that will understand this, I saw our friend the Disney Duck today and he is alive and well living happily in the World Showcase Lagoon. =)
