It's the circle of life....

It seems that the only free time I have these days are during my days off! Today is my day off and I am sooo glad! I'll give an overview of what's happened since I last updated:

Thurs: Having gone to bed at 9.30pm the night before and got a really good nights sleep, I went to work on Thursday for my first day without a trainer! Managed to get there bright and early which was good because I didn't want to be rushing. My shift was only from 4.30pm til 10.30pm so it was only a 6 hour shift. I was on registers for the whole time which was good because I was really getting to grips with the till system and on the whole I enjoyed the day, had some good guests and I got to hear the July 4th fireworks display which they did in full on Thurs and Fri (I had only seen the 'rehearsal' which was slightly less than what actually was shown on the day itself). It's kinda frustrating only being able to hear fireworks because you really want to see them. I was quite annoyed actually because everyone else who was working near me all disappeared... and then reappeared after the fireworks and when I said "Where have you been?" it turned out they had been hanging around the doorways and watching the display. Which is really unfair because I know they are not supposed to but I actually stayed doing my job and helping guests and none of them told me that they were going to go and watch them! Meh.

Was quite glad to be able to clock out and get home early though as it wasn't a late night shift. It had gone quite well but I felt a little bit bored because none of my fellow ICPs were working... I was just with loads of people I didn't know who were full time or part time.

Friday: Oooh the 4th of July. I didn't really know what to expect, all I had been told was that it was going to be busy and I knew that I would partially be on stock and mostly on registers. My shift was from 12.15 til 7.45pm which is quite a good shift really.... so, what was the very first job I got given on stock?? CROCS!!! Why why why do shoes follow me round everywhere?!?! It was quite amusing really that the first job I got given involved tidying these stupid shoes and restocking the display. More to the point, I really hate Crocs because they don't fit people's feet properly especially children, and they are so ugly! And expensive! Anyway, luckily was only doing that for about 30 minutes before I got put on putbacks which is basically collecting all the bits and bobs that get left round the tills for one reason or another and putting them back in thier correct places. Did that for about an hour before I was put onto registers... yay!

It went quite well considering how busy it was and the fact I was freshly out of training. The biggest pain in the neck was shared between a man from Guilford in Surrey who bought a watch and then 2 seconds later changed his mind so I had to do a refund which I had to call a manager over to do because you can't do your own refunds (it's lame... and complicated!) and a woman who decided she wanted half of her purchases to be sent to New Jersey, the other half to be sent to her resort and some more stuff she had bought earlier in the day to be post sale shipped to her resort as well. Needless to say I was not very happy especially considering the queue of people forming behind her! Apart from that, the day went very well really considering my lack of experience!

As 7.45pm rolled around, I went down to my locker and got changed, grabbed my bag and then found a way out of backstage that came out by baby care... really inconspicuously as well! Nobody even noticed that I had walked out of a gap in the wall! haha! Anyway.... I have never seen SO many people in one area of a park! It was mayhem! There were ropes and tape on the ground directing the traffic of people creating a one way system because everyone had already taken their spots for the fireworks. I managed to finally meet up with Lara, Sarah, Alexa and Vic in Tomorrowland and we slowly made our way to Main Street (which involved a bizarre detour route through backstage, I suppose with the amount of people there it was just easier... but didn't it ruin the magic a bit for them?!). We managed to squish ourselves into a spot about half way down main street for the fireworks.... which we AMAZING. I can't imagine how much they cost to put on but I have never seen so many fireworks in 15 minutes! Apart from the music/americanisation ruining it a bit, it was quite magical!! We did a bit of sneaky cast member shortcutness to get out because I told the others to follow me back out of that baby care entrance and so 1 minute after the fireworks we were backstage and getting our stuff from lockers before heading to the buses. I got to bed at about 12.30am so it wasn't too bad considering there was 72,000 people in the magic kingdom (they did actually close the park to stop anymore people coming in). Another astounding fact... the Emporium (my shop) took over $300,000 on 4th July..... thats JUST our shop.... add in the rest of Disney to that!! :O

Sat: Yesterday I got up again, bright and early, at about 7am... yes, it's crazy. But we wanted to get to Animal Kingdom for when it opened at 9am and we did indeed manage it. It was only me and Vic but it was nice to know exactly which rides we wanted to do. We headed straight to Everest and did that (whoop!! Would love to do that one at night... unfortunately animal kingdom shuts at 7pm) and then got Fastpasses for the Safari... headed to Dinosaur and did that (still the scariest ride in WDW!), went back and used our fastpasses for the safari... then went and did Kali River Rapids and got absolutely soaked. Then we crossed the park and went to see Festival of the Lion King which was amazing as usual!! We left the park at about 1pm because we were still damp and it was getting very busy and very hot!

I had my first uber night shift at 6.45pm til 3.15am last night. It wasn't too bad except that I was on stock which was a bit rubbish because I was doing putbacks ALL NIGHT. It got a bit dull but I had a good laugh with Charlotte, Matt and Edouard (from France!) so it was reasonably good. When it got to about 2am tho it started to really drag because there were no more guests (the park was shut) and so we were just tidying and restocking. We did get given a crispy creme doughnut though at the end of the shift! woooo!! Got into bed at 4am so slept in today until about 12 as it's my day off.

Just got my schedule for next week though! Ahhhh! (As in, the 13th - 19th July) Most shifts are the 1845 - 0315 ones but on the Thursday and Friday and I working 11 1/2 hour shifts!! Ahhh! From like 1230 - 2315 and 1300 - 0030! It seems that I am on sales for both of them though, not stock so hopefully that will be ok.

Right, I am going to get back to watching Top Gear which my parents recorded and sent to me YAY... I watched Casualty yesterday and got overly excited because its my favourite programme and I havent watched TV for 2 weeks! Wooo!

x