Celebration

For anyone who doesn’t want to know what happens during Celebration, there will be some spoilers…

With a little more than 3 weeks left in the DCP, we were invited to attend a formal party celebrating our program, our hard-work, the friends we’ve made, and finally Earning our Ears! They held it in the Paradise Pier hotel, one of the hotels on the Disneyland property.

We all had the night off from work, so once we got all dressed up and ready, my friends and I headed over to Celebration. Randi and I drove together and I don’t really know why, but one of my favorite memories was that car ride over. We were singing and dancing and it pumped us both up… I think Randi is my favorite friend to ugly sing and dance with. Love you Randi, it’s always hilarious times with you! Honestly wish I would have recorded it.

Once we got there we checked in and received a gift! We got an adorable little black leather memory box that says Disney Professional Internships & Programs that had a place for a picture on the cover. And to make it even more magical, we received our graduation ears! My friends Sarena, Randi, James, Laura, and I grabbed a table but it wasn’t quite time for dinner yet, so we mingled and took some pictures before our meal was ready.


 

My baby Diggle Hopper!

Dinner was really good! I think it was chicken and potatoes or something, but whatever it was I’m sad that I didn’t even get to finish it all haha because the Photo Booth opened and everyone rushed over there! My friends and I didn’t want to stand in line for too long so we decided to run over there too. The dance floor opened and I was there! You didn’t need to ask me twice!

My favorite custodians!

We danced a little, but as soon as we started, our boss decided to make a special appearance! Mickey came out in a cap and gown to congratulate us and take pictures. This time the line was HUGE. It was nice to get a picture with him, but it took at least an hour to get through the line which was really sucky because I feel like a lot of our party time was wasted just waiting. At least I got to stand in line with my friends so we made the most of it.

After we snapped a few pictures with the boss man, we danced some more… and it seemed like people kept going home little by little, but we stayed till the very end. We got some more photo booth pictures and meet Goofy too! The night started winding down and before we knew it… it was over. It ended on a strong note with some good ol’ Disney songs… our fav.

Awkward dancing with Alex… YAS!

We all circled up for Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'”

We headed home but weren’t ready to call it a night. So James, Sarena and I decided to have a small after party. We invited a few people over and had fun laughing and playing games.

I’ll always be your Jiminy Cricket Alex!

“Let’s take selfies with the Christmas tree” Sarena

If you would have told me a year ago, or even at the start of the program that I’d have friends that would change my life or that these goofs would become my best friends, I wouldn’t have believed you. This Disney College Program has been the best thing in my life and I have these guys to thank for all the memories and for making these few months what they’ve been.

Nearing the end…

Making the most of what was left of the DCP involved A LOT of “squeezing things in” each day! I wish I would have spaced things out a little bit more because I found myself trying to cross everything off my bucket list once December rolled around. I finally realized I had a ton-more stuff I wanted to do and very little time to do it.

December 1st was our Sleeping Beauty Castle Picture! Anyone in the DCP who wanted a memorable photo of them self surrounded by their fellow CPs was welcome to go. Not everyone ended up going though since it was at 7am before the park opened. I mean- that’s early if you worked a full week and had an long shift the previous day… but to me, it was worth it!

Then I spent the rest of the day in the park with my friend, Chris, being touristy!

At the beginning of December I received this Candy-gram from my friend James! It was so sweet of him to think of me and I wanted to return the thoughtfulness, but I think they only offered them for a week or so and I didn’t know that BUT THANK YOU JAMES haha

A couple days later I decided to go to the park to do some more bucket list things, but I couldn’t find any of my friends to go with. That’s the nice thing about the DCP though- you live in the same apartment complex as everyone else in the program… plus you’re already Facebook friends with most of them. So what did I do? I messaged one of my Facebook friends that I’ve been meaning to get to know (sadly I waited until the last month!). Turns out Emily and Jennifer were literately my neighbors haha! So the 3 of headed over to Disney and one of the things that we did was ride in the Caboose of the train for the first time!

When the day was over and the park was about to close we headed over to California Adventure for yet another event! This time we got to tour Soarin’ Over California. First we rode it and then we got to go BEHIND the screen! To my surprise, the screen is metal and has small little holes in it! I even touched it… shh! Haha. They let us smell the beads of the 2 scents they use- oranges and pine. Oh my gosh, if Disney was to sell those beads in the parks, they’re sell like HOT CAKES! The tour guide rattled off a lot of (really cool) facts about the attraction, but I honestly can’t remember them. I know he was saying that one(?) of the clips was kinda fake… like it was photo-shopped. I think it was the one with the hand glider. The person is really hand gliding, just not in the location that they show him in. Another interesting fact is that in one of the clips there’s a guy just chillin’ up on a mountain just so he could be in the video because he heard they were filming that day… he was waiting there for HOURS! And the snowboarder who falls, really does fall! haha. There’s also a Hidden Mickey in the film, and no, not the one at the end. I’ll give you a hint- it’s during the golf course clip. The fact that was mind blowing to me though was learning how much they spend on film and how quickly they go through it! I think they said something along the lines of each roll of film costing $10,000 and it lasting 30-60 days… times 2 since they have 2 theaters! Shesh!! The film gets worn out because it’s constantly being played. That’s why the attraction is currently being refurbished- so they can switch to digital! Now I know why the ticket prices are so expensive haha! So make sure you go on Soarin’ over California so you can make the most of your park admission!!

Here’s a Facebook status I posted:) What a beautiful night! I think that was the first time I stood between the tree and the castle on the middle of Main Street… if you haven’t stood there during the Lighting Ceremony/Fireworks, I definitely recommend it!

My friend, Katie, from high school & college decided to take a spontaneous trip to Disneyland with her two friends, so since my plans got cancelled I decided to spend the day with them. I’m so happy I did because they were so sweet and they really cheered me up! Katie is a DCP alumni so it was fun being able to talk to her- sharing our experiences and memories.

Sarena and I realized we never spent a whole day together just us two… so this called for a BEST FRIEND DATE! We went to the movies and saw Mocking Jay, did some shopping for the Celebration party the following night, ate at Buffalo Wild Wings and then headed to Disneyland (duh!). So as we were driving there, we feel a thud so Sarena pulls over and it turns out she got a flat tire… thankfully we were right in front of a donut shop! …I mean- thankfully we were in a good area! Haha 😉 so we call AAA and we know it’s gonna be a little while so while we’re waiting we thought it was necessary to get a donut… I mean it was the nice thing to do since we were parked right in front of the shop. We were just trying to be courteous… since they were staring at us. The donuts, not the people. That would be rude.

Oh, and Sarena had window markers in her car so we figured out another way to pass the time!

We finally got to Disneyland… with 30 minutes before park close- but that’s plenty of time! We were the last ones on Pirates (Sarena’s tradition that I was honored to be apart of) and then spent the rest of our time on Main Street as we took a gazillion pictures with the Castle and the Christmas tree… that’s what people do on their day off, right? Oh, and bugged our favorite custodial co-workers a little too! Another necessity.

Here’s a selfie we took this fun couple that we started talking to on Main Street. When we asked if we could get a picture with them they replied, “only if you put it on Instagram!” haha

Sarena and I also found this half-and-half light bulb at Coke Corner that one of our leads told me about. When Walt put the light bulbs in he didn’t want a odd number of white and red bulbs, so he made one BOTH!

This day was one of my favorites, but to top it all off… Sarena and I decided to take advantage of the empty park and so we just started to dance. We were at Rapunzel’s tower watching her hair glow and there was just something about being there alone that was magical. These are the nights I miss.

The next day was Celebration! But I think I’ll just make a new post just about that since it was a very fun and eventful evening!

November- part 2 ,

My first half of November was pretty eventful and so was my second half! It was too hard to condense it all into one blog so that’s why I split it up 🙂 Anyways, here’s what I was up to the second half of November!

My nieces Isa, Jaema, her husband and family came for the Avengers Marathon so I had a wonderful time visiting with them and playing in the parks! They treated me to lunch and we got to ride a few rides before I had to go to work. The next day we met up again for a couple of hours before my shift and while we were riding Space Mountain, the ride stopped! So we got to see it with the lights on and even got to ride it again without getting off!

My friend, Vivian, and I decided to check something off our bucket-list and go to a Disney Character Audition! We weren’t just going for fun though, we actually would have loved to have gotten into Entertainment! Unfortunately, I looked at the description details the night before and found out it was just for Frozen Characters (and neither of us look like Anna or Elsa haha!). But we decided to go anyways for the experience and fun of it. Plus we heard that if they like your look they do actually consider casting you for a different character (too bad they don’t have Pocahontas as a ‘meet and greet character’ out on the regular!!) So we woke up at the crack of dawn, drove to Burbank, and waited in line for a little over an hour… just to get about 4 seconds of audition time each. Haha it was slightly annoying to be turned away so quickly but it was a fun day at the very least! Since neither of us really ate yet we decided to grab a bite to eat at the mall before going back to Anaheim (we would have stayed a little longer if it wasn’t for the fact that I had work that afternoon). After brunch we decided to take one last stop before we headed home. We went to Griffith park, the park where Walt sat and watched his daughters on the merry-go-round and thought up the idea of making a family-friendly amusement park for people of all ages! They didn’t have the bench there anymore where Walt use to sit but we talked to the man who owns the merry-go-round and he said they were getting a bench in memory of Walt and they’d have a ceremony in which his family would attend! He (informally) invited us and of course we wanted to go, but we looked the event up on the internet and it said you had to have a ticket because it was a members-only kind of event:/

This picture was actually taken in January when I went to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, but they had one of the actual benches from Griffith Park there so I just wanted to share it!

November 18th is well known for Mickey and Minnie’s birthday, but it’s also coincidentally my dad’s birthday! I was so excited to be in the DCP during this time so I could go celebrate in the park. But not only was that day hard on me since I was missing my dad (who had passed away), but it was hard because I couldn’t go to Disneyland since I strictly had to spend the whole day working on a paper for class. Hopefully I’ll be able to celebrate their birthdays in the park another year!

One of my favorite working memories was because of such as small event that happened, but it left my heart so happy and it happened with one of my best friends, Jessica. Being that we’re custodial we get to sweep and roam our area freely… well, one evening I came into work in Adventure/Frontier land and Jessica was already there the whole day so she was about to leave in an hour or two. I think I was having a bummy day but when you’re at Disneyland, you can make one of the worst days into the best… plus I think I had a cup of coffee right before work haha so that was probably also to blame! So I was super hyper and excited to be working that night and one of the things that we’re able to do is sweep the boats (the Mark Twain and the Columbia)! The cool thing about this is, we get to ride on them while we do this since you can’t obviously sweep it all in the amount of time it takes to load guests on/off the boat. Usually it’s only suppose to be 1 person sweeping it, but the area was clean so I talked Jessica into both of us going on and sweeping it. Honestly, I think this was my first time riding the Columbia… ever. So being able to ride it, with my best friend, while we were getting paid, as I was hyper off coffee was a fun experience haha! I think I had an imaginary sword fight with a little boy and shared a few pirate jokes back and forth with him and once he got preoccupied as we started sailing off, Jessica and I decided to wave to all the guests down by the river. We had so much fun laughing and joking as we past by all the guests. There was this little boy eating at Hungry Bear restaurant who I pointed to and waved at to make him feel special and as soon as I did that, his face lit up and he pointed and waved back- it was adorable! Once the boat docked, Jessica had to finish up so she could clock out but she decided to stick around as a guest for the evening and came back to visit me as I was working! That night I got to be a responder for the first time (for Indiana Jones)! A responder is when you have a radio and you take care of a specific (large) attraction; dumping trash, sweeping the line, and keeping your ear out for any codes being called. What a great shift and a great night!

A few days later I had amazing night in Adventure/Frontier land with BOTH of my custodial friends, Sarena and Jessica. I think this shift was honestly one of the reasons they became my best friends and was the start of our real bond. We had so much fun singing, dancing, and reenacting Fantasmic backstage on the balcony and other Cast Members even stopped to watch us hahah. I never really paid attention to Fantasmic until this night. Sarena’s love for the show (and the princesses specifically haha) rubbed off on me for sure! After Fantasmic Sarena told us that the best place to watch the fireworks was on that balcony backstage, so once again, we went up there to enjoy those as well. One of the best shifts ever!

I got to tour the Tower of Terror!! Talk about thrilling! We got to learn all about the attraction and the story that goes behind it. Our tour guide was excellent and pointed out some really cool facts! If you ever get the chance to go on the ride with me I’ll tell you some sweet stuff I learnt! It was pretty nice though because you have to sign up for these events (and not everyone can since there’s a limited number of spots) and I didn’t get a spot- I was on the wait list. But I decided to go anyways, just in case someone didn’t show up, and I ended up getting the last spot! (Glad that person decided to sleep in! haha) We not only got a tour, but we got to ride the ride; once normal and once with the sound and lights completely off. It was terrifying and exhilarating! I love Tour of Terror but, the suspension just about killed me… but it was exciting!
   

Another one of the events that the DCP provided us was a Thanksgiving Dinner! They knew that we couldn’t be home with our families so they decided to cater Thanksgiving food and put on a dinner party for us. The meal was delicious and it was a really fun evening being able to chat with friends. I even met new people and talk to people I’ve never talked to before. I know the Disneyland CP is small (300 residents in the provided housing), but I STILL managed to meet new people at each event! It’s crazy how I didn’t even know some of my fellow CPs by the end of the program… and I was someone who was extremely social haha!

The three of us custodians matched on accident! #burgundyforever

I’ve never been in Disneyland for “rope-drop” (one of the first people in the park), so my friend Ashley and I decided to get up super early and go so we could mark that off my bucket-list, as well as some other miscellaneous things. So that day I got to be there for rope drop, took an awesome picture in front of the castle, got to meet and greet the Frozen characters, and the Big Hero 6 characters. Rope drop was actually pretty lame 😦 Someone told me once that they play a recording of Walt’s opening day speech over the speakers, but all it was was a pile of people waiting in front the Partners statue for the Cast Members to “drop the rope” to give them the ‘ok’ that the park is now officially open. No Walt Disney speech 😦 As soon as they dropped the rope, Ashley and I RAN through the castle to get in line for a fastpass for the Frozen meet and greet. The park opened at 8am, we got our fastpasses at 8:15am and we were one of the last ones to receive one (and there were still guests behind us)! It’s crazy how quick they sold out… not everyone gets one and sometimes that’s the biggest reason why little girls want to visit Disneyland! Our fastpass told us to come back at 7:30pm that night so we decided to go do a couple things in the park, go home and then come back. When we came back I got to visit my best friends working in Fantasyland that night for a little while!

After we meet Anna and Elsa and chatted with Jessica and Sarena, Ashley and I headed over to Mad Tea (for my first time!) It was really fun; why did I wait so long to go?! It was one of the last night of Mad Tea (since they were replacing it with Freeze the Night), so it was really emotional for Alice, the Mad Hatter and the gang, along with all the die-hard T-party fans. I’m glad I got to check it out before it left!

When I went back to the apartment earlier that day what I actually had planned was a networking event. The DCP has an event every once in a while called Talking over Tacos where you get to eat lunch and chat with a professional intern from various roles through-out the company. This day in particular was with the professional intern for the Catered Events and Fairytale Weddings! The spots were all filled up for the Fairytale Wedding walk-through happening in a few weeks so I thought for sure there would be a large handful of girls there wanting to talk to the intern. Nope. Just me. I was the only one! Kinda crazy because I didn’t even get signed into the event- I was wait listed… and here I was; the only one wanting to chat with her! It was awesome though since we got to chat one-on-one. We both talked about our lives and how we got to where we are today. She told me about the Disney Fairytale Weddings and what her job entailed specifically. I told her how I was really bummed that I didn’t even get into the event (that was happening in a few weeks) and how I did my whole research project and presentation on the Disney Fairytale Weddings for my class. She was very excited to see my interest and said she’d talk to her boss and see if she could squeeze me. She even told me that if I liked the walk-though, I was invited to shadow a real Disney Fairy Wedding! OMG! What!? That’s awesome! I was stoked… see, this is what people miss out on when they don’t show up to networking events!!

Here’s a picture of the intern Keli, me, and BK (the CP intern)

My mom and brother flew out on Thanksgiving for the day to spend time with me! We went to Pizza Press first and then headed over to Disneyland to have some fun! I got to cross one of my bucket-list items off as we rode in the very from of the monorail and then made some magic for a little birthday boy and his family by giving them our seats after we rode up front for a little while. Christmas festivities started early at Disney as they had the Viva Navidad celebration in California Adventure. The 3 caballeros were out for a meet and greet and so after we took a picture, I started to dance and shake my tail feathers with them!

    

Disneyland was getting a new system for Fantasmic and they needed to inform Cast Members of it, so they had a Fantasmic Expo backstage and I got to work it! And by ‘work it’ I was told to just take out the trash whenever it was needed… which wasn’t very often. So while I kept my eye on that, I decided to spend my time helping Main Street as well! Fortunately one of my good friends, Randi, was working so it was really fun! I helped her with trash and she even gave me a four-keys card for helping her! The Expo included information telling us how the fastpass system worked, but also gave us the opportunity to sample some of the food options: corn chowder and a piece of Ghirardelli dark chocolate. AND the best part was being able to take cool pictures in front of a green screen with the Fantasmic dragon photo-shopped in it! I worked the expo for 8 hours so I got 8 pictures taken hahaha! I get paid to do this!?

Before Mad Tea was gone, I went one more time for the last night! I meet up with Ashley and Deborah and our other Brazilian friends! We danced and sang and had, well… a ‘mad’ time!

Here are some statuses I posted:)