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:)
Beth 'Baguettes' Disney Magic 