A week of many firsts.

This last week has been a bit crazy. I was friends with someone different everyday. I had a refresh training course since I was never trained as a mouse. I had my first scheduled dining shift. I had my Interactive Learning Program class at Magic Kingdom. I had multiple shifts were I was friends with Mickey, which was crazy!

Thursday I was friends with Donald. That was lots of fun. Donald has a great personality to work with. He and I were together at Camp Minnie-Mickey, which is at Disney's Animal Kingdom. At camp, Donald wears a green jacket and a safari hat. It's super cute. It was really fun to be friends with Donald. He is number one. He will even tell you. A lot of people see Donald as the villain of the fab five, but that isn't the case. Yes, he has a short fuse when things don't go the way he intended, but he gets over it quickly and doesn't go looking for reasons to be upset. Sometimes when people are friends with Donald, they think it is okay to be mean to kids by throwing Mickey autograph books on the floor or taking away kids' mouse ears. I think that's too far. It's possible to have fun with Donald without being mean. For example, when a pen stopped working, I let everyone know it was because it was a Mickey pen and not a Donald pen because Donald is number one. And if kids had mouse ears, but no Donald ears, I would find the person in the group who was excited to see Donald, and go stand next to them. Who doesn't want to be near people that like them? I feel like that is a better way to show Donald's personality than being mean. I absolutely loved telling people Donald is number one. That is incredibly entertaining. A lot of people understood what was going on, but some guests would just get confused. They would look at me and say something like, "You need me to wait a minute?" I chuckled a little in my costume, but nobody heard me.

The next day I was friends with Grumpy at the Halloween party. Something you probably didn't know: Grumpy has really bad eye sight. I think that is really the reason behind his bad attitude. He can't see anything. When he and I were hanging out, it was dark and raining, so the dwarfs were moved to a "rain location," which is just a covered area so we don't get wet while we are sitting there for our set. In my costume, I honestly could see NOTHING. And I mean nothing. Close your eyes and put on a blind fold and that is how I felt. Grumpy is supposed to sit on a stool. I couldn't even find the stool. So I just stood there with my arms crossed while the attendants said things like, "Come on, Grumpy. You remember you are supposed to sit down? Grumpy, stop being so grumpy and just sit down. I promise we will go get more gooseberry pie after a little while." Little did they know, Grumpy couldn't see anything besides his nose. When we got backstage, all of the attendants commented on how great I was with this character. Are you kidding me? They thought it was an act! Um no. I made sure to let them know that I was not acting and I really could not see anything. After that, they made sure to guide me to my seat every time we went out. That was a lifesaver. Literally. I could have tripped.

Saturday I was friends with Minnie Mouse. I sure do love Miss Minnie. She's so cute and girly and it's so fun to hang out with her. I really love pointing out little girls wearing Minnie ears or a Minnie shirt or dress. They always get so excited that she noticed what they are wearing. It's kind of fun to see which people drift more toward Mickey or Minnie. Every once in a while, there will be a little boy who is very shy, but very excited to see Minnie. How could you not be excited to see her though? She's fabulous. I like to think of her as the Mommy at Disney World. She even has to help Donald get ready to go on set sometimes. And she's always taking care of the little kiddos and fixing Mickey's bow tie.

Side note: I'm watching the debate while writing this post. Americans need to be educated about their leaders.

Sunday I was friends with Mickey. My shift was 12 hours which I expected to come close to killing me. Luckily, it was one of the easiest shifts I have ever had! I was at Epcot all day. My group included Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy. I was excited to work with Pluto because he and Mickey are almost never together. Our first set was over at Character Spot. C-Spot is kind of a mad house. You really have to go as quickly as possible to keep the line moving. I was nervous about being friends with Mickey for the first time, but since we had to move so quickly, it was easy to adjust. After C-Spot, we went over to the private Visa location. At Epcot, there is a special room where people with the Disney Visa credit card get to meet some Disney characters. When guests are waiting in line, they don't know which characters they will meet. It's really fun because the room is big with a few different props that we can hide behind. In this room, Pluto and Mickey are together. When we first go into the room, no guests are there so we were able to hide! We hid on different sides of the room. When guests came in, they didn't know who was in there. Pluto popped out first. The guests were all so excited to see Pluto. He gave everyone a hug and set them all up for a picture. Then I came out. It was so fun to see the guests' faces when they see Mickey and weren't expecting it. Even the parents got super excited. I loved it. The rest of our day was spent at C-Spot and it went by pretty quickly.

The next day I had my refresh training. I spent 4 hours putting on different costumes, practicing autographs, and acting out different scenarios. The trainer said that I had learned very quickly and she thought that I had picked up everything on the spot very well. This made me happy and gave me a lot more confidence.

Yesterday I had my class again. This time we met in Magic Kingdom. We were meeting at 9 AM which is when the park was opening. If you show up before the park opens, you get to see the Welcome Show. I have never seen the show, I've only been in it, so I was pretty excited. I loved watching it! After the show, we broke up into teams and were given several riddles to solve, a couple scavenger hunts, and some trivia to do in a certain land of Magic Kingdom. My group was given Fantasyland. I was super excited because Fantasyland is my favorite! We had so much fun doing the scavenger hunt and our group was the first to finish all of our tasks which was pretty exciting. After we finished and turned our packet back in, we were very hungry from running all over the park all morning. We headed over to Pinocchio's Village Haus. I had never been there, but one of our team members said that all of the friers are new, so the food tastes better. That sounded like a good enough reason to me! While we were eating a talking, a cast member came over and gave us all fast passes to see Mickey's Philhar Magic! Even though you don't need a fast pass for this attraction, we were still really excited, so we headed straight over! After the show, we all headed out. I was exhausted so I spent the rest of the day sleeping and then I went to dinner with my roommate, Sarah!

Today I had to do character dining, which was a big horrible nightmare. I don't even want to talk about it. I will just say that the characters have to move VERY quickly through restaurants. It is not fun, especially if you are new. I did not enjoy it and I am not looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.

That being said, Michael gets here tomorrow! I am so excited!! After my dining shift, I am heading straight over to the airport to pick him up! I'm so happy he will be here. We have so many things planned for while he is here. We are going to have so much fun!

Lastly, I want to say thank you to a few people. I want to say thank you to Chris Board for sending me to Florida with a vacuum. It is so nice to only have to open a closet door to get out the vacuum instead of walking across the complex to the club house to get the vacuum and then hall it back over and up the stairs. I want to thank my family for sending me packages and listening to all of my stories that I tell when I get off of work. And I want to thank everyone who reads my blog because it makes me feel significant! I hope everyone is doing well!