In Which Cinderannie Speeds to Space and Sits and Stares

One day I went with Dory shopping most all day because we needed to go to Michael’s to buy things for Kari’s birthday party and then to Wal-mart for groceries, and we got kind of lost trying to go to Michael’s and it took absolutely forever. All Florida lights are too long and every road requires you to turn around, and they don’t have nice turn-arounds like Michigan; you just have to wait for the next light. But we were successful in finding what we wanted to find, but didn’t get back until late afternoon. Then I went to Wednesday night church, which was nice, and when I got back I knew I had to go get Kari’s birthday present, so I went to Downtown Disney. But they didn’t have the present I wanted, because it was a theme park exclusive. So I asked what time the Magic Kingdom closed – it was about 11:30pm. It closed at midnight, so I should have just enough time to get over there and buy the present – a Tinkerbelle music box – before the stores closed. The main street stores are usually open till a half-hour after park close. And there were extra magic hours until 3am. I wasn’t sure if cast members can do EMH or not, but if they could maybe I could go ride Splash Mountain, which I had been wanting to do.
I made it to the store in good time, and soon found the music box and bought it. It was midnight, but I headed toward Splash Mountain in hopes of finding a kindly wristband distributor. I had asked at the gate whether we were allowed, and the girl said it depended on who you asked… from which I gathered that this was one of those bendable rules. Sort of like having to wear polishable leather shoes at Liberty Tree, which barely half of us do.
The wristband people at ------- wouldn’t give me one, so I trucked over to Splash in hopes of them letting me on even though it was past midnight. No go. Disappointed but not distraught, I decided to wander over through ------------ on my way out. There was another EMH wrist band distribution point there by ----------------. It couldn’t hurt to ask.
The person let me! I was so excited, and promised that I would just go on Splash and then leave, and that’s what I did. It was so much fun to be riding Splash Mountain at 20 after midnight! And I love that ride so much, too. Especially this one part where it’s like you’re in a cave with water splashing everywhere. Now I wish I could ride it right now. Well, I could. It’s 10:15 and I think the park doesn’t close until midnight. Hmm.

It’s now just over 24 hours since I wrote that. And I didn’t ride Splash Mountain. But I did talk to Dory, who came over, who had never ridden Space Mountain because she is scared of roller coasters. But recently she managed to ride Rock’n’Roller coaster with Tiffany. But Space Mountain has more ups and downs and is more jerky, and you also have to sit single file instead of having someone next to you to cling to. But when I suggested it – imagining the look on Tiffany’s face when we told her what she’d done, we decided to make a dash for it. The park actually closed at eleven, so we had to run for it. I drove superspeed, we ran to the monorail like crazy people – “will you make it?” the driver asked “sure,” we said – got to ride in the front, dashed off the moment it stopped, took a shortcut through backstage, and made it to the Space Mountain line at five minutes until eleven. The sign said 20 minute wait, but it was nearly a walk-on. She was shaking a little as we were about to get in line – and we got the front! – but she didn’t waver in her determination. I kept my hands on her shoulders the entire time, and we sang “Zip-a-dee-do-dah” for most of it. And she wasn’t too terrified! She was smiling when we got off. She says we need to go on one more time for her to truly conquer it, but of course we couldn’t do it that night since the park was now closed. On the way out we wandered through a lot of shops. I liked the crystal store with the pretty statues and the art of Disney store had some pictures I loved. There was one with Dumbo in the bubble bath and the light was all golden and it was so lovely I crouched down on the floor to just look at it. It made me imagine it would be in a hallway in Bram’s house someday, Bram’s house when he is all grown up, a big house with dark wood paneled walls and it would be in a hallway where the light is dim because that’s the sort of picture it was. And there was a picture I liked even more, my favorite one of all. It was about 18”x36”, tall ways, and it was of sleeping beauty, but not the Disney sleeping beauty exactly, it was more realistically painted instead of animation-looking. The coloring was all a warm red, with sleeping beauty laying on a bed at the bottom of the picture, and looming above her, through the huge window, was the dragon and the prince fighting it. It was so beautiful. If you want to see it, go to http://www.john-rowe.com/ and click on images, then scroll down through the pictures on the left hand side to almost the bottom and click the one with the scary red dragon. I sat on the floor in front of that picture for quite some time. Thankfully Dory was also liking wandering around the store.

In Which Cinderannie Makes Very Little Sense

I cannot stand high heels. Tonight I was going to Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM) and I was going to pretend to be a movie star so I put on a shirt with sparkles on it and my earings with the crystals that Papa got me and borrowed my roommates high heels and wore my sunglasses and went. And I was barely through the gate and walking down the street before I wished I was at Magic Kingdom and the heels were driving me crazy. I'm not cut out to be a movie star. I would have gone over to MK but I didn't particularly want to walk around there in high heels either. So I came home and now I'm writing a blog entry and Tiff and I are going to watch Stardust. They all like it so I hope it's good.
I know there were a couple things from work I wanted to tell you about. Oh yeah, I got to do the dinner bell the other day. That means choosing a family to help open the restaurant and go up on the balcony and ring the bell. And all the characters come up too, and the family gets to get a picture with all of them. It was fun, but the script had gone missing so I had to improv it, and for some reason I couldn't pronounce "hospitality" for the life of me and kept stuttering. Dear me. But at least I projected, and got everyone's attention, unlike sometimes when you can't even hear the person and no one knows what's going on.
I keep realizing I have more high functioning autism characteristics than I realize. For one thing, because of my roommates friendly teasing when it happens, I realized that I stutter rather a lot. I didn't notice how often I get "stuck" when I try to say something and repeat the same syllable, word, or phrase over and over again. Also at certain points I get a sort of barrier to talking, like I don't know what to say unless it's scripted, either by standard conversation, or a direct question I can give a direct answer to, or actually scripted like at work. I realized this very vividly when I went to work one morning, having hardly spoken to anyone until I was there, and then I had to seat a family, and when I was at the table needing to say my spiel, I felt like I almost forgot how to talk. I had to make myself remember my lines, "You're seating in the ______ room and ______ will be your server," and I certainly couldn't make myself get out any of the usual pleasantries (have you dined here before? what have you done today? etc). It was weird.



Edit: Grr! I wrote more than this! And the computer ate it! Now I have no idea what it was I wrote. I told you about some other things... that I no longer recall.

Oh yeah, Tiff's birthday party! It was her birthday so we had a party and I made chocolate cake with mint frosting (which I made myself) because mint and chocolate is her favorite.

And I wrote about the stuck-up Disney Vacation Club people! And it got lost... and it's midnight and I don't feel like writing about it over again right now. I am officially frustrated. This has to be the weirdest, most irrelevant and disconnected post I've ever written. Probably related to my very emotionally charged days off. Well, I think I'm going to bed now. Hopefully a more coherent - and more positive - post will follow before too long.

In Which Cinderannie Has a Lovely Time, Works Too Much, and Has a Lovely Time Again

Well, now, it's been awhile, as usual, but I have a good excuse this time, which is that I have worked 60 hours for the past two weeks. This is because it was spring break, when everyone comes to Disney. I really don't know what possesses people to come during peak times. Why would you want to come and have to fight all the crowds and wait forever in lines and not be able to get into any restaurants, when you could come in the fall and have almost no one there? It's ridiculous. But of course, people do it anyway, and then they are mad at me when I'm on door checking people in because they can't get into any restaurants. So that is the bad part of it being crowded. (And for goodness sake, the food at the quick-service restaurants really is quite good. I am sick of people saying it's "cardboard" or "fried junk" and being mad that there is no table service availability. If you're going to turn up your nose at the quick-service food, you should have made reservations. I have patience for a lot of things - mismade reservations, being late for reservations because you were caught in traffic, needing to add people to your party - but not that.)

The good part is that we open up the Diamond Horseshoe, the restaurant next door. It's basically an extension of our restaurant - it's the same cast members and the same food, with a makeshift kitchen area set up in the hallway. But the characters don't go over there. I like that restaurant because it's so beautiful inside. I only worked over there two days but they were so much fun.

There is a sort of bar area in the Diamond Horseshoe - just a long counter, with space behind it with a refrigerator built into the counter and more counter and cupboard space behind. This is where we set up the drink-making station (non-alcoholic, of course, just our usual drinks) and since the portable drink machine wasn't working, we had to use two-litres, and fetch pitchers of the drinks we didn't have two-litres of from Liberty Tree. There is not nearly enough space in that bar area for all the servers to be coming in and out getting drinks for their guests, so instead we have one of the seaters back there, and the servers write what drinks they need on a slip of paper and that person makes them and puts them on the counter for the server to pick up. They work with the stocker, who keeps the pitchers and the ice container full as well as getting glasses and coffee mugs. Now Brandy was the drink-maker for four days straight, because she was very good at it. And some days William was her stocker, and he is rather distractible and was always leaving her with no glasses left or no ice, so she was running around like a maniac. But then I was her stocker and she was glad to have me, and we had an excellent time working together - the time absolutely flew by. The five hours felt the way two hours does usually. And since she was going to be off the next day, and she had now taught me the system for the drinks, I was assigned to do drinks the next day. I had such a nice time. And Rob was my stocker, and he did a good job and we worked well together, and he joked that we would have our own bar, Rob and Joanna's, and I thought that this name actually had rather a nice ring to it, although of course I wouldn't really want to open a bar. But I had so much fun making the drinks that I thought that if it weren't for the sleazy drunk people I would probably enjoy being a bartender. If people always just went to have a nice time, and always only had one or two drinks apiece, it would be really fun. It's a pity that alcohol is abused so thoroughly.

I wouldn't want to leave Liberty Tree now, since I'm quite attached to the people over there, but if I could from the beginning have picked what shift and where I'd like to be, ideally, I would choose the opening shift at Cinderella's Royal Table. The reason for this requires me to skip back a bit and describe my morning there. I started work at 6am, as I told you before. But the opening work there is so pleasant. Everyone is still quiet and blinking themselves awake. You bring up the syrup and milk from downstairs, and then you fill up all the adorable little cream pitchers, and use this cool machine that you push the handle and it pumps syrup into the little syrup containers. (The little containers are called ramekins. I didn't know that until about a month ago - I always called them "syrup jiggies.") We also set up the soda machines for the day. And then when we were done with that we went out into the dining room for the pre-meal meeting. I was standing at the back of the dining room, with the big windows in front of me. I looked out, and I could see all the roofs and empty streets of fantasyland, and the sky was just starting to brighten to pink and gold. It was so beautiful I got tears in my eyes. And then, having started so early, we were done with the shift at 2:15. I like this arrangement.

Since I was done at 2:15 and I had a change of clothes up in my Liberty Tree locker, I went up to get them, changed, and went out into the park. I had not been wandering long when I got a call from Dory, wondering where I was because she was off of work and wanted to get together. "I'm in the Magic Kingdom," I said. "Where are you?" "At the Ticket and Transportation Center," she said. "Well, for goodness sake, get on the monorail and come over here!" I exclaimed cheerfully. "You'll be just in time for the parade!" And she was in time, and we went to Town Square where we found a place to sit and watch, and we had the loveliest time - we went on Jungle Cruise and Buzz Lightyear's space ranger spin and we got to ride the double decker trolley down and up main street! We decided to be seven years old for the day and we skipped and sang and had a sword fight with our knife and spoon from the pineapple ice cream and pineapple wedge we ate. So yes, this is the advantage of having to get up very early - then you have more day left.

Yesterday was so nice too, because Kari and I spent most of the day at the Magic Kingdom, and I convinced her to come on Big Thunder Mountain even though she doesn't like roller coasters, and it turned out she liked it after all. While we were waiting for our fast pass for that we went to Tom Sawyer Island and roamed around, and sat up at the top of the hill on a bench and ate our lunch and reminiced about our childhoods for about an hour - this is the beauty of being a cast member and not in a rush. And we had the most excellent ice cream from Enchanted Grove, which is a swirl of strawberry sherbet - made with real strawberries - and soft serve vanilla ice cream. Now that is deliciousness. And we ate it while we listened to a saxaphone quartet, and then we went on the teacups (I am so glad that I don't get dizzy so easily anymore like I did when I was younger, because I really like that ride now) and on Goofy's Barnstormer. We wanted to visit Minnie but she was busy spring cleaning. All this was while we waited for our FastPasses from Peter Pan's Flight to be ready because it was hours and hours. Oh and we went on the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, too.

Speaking of that, that makes me think of Mr. Owl, and I wanted to tell you that I was going to say that Liberty Tree was like hobbits and dwarves and Cinderella's Royal Table was like Elves, but I tend to be a Lord of the Rings geek and I didn't want to overdo it. So I was glad that you thought of it.

Something I like about Liberty Tree is that there is no skim milk to be found in it from one end to the other. Also our honey butter we make ourselves, from real butter and real honey, blended together in a giant mixer.

Oh here is something else I keep forgetting to tell you! One day when I was on the bus to work, the one that goes from the WestClock parking lot where the CP bus drops us off to the main tunnel entrance, I noticed a big building, and there were monorail tracks going into it. I had seen that before, and I knew it was where the monorails sleep, but then I noticed something else about it - through the windows on the lower floor, I saw a train! And there are train tracks going into it! So the monorails and the trains sleep in the same building, with the monorails on the top bunk, as it were, and the trains on the bottom. I thought that this was most delightful.

Well, Dory has just brought me a salmon, rice, and brocolli dish for lunch that she made herself, and as it smells and tastes wonderful, I am going to leave this entry as it is, with a last note:

44 Days until I come home!