Amber Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary (23 page)

And on November 16, I’m attending a wonderfully nerdy concert at the House of Blues. I’m a big fan of a group called Team StarKid; I’m not sure that any of you will have heard of them, but they are basically a group of university graduates, all theatre kids, who have made a variety of splendidly geeky musicals. They got popular with
A Very Potter Musical
, and one of their co-founders, Darren Criss, has reached mainstream popularity. I, however, am a fan simply of their musical talent, their humor, and the fact that they’re just a group of nerds having the time of their lives. Their opening act is Charlene Kaye, who is a magnificent artist as well. Yes, I am attending said concert solo, but as my mother says, it’s best to view it as “you have the confidence to do these things by yourself, which most people wouldn’t. It’s not that you’re being a loser [my term for my habit of doing things by myself], but you don’t need other people to have fun.”

Honestly, I’m just hoping I get a picture with them.

IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED. The inevitable has come to pass. We have failed inspections.

After my cleaning boycott, when I decided I was going to quit cleaning up things that weren’t mine, I knew this day would come. Inspections were coming up; I knew they were. But I wasn’t going to touch anything but my half of the bedroom and our bathroom. I had already scrubbed everything in the bathroom, and then the night before inspections I cleaned and uncluttered my half of the room before falling asleep.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of a whistle in the living room. The maintenance people had come early in the morning to install new faucets and showerheads — more eco-friendly faucets. I fell back asleep rather quickly, only to be woken up what felt like a few minutes later to people knocking on the bedroom door, and the clicking of a camera taking pictures of the illegal posters my roommate and I have on our walls. I feigned sleep, as I honestly did not feel like dealing with these people who were storming in and out of everyone’s rooms, taking pictures and speaking in code, like we weren’t allowed to know just how poor a state our apartment really was in until the last moment.

After I’d dozed off for a bit, I heard them explaining something to Jordan, who sounded rather terse in her replies. Lindsey and I looked at each other warily because we knew something was amiss. After about ten minutes of preparing ourselves, we walked out to see that we had failed inspections. And not just half-heartedly. No, we really failed. Everyone’s bathroom failed but ours, the kitchen failed, the floors failed, the bedrooms all failed. The patio passed, and that was about it. Jordan stormed around on the phone, ranting about how ridiculous it was — ridiculous that we each had to pay a cleaning crew $25 (withheld from our next paychecks) to come and clean the apartment, ridiculous that we had failed, ridiculous that they had taken pictures of everything — while the rest of us just didn’t care. And I have to admit, I wasn’t too entirely fussed about failing, either; though I was upset at the $25 cleaning fee, which is now, like, a quarter of my paycheck.

Part of failing the inspection is that you have to undergo a second inspection a week later. Ours is approaching, and the apartment is back in the state it was in prior to the first inspection. The floors are a mess, there are more fast-food wrappers on the living room table, and I can’t be bothered to wash my dishes because that means finding a place to put all the dirty dishes that are piled in both sinks. If we fail this one, we have to have a meeting, though I hope it won’t come to that. I’ll clean my own room again, maybe sign out a vacuum from the front desk, and make sure the kitchen floor is swept. We’ll see how it goes.

I picked up a shift at the Emporium last Friday. The Emporium on Main Street in Magic Kingdom was my requested work location when I interviewed for the College Program. A few days before the shift, which was from 7:30 a.m. — 4:00 p.m., I went to scope out the place. I made my way through the Utilidor, came up on the wrong side of Main Street, and asked two older women where I would have to clock in. They told me to look for staircase 19, and I ventured back into the tunnels. It wasn’t as complicated as I had thought. I went to the costuming building to pick up my lovely floor-length, brown-and-blue plaid skirt; puffy-sleeved cream shirt with lace collar; and a rather stifling tie that wouldn’t adjust. It didn’t actually look half-bad, though something on the inside of the collar chafed against my neck throughout my shift.

The night before, my roommates — namely, Christina, as per usual — decided that it was another night to scream for hours. And hours. As I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, I listened as four of my roommates, as well as three other people I only vaguely knew, conversed loudly in the living room. I was so thoroughly angered by their lack of common decency, I thought I was going to reach my breaking point, but didn’t. I know I’ll have to say something next time; there are only so many nights that I can stand to be kept awake for hours on end when I have to work the next day.

By the time my alarm went off, Lindsey was just walking in from the living room. As I sat up groggily, she crawled into bed.

It was an unexpectedly cool day, and I was wishing I had put on leggings under my skirt as I waited at the bus stop. The A bus arrived, and I listened to my iPod, more alert than I had expected. At the Emporium, I found the lockers and the CDS without problem, and settled in the break room to wait out the extra thirty minutes that I had given myself in case I encountered any problems. When it came time to clock in, I found a coordinator in the office who explained everything about the Emporium. The morning was fairly slow, but I was rather enjoying the atmosphere of Magic Kingdom. Christmas music was playing (not that I’m a huge fan of Christmas music, but it went well with the decorations), and everyone was cheerful and quite willing to answer any questions that I had. When I came back from my first break, I ran into Taylor, a coordinator from my area in EPCOT. That was quite unexpected, but apparently he picks up shifts at the Emporium whenever he can.

The shift went by at a steady pace, and I really enjoyed all of it. I chatted with a leader who gave me a GSF (Guest Service Fanatic) card at the end of my shift, acknowledging my willingness to learn and my eagerness to be in a new environment. I definitely want to work there again.

There was a bit of excitement after my shift at the Emporium; some of the girls I had met at my camp-out for the Harry Potter premiere in New York City were in town for the convention at Wizarding World. We were supposed to meet up at City Walk to watch
The Chamber of Secrets
at a theatre, but at the end of my shift they texted me that some stars from the film were meeting at a local Walmart to sign autographs. I immediately regretted my decision to not drive to work, and was anxious the entire bus ride home. I quickly changed and sped to the Walmart. After two hours in line, we were screamed at by a manager that there was absolutely NO WAY we were going to make it in the line to get autographs, so I and the people near me snuck around, took a few pictures, and threw in the towel. I’ll try again next year at the convention in Chicago.

Work has seen a bit of excitement as well. I was working a shift at Gift Stop, probably the slowest store in EPCOT. It’s the one at the very beginning of the park, outside the gates, where you pick up your packages. The night had been crawling by, when all of a sudden some little kid starts bawling. He had tripped over something and bashed his head on a ledge. Already the bump had swollen to the size of a ping pong ball. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but one of the guys in package pickup had me call 911 and wait with the boy. He was six years old and rather annoying, for all that he had just hit his head. The mother had a panic attack while the paramedics were there, the kid refused to keep the ice on his head, and the paramedics were getting fed up with both of them.

Later, during my shift at the Seas, a guest ran into the store and told us that a kid was bleeding in the shark room (which features a playset with the giant Bruce). One of the girls I was working with had absolutely no idea what to do, and the other was already faint at the sound of blood. She held the phone in her hand without knowing who to call.

Thankfully, after the stint at Gift Stop, I knew what to do. My experience with emergencies at the animal clinic kicked in, and I had her call 911 while I went to get information from the guests. I got the kid’s name, age, what had happened, and whether or not he had lost consciousness at any point. I found the mother on the floor with the boy in her lap. He was three years old, and the baby wipe that the mother was holding to his head was already quite bloody. I went back to the register with her information to call a manager, and when he arrived, with the paramedics right behind, I stayed in the shop while the crowd of Cast Members gathered around the family. After all the drama was over, the manager for our area came over to give me a GSF for a calm and effective response in an emergency, which honestly made me feel quite good.

Both of the boys were okay, by the way.

THE HOUSE OF BLUES. It’s a popular place for CPs. I never quite understood the appeal of it, but then again, I’m not the partying type.

But on November 16 I was sitting on the sidewalk outside the House of Blues, and I found myself reminded of my New York adventure. Only this time, I was solo, it was less than a couple of hours spent waiting on the ground, and these were StarKid fans. The time for the concert had finally rolled around, and I had showed up at Downtown Disney super early to get as good a spot as possible.

While in line, I met two local girls, Lynell and Courtney, and spoke with them quite a bit. Before we went in, we exchanged email addresses and Facebook information, promising to upload any and all pictures we got that night. Lynell frequented concerts at the House of Blues, it turned out, so I looked to her for the best way to hit the merchandise table and get a good place to stand for the concert.

Which was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. Afterward, Lynell and I headed outside to wait for StarKid and Charlene Kaye to come and take pictures with everyone. Lynell didn’t have a camera with her, so I offered to share mine, and just tag her in all the photos afterward. We made the rounds, and when the bus driver honked the horn to herd everyone onboard, Lynell and I parted ways. As I was still annoyed by the whole roommate situation, I bypassed my apartment to head over to Chris’ instead, determined not to let anything ruin the happy buzz I was still experiencing from the concert.

The Food and Wine Festival was ending soon. I had not met my goal of eating everything in the little menu passports you could pick up at the stands, but I had tried most of it. I had gotten into the habit of going to EPCOT early, before a shift started, and stopping by at least one or two stalls before changing into my costume for work.

On one of the last days, Chris, YanYing, and I went to enjoy the Food and Wine Festival. Chris had signed up to work the Festival, but ended up withdrawing from the position and going back to work in the West; he enjoyed being a trainer more than he did selling beer to guests — not to mention that managers were all over the place during the first few days of the Festival, whereas they were rarely seen in the West.

His roommate, Manual, had stuck it out, though, and we stopped by one of the merchandise locations to say hi. Manual normally worked in Animal Kingdom on Discovery Island, but had volunteered to work the Festival — something any College Program participant could have signed up for. In fact, many times I found myself wondering why I didn’t sign up to work it myself.

YanYing, Chris, and I wandered around, stopping whenever something sounded good like the salmon in Canada or the lamb from Morocco. When we stopped and sat on the curb in the United Kingdom so YanYing could eat her fisherman’s pie, I mentioned that I had the phone number for the phone booths just across the sidewalk. Chris passed the time waiting for someone to approach a booth, then dialing the number and watching their reactions when they realized they were talking to a real person.

November began, and Chris and I decided it was time for one more beach trip. This time, we went to Clearwater instead of Cocoa Beach — partly because we hadn’t been to that beach before, and partly because there were no toll booths on the way there. We both took pictures of the temperature readout on the dashboard; 92 degrees in November was a rare event for both of us.

Sadly, the warm weather was only present on the ride there, and after about two hours of watching Chris dart into the freezing water, I was wishing I had brought a jacket. The sunset, though, was spectacular; I’ve got shots down the beach of many other beachcombers standing at the edge of the water, cameras directed toward the orange sun sinking behind the line of the ocean. We did stay to watch the stars come out, but quickly retreated to the car, and the heater.

My family came down once again for Thanksgiving; I think they enjoyed that I was living in Florida more than I was, because it gave them a wonderful excuse to visit as often as possible. I spent most of the week they were here exploring the parks with them before and after my shifts. I never asked for any days off; they knew I was going to be at work, and they knew that I would be coming home soon, anyway.

Thanksgiving that year was definitely one of the more unique affairs we’ve ever had. I had the day off, and we spent the morning at EPCOT. Our Thanksgiving lunch consisted of fish and chips, with seagulls lurking around our benches waiting for someone to drop something. We had a sibling competition on the Kim Possible excursion: Jeremy and I raced Matthew and Hayley to see who could finish two missions first. We’d done this before, and Matthew and I had won (though, admittedly, maybe it wasn’t a fair win). We picked up our Kimunicators in Italy, and then sprinted off in the direction of our first mission. I do not run very often, but this was an unfair competition: the two athletic siblings against the most unathletic and the youngest. So I did my best to sprint behind Jeremy, although by the time we made it through our first mission in Germany and were on our way to Mexico, I had to wave him on as I stopped to catch my breath.