In the big, blue world...

I thought this title was pretty fitting, especially since I'm going to start with the blue dress story from (now 3) blogs ago, and some Finding Nemo later on. So I was at the Magic Kingdom waiting to see Wishes! before it left for the summer. (Wishes! is the firework show) Since it was just me, while I was waiting, I was looking around and realized how blue the sky was behind the castly. My camera has a stetting where you can select a color and the camera will just show that color then everything else shows in black and white. This is the picture I took.
Honestly, not the greatest picture ever... Kind of blurry, but I'm not going to lie, I was mostly just playing with my camera and killing time. While waiting for the fireworks, I got bored with my camera (let's be honest, I often have a short attention span.) and started texting some people that I love oh so far away... I turned off my camera and unknowingly left my camera in the manual color selection screen. (I have an on/off switch instead of turning the dial from manual to off.) The next night, our complex had a pool party that Stitce was at, so we decided to get a roommate picture with Stitch. The character attendant had made a comment about how cool my camera was, but I didn't think anything of it until later that night when my roommate and I looked at the picture-it was still set to pick up the blue from the sky behind the castle, which happened to be a very similar shade of blue to what I happened to be wearing. (Once again, let's' be honest, I wear a LOT of blue.) My roommate, Brianna, claims I set my camera to do that on purpose... What do you think?

Occasionally on my day off, I do all of my boring adult stuff and still have some time to go out into the park and play. A week or two ago (or now closer to a month...) my roommate, Bri, and I along with Kristina, a girl I work with, went to Animal Kingdom. We walked onto Dinosaur, which will ALWAYS remind me of Dennis. :) After Dinosaur, we got in line for Finding Nemo: the Musical. I was able to take some fun pictures... Here are a few of my favorites:

P.S. Dory will forever make me think of you Mom. **delay fish**

As promised, I walked around and took some pictures of my apartment, the complex etc.

This is my fantastic security station/whatever. I live in a gated community. To get into the complex, you have to go through here. All of us have housing ID's that we have to show to get into the complex or on any of the buses. The bus system that I use is ONLY for college program students. It's just like a normal bus system, different buses go to different locations. Back to the security... You MUST show your ID to get in. If you dont' live in the complex, you can't get in without someone who lives in the comples signing you in. Even if you are signed in, 2-7am is considered quiet hours and ONLY people who live in the comples are allowed in. So, don't worry, I'm being safe.

This is my fantastic apartment.... Okay, so it's really not so fantastic, but it could be lots worse. :) It's just your pretty typical college apartment. There's one bed/bath suite off of the kitchen and two more off of the living room. I know it's not particularly clean, but it's how it looks by the end of all of our work weeks, then we clean it really well and the cycle starts all over again.

This is my bedroom... Notice my pillow stack compared to my roommates. YUP! Even down here, I have a bunch of pillows. Once again, pretty mediocre, but it definitely covers what I need. Next to where I'm standing there's a bureau with a mirror with drawers and a walk-in closet... I didn't take a picture of those because, well, they just aren't that interesting to me.

Okay, this is my last picture for this post... I took it really just because I thought it was fun. This picture shows really how much we all are immersed in Disney. This was written in some cement that I walk everyday on the way to and from my bus. I'm not going to lie, it just makes me smile. I thought I'd post it just for the heck of it.

I hope you all enjoyed! Let me know what you think. :)

I made a GUEST cry at work...

Before I go into anything, I'll just start out with making this guest cry was a good thing, so it's not sad like my last post.

Tuesday, I was starting to get sick, but I just wanting to finish my shift so I could have my next two days off.

I had a guest that came to me asking about a beach towel that she had seen. Her and her daughter had looked at it at a kiosk outside of Pirates called the Crow's Nest. Because it's a little kiosk, they close earlier than the regular stores. They had looked in the Pirates store, but they didn't have it, so OF COURSE they came to us. (Regardless if we have something or not, people from everywhere else in the park send guests to our store and tell them that we'll have it.)

I got the description of the towel from her, and went to do a little research. I came back and told her that I was working on it, but it was going to take me a little bit of time. The family had a reservation at Crystal Palace (a restaurant) that they were just heading to. I told her that would be perfect, they could go enjoy their meal, then gave her my name and told her to come find me after. I told her if it was at all possible to get it here, I would have it for them when they got back from the restaurant, then sent them on their way. This seems like a large promise, but as long as another store in the Kingdom has it, then we can send a runner to pick it up and bring it back to our store for the guest to buy it with us.

I started working on my task at hand. Calling from one store to another, especially at 6pm isn't always as easy as it sounds. Often, that's our really busy time that everyone is distracted during and so they don't answer the phone. After trying and trying, I finally got someone at the Pirates shop. I finally got them to understand what I was trying to have them do, and the guy said that he would go check it out and let me know. A half hour later, I was in the office and still hadn't heard from him, so I decided I needed to do a new approach. I started talking to one of my managers who used to work in that area and explained the situation. She started taking some manager control, and found out who their MOD was for the evening. She gave her a call, explained what we were looking for, and we started to wait again. It only took 5-10 minutes this time and Debra, my manager, got a message saying they had found the towel. We got a runner who was going to go pick it up for us. Debra also gave her a No-Strings Attached coupon to get it for the guest. No-Strings are really the golden tickets. A manager writes them out and can write them out for whatever they think is appropriate. I was so grateful my manager was going to do this, and take it the next step up.

So, our runner got back from Pirates and had the towel in a bag. My manager gave it to me and told me that I got this rolling, so she was going to pass it to me and I was going to take care of the rest. I love when managers trust us like this, let us take the reigns and have some fun. One of the "basics" at Disney is to stay in character and play the part. For example, in the Emporium, since we're a turn of the century, Main Street themed location, we don't go on break, we go on tea. We don't get our bump out to go home, our carriage arrives. We don't say we're going to the bathroom, we go to visit the mayor, or for girl's, the mayor's wife. These are the little things that keep the magic going.

I didn't want to just tell my guest that we got it from the crow's nest for her and my manager comp'ed it for her, that just doesn't really sound, well, magical. So I thought up my story for her.

Two hours later, I was a little nervous they weren't going to come back... More than once we've tracked something down for a guest and they didn't come back. After the fireworks, I made sure I was working in the right area so if the guest came back, they'd see me. I was checking out another guest, and looked up, and there was the mom and daughter who had been looking for the towel. They were both smiling at me and the mom was giving me a "thumbs up? thumbs down?" signal. I gave her the signal to wait while I was finishing with my current guest, then pulled them aside. I told them I had the towel, and to wait there for me. Then, I went in the back to grab the towel.

When we got the towel from Pirates, I had also gotten a little bag and filled it with pixie dust. Pixie dust is little mickey-shaped shiney confetti, we use it for special occasions, magical moments, just those little things we want to make a litte extra special. I grabbed the towel and baggie of pixie dust and headed out. I got to the family, pulled out the towel and made sure that it was the right towel, which it was, thankfully. I put the towel back in the bag and told them I had a little help from Tinkerbell and Mickey to get it for them. I started telling them my story that Tinkerbell had flown to the Crow's Nest, snuck in and searched around for it. She found the towel and brought it back to me. She wanted to stay and say hello, but she had to go get ready for the parade, so she left some pixie dust to know that she was there. I also said that I had been talking to Mickey. I had told him the whole story of what happened and all the stuff that we had gone through to get it for the family, and that he told me that he wanted to pay for it to make their trip a little more magical.

When I told them that, the mom got huge eyes and was looking at me, and asked me if I was serious. I told her that I was. She asked again, and I told her that I was very serious, we just wanted to make her trip a little more magical. She started crying and thanked me profusely.

I love that this is my job. I know handing out stuff for free doesn't happen often, but it's wonderful when the little things can make someone's vacation that much more special. She would have been over the moon that I had found the towel her daughter wanted, but I love that my managers and my company let us take it to the next level and I got to make the magic for this family.

This is why I love Disney.