Monday, March 21, 2011

kitchen sink


Last Wednesday was fun.

My morning started off at Downtown Disney with Annie and Samantha (two lovely girls from CRT). We had a delicious lunch at Earl of Sandwich and then went to see the Justin Bieber movie! (Don't judge....it was AMAZING)
After the movie we had plans to meet up with Abby and Brent (two more lovelies from CRT) and Lisa (honorary CRT lovely <3)
For those of you who don't know, the Kitchen Sink is a massively delicious ice cream creation that you definitely need to share. Eight scoops of ice cream, every topping possible, and an entire can of whipped cream is served to you in a kitchen sink (how fitting). The six of us were able to finish it but were SO full afterwards!!!
Unfortunately, we missed Fantasmic because we were too busy stuffing our faces with ice cream but that is ok because Lisa and I are going to go watch it tomorrow night!!
xoxo,

Natasha

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

typical day in the castle


A few days ago, my wonderful roommate Lisa asked me to do a guest post on her blog about a typical work day for me while here on the college program. As I have mentioned before, we are both in the Full Service Food & Beverage role but our work experiences have been very different so far. Here, I will share what a typical day is like (for me) working in Cinderella's castle and then I will ask if I can borrow Lisa's post too :)

My restaurant is located inside the Magic Kingdom... arguably the most popular park here at the Walt Disney World Resort. Because I don't have a car here, I am one of the (un)lucky that get to ride the "A" bus to work. This bus is always full and, until another bus was added to the schedule, was a nightmare to get on. To ensure that I get to work on time I need to get on the bus approximately an hour and a half before the start of my shift.

As a seater at my location, there are two main shifts that I could work: breakfast/lunch or dinner. I almost always get scheduled dinners, but some CP's at my location get almost all breakfast/lunch shifts so it can vary. My shifts usually start at 2:45PM and end anywhere between 10:15PM and 12:15AM.

After getting off the CP bus, I usually run inside the costuming building to pick up my costume, then catch another bus that takes me backstage. When I am changed into my costume, I go clock in. One of the things that was hard to get used to was that when working the dinner shift, you are assigned to go on your lunch break right away...I have now learned to love that and enjoy the time spent with my coworkers before we all go start in our positions :)

When my break is over, I clock back in and get an assignment. As a seater there are quite a few assignments that I can receive: seater, seater/setter, updater, set-ups, greeter, greeter assist, or podium (I won't go into detail about each of these because I think this post is already getting pretty long!)

In between rounds of seating, I will go down into the break room and fold napkins. In addition to the side work you are assigned at the end of the night (cleaning high chairs/boosters, lost and found, etc.) there needs to be 22 bins of napkins folded and ready for the next day. After that number is reached, you can either clock out or stay and do task work until your scheduled out time.

After clocking out, I go change out of my costume and say a little prayer that I wont have to wait too long for the "A" bus...and that I will get an actual seat :)

Oh! And because I hate doing posts with no pictures....here is a picture of me in front of my work location with a yummy treat :D hahahaha


xoxo,

Natasha

Saturday, March 12, 2011

nom nom nom


About two weeks ago my mom flew out for a couple of days and we took advantage of an awesome cast-only promotion going on with resorts/the Disney Dining Plan. For 2 days we had the regular dining plan which consists of 1 Quick Service meal (QS), 1 Table Service meal (TS), and 1 snack per person, per day. Then, for another 2 days we tried out the Quick Service dining plan which consists of 2 QS meals and 1 snack per day plus a refillable resort mug for each person :)

I was really excited for this trip because: (a) I missed my mom and (b) I had never done the dining plan before and had been wanting to try it forever!

For the first part of our stay we were at the All Star Music resort (since our favorite, Pop Century, was unavailable) and the second half of the stay we were at Pop Century...yayyy!

I'm not going to go into crazy detail about all the delicious food we ate but the highlights were definitely Cape May and Boma! We already knew that we loved Boma but Cape May was a new experience for both of us and we were very pleased!

Here are some pictures from her trip....





Love and miss you madre!

xoxo,

Natasha

Thursday, March 10, 2011

still alive

I promise I am still alive. Life has been crazy lately and I haven't had much time to update. I will work on getting some posts up this week but in the meantime here is a preview of what is to come:

  • New Friends
  • Madre visits and we have our first experience with the DDP :)
  • ESPN the Weekend
  • Trip Home
  • Disney Magic
xoxo,
Natasha