Magical Moments: September
It's time for the second edition of Magical Moments!!! Are you ready for more cute stories? Of course you are. Here we go!!!
One of my discoveries during my first day on the job: I essentially got a blister in my mouth from SMILING so much! Haha I guess that's the price you have to pay for working at the Happiest Place on Earth!
I was working Transport at Journey into Imagination (you help Dispatch send off the trains and you close the doors on each car manually) and a very little boy looked at me and asked, "Are you gonna close the door?!" with a big smile on his face. So I said, "Yes!!! Would you like to help me count it down?!" He was so excited that he actually started to count before me! We counted, "1, 2, 3,!" and I closed the doors. Haha he looked at me like I was a wizard!
There was a little girl who was wearing a cute Snow White dress and seemed really happy to see me. I did the Disney Bend to get on her level and addressed her as Snow White. After telling her that her dress was beautiful, I asked if she could twirl, so she spun around! Her parents looked so happy and she looked so happy and it was just really sweet. This sort of thing happens almost every day, but I wanted to make sure that I included at least one story! It just goes to show that even the littlest things can bring magic to someone's day!
One day, one of the managers for Future World West came and hung out with me for 20 minutes while I was greeting people at the front of the ride. I had seen her picture in the break room, so I got simultaneously excited and nervous when she came by. We got to pin trade with guests together and she even taught me about some interesting Epcot heritage stuff! When she left, she said that she was glad to meet me and that I have a fun, positive energy and woooooowww!
We're supposed to have 9 pins on the staff pin-trading pouch at all times, but for some reason, we had 10 one day. A little girl came by and she really liked the red cherry Mickey-shaped pin (like one that I actually have at home), but she didn't have a pin to trade it with, so I added a little magic to her day and gave it to her!
Way, way, WAYYYYYYY back when I was a little kid, I saw an Eeyore pin that I wanted on a Cast Member's lanyard, but I didn't have a pin to trade with them, so they just gave it to me! It was so incredible and I've never forgotten about how magical and special it made me feel. Giving that little girl the pin she liked was my metaphorical way of thanking the Cast Member who gave me the Eeyore pin and passing the tradition on to someone else.
I told a kid that I liked his Pikachu backpack. He dabbed.
When we're working Exit at the Magic Eye Theater, one of our jobs is to go to the special row with the guests in wheelchairs and get their 3D glasses from them directly. One day, I went in at the end and there was just one woman in an ECV scooter and she was with a young girl. The girl came over to give me the glasses and told me that her relative in the scooter would be coming in a second - she was still crying from the films. In that moment, I felt my eyes well up with tears. The last film is "Feast" and it ALWAYS makes me cry. When the woman came over to us, she said, "I just love Disney. They make me laugh, and they make me cry." Then we had a fun talk about how awesome Pixar shorts are. Her favorite is "La Luna." It was just cool to see someone getting THAT into the shorts, like I do.
On September 10, my roommates and I braced ourselves for hurricane Irma! Thankfully, the only noticeable damage was a surplus of tiny tree branches on the ground. Since Disney closed the parks, we basically spent two days watching movies and playing board games!
At 12:47am, on the night of the hurricane, the fire alarm in our apartment started going off for no discernible reason. It stayed on for FORTY MINUTES. We never figured out exactly why it went off, but the apartment never burned down, so we figured it was fine...
That night, 3 of my roommates brought out their mattresses to the living room to sleep and the other two slept on the living room couch and chair. I was honestly too freaked out to sleep, so I sat in a kitchen chair with my blanket and pillow. I finally decided to go to sleep at 4am. The next morning, it wasn't even raining anymore! We survived!!!
On the night that I trained for Illuminations, I was scanning FastPasses for the special area where you can view the fireworks when these two little girls in POCAHONTAS DRESSES (I've literally never seen those before - they were so ornate!) came up to me. I bent over to ask if they were dressed as Pocahontas, and the littler girl took that as me asking for a hug, so she put out her arms and HUGGED ME. I almost never get hugs from little kids at work! Then they both started to fawn over my long, curly hair. They were literally circling me and playing with my hair and oh my goodness I was just so full of joy. Normally, I would have been like, "OH MY GOSH NOOOOOOO DON'T PULL MY CURLS APART," but they kept saying, "Your hair is so pretty! So pretty, pretty, pretty!!" I just couldn't ask them to stop because it was literally the cutest thing ever.
One night, my roommate and I took a short trip to Animal Kingdom, and we ran into someone she knew that works at the Kilimanjaro Safaris. He was so excited to see us that he asked his coordinator if he could get a private truck to take us on our own special safari! SOOOO, not only did I get to experience the Kilimanjaro Safari at night for the first time, I also got a special private tour with secret behind-the-scenes facts that the regular safaris don't get to hear!!!
I had been having an oddly emotional day, and I kept tearing up during the Pixar show, even though I've seen it a thousand times. I think God knew that I needed a little ray of sunshine, because after I had done my spiel, a cute little girl went out of her way to run up to me and hug my legs! It really made my morning.
Later that day, I was talking to a little girl about her cute Tsum Tsum dress, and she was being shy. Then, out of nowhere, she walked under the queue rope and hugged my legs and I thought I was going to die of cuteness. Two hugs in one day!!
Lastly, one of the guys at work used to be friends with Goofy, so when I told him that I was having a rough day, he made a Goofy autograph to cheer me up!
What started out as a rough day turned into a pretty memorable day!
We have a thing that we do for little kids who are scared to ride Journey into Imagination with Figment where we help them pull down a lever on three fake breaker boxes and tell them that they turned off all the scary things. One day, there was a group of kids that were really scared to get on the ride, so Grouper took them to the breaker boxes and they turned off all three of them to make the loud sounds go away. While they were waiting for the train to take off, I overheard the parents saying, "Wait, they turned off three... does that mean ours isn't turned off? Or does it turn the sound off for the whole train? Are we going to have any sound at all??" I was so tickled about the fact that we not only helped to calm down the children, but we also fooled the parents with this cute little trick!
One day, while I was sitting in the Figment train, waiting for it to take off so that I could do a ride-through, a family that was waiting in line for the next train yelled, "Awww, but we want to ride with her!" The dad and teenage son put their heads together and made pitiful puppy dog faces and said, "Look what you're missing out on! We could have exchanged selfies!" I was DYINNNGGGG. So I hung around after the ride and said hi to them while they were leaving! They remembered me and gave me a fist bump!
One evening, I had an Extra Magic hours shift from 6pm to midnight. When I got to work, the ride had been shut down twice since 3:30pm. To make a long story short, it never came back up. I spent the entire 6 hour shift telling guests that the ride was closed indefinitely, and I felt so bad...
But, there was a cute little girl who came up with her family to ask about the ride, and she was dressed as Moana. I love how many little girls dress up as Moana!!! I said something to her about her dress, and SHE STARTED HULA-ING. I asked her what was in her necklace and she exclaimed, "The heart of Tefiti!!!" I was very impressed! Then I asked her what the heart of Tefiti does and she said, "It lights up." Yes, yes it does. *sigh* so close...
While I was working Dispatch one day, 3 cute things happened within one hour of each other. First, a sweet elderly gentleman asked to take my picture while he was waiting for the train to take off, so I posed for him and did a cute little "face shelf."
Then, a Cast Member came through the loading area doing a scripted magical moment [oh my gosh, I love these!], so I decided to make it even better by discreetly asking her what the child's name was. When she got on, I waved to her and said her name as the train left the station! I could really tell that the little girl felt like she was a celebrity!
Later, there was a little boy getting on the train with his family. When I said, "All aboard!" (which we always do), the dad started talking to the boy, saying, "did you hear what she said? All aboard! Like a train!!!" So I asked the little boy for his best train whistle sound!
HE ACTUALLY DID IT. I love little kids.
On one of my days off, I decided to go to Magic Kingdom, "flying solo," as Tinkerbell called it. After spending the day meeting characters and getting the first of many signatures on my Cast Member t-shirt, I decided to ride the train before leaving the park. When I got on, I took a whole row for myself. The train was pretty full, so a family of three (father, daughter, and son) asked if they could hop in too.
I'm so glad that they did!!
I spent the whole 30 minute train ride getting to know this sweet family! I was surprised to discover that they were from Canada and had driven to Florida for their vacation! It was the little girl's birthday trip, so we spent a lot of time talking about her favorite rides. At one point, the dad asked me where I was from, so I told him that I currently live in Orlando and work at the parks. They were so excited to discover that I worked in Epcot because that was where they were planning to go the next day! As I got off the train and we said our goodbyes, they promised that they would come look for me at Figment the next day.
I was very hopeful that they would find me, but the odds that they would visit during my work hours (not to mention while I was at Figment, rather than Pixar!) were pretty small.
BUT GUYS. THEY FOUND ME.
And it was while I was working the outdoor greeter position, no less! The little girl excitedly ran up to me and just beamed the biggest grin, but I didn't recognize her at first, so I simply complimented her cute, yellow sundress. It wasn't until the dad came over with the rest of the family that it hit me! They were so excited to see me again, and I think it was really magical for them to get to know a Cast Member outside of their work environment and then get to see them actually working. I hope they know just how magical it was for me, too!
On the last day of September, my friend Sally Ann came to visit! We knew met each other at Belmont University, and she is one of the biggest reasons that I decided to do the Disney College Program (she had absolutely loved being a part of it!). It was so fun to run around Epcot with her and her friends after I got off work! We watched Mark Wills play in the Eat to the Beat concert series and then met Anna and Elsa! It's always fun to share Disney with my friends!