 |
| Photo credit: Natasha Woloschuk |
After almost three months of working in
Walt Disney World this summer, and then another trip to visit my
family in Ontario immediately after I returned to Canada, I'm finally
back to writing for my school blog.
Last year this blog was a requirement
for my Public Relations class, and this year it's still a requirement
since I am majoring in PR. Woo! So get ready for some really interesting
blog posts this year, because I'll be putting one up every week.
This summer it was really hard to tell
people about my job at Disney because it was difficult to get past
the 12 hour shifts, the homesickness, the torrential rain storms that
took place every afternoon between three and four,
the crazy room-mate I came home to every night after work, and the
not-so-glamourous wages I was working for. But now that I am back
home and have returned to eating regularly, and sleeping regularly,
and talking regularly, I've had a chance to look back and miss the
things I really loved while I was down in Florida.
This Monday was our first day of
classes and all week I've been promising my class mates and
instructors I would blog about my experience, so that's what I'm
going to do.
So why not start this year's blog posts
with a super cool topic?
'No strings', or as I like to call
them, Freebies!
Most people working in custodial in the
parks can give away stickers and pins off their lanyards (more about
pins to come), everyone in merchandise can give those away too, as
well as the occasional toy off the shelf, but for some folks in
merchandise like me who are lucky enough to work in a store that
sells photos after a ride, we get to also give away 'test' print outs
whenever we feel it is necessary. : )
Now there are eight rides in all of
Walt Disney World that take pictures; The Rockin' Roller Coaster and
the Hollywood Tower of Terror in Hollywood Studios; Test Track in
Epcot; Expedition Everest and Dinosaur in Animal Kingdom; and Splash
Mountain, Space Mountain, and Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin in the
Magic Kingdom.
Because I worked in Tomorrowland in
both the Space Mountain shop and Buzz shop, I feel as though I had
the most opportunities to hand out test prints. I would almost always
print them out at the end of the night. When it's almost 1 a.m. and
the park's going to close soon, families are exhausted after a fun
day in the park, and they're sad about saying goodbye to the happiest
place on earth.
I can't count how many times I received
hugs from guests who were leaving on a plane the next morning and
appreciated the 5x7 photo I had given them as their last magical
moment during their trip.
Moments like those always made the next
two hours of cleaning the registers, stocking the shelves, and
counting the inventory a little bit easier.
But more than giving printed pictures
to families, I loved giving games in the arcade. You see, within the
Space Mountain store is an arcade, and at one of the registers we had
a special key that could open most of the games. We weren't allowed
to open any prize games, but we could open all the racing games, the
basketball hoop machines, and even the pin ball machines. Whenever a
guest asked me to return their quarters after a game had ungraciously
taken theirs, I would always offer them a few games at a different
machine courtesy of Mickey. After I had successfully wowed a guest and saved
the register from losing a few quarters, I would then move on to the
next machines in the row and ask the surrounding kids to try playing
them to “help me test them to see if they work”. Sometimes I
would play with them. : )
When I started working at the Magic
Kingdom, one fellow cast member told me that the more fun I was
having at work, the more fun the guests would have. That wasn't
always the case this summer because sometimes your smile just isn't
big enough to make an angry person happy, no matter how wide you
stretch it.
But it was true most of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment