Blogs from Orlando, Florida, United States, North America - page 71

Day 2 - Disney/MGM Studios We had checked the weather before we came down, and even when we arrived, the timeshare said we were going to have rain all week. Depressing, but we figured we’d make the best of it, either way. Today, however, was a welcome, beautiful Florida day. We could not have asked for more beautiful weather. Partly cloudy, slightly misty in the morning, but sunny and hot (and humid) the remainder of the day. Today we ventured out into Disney/MGM Studios. It was a great (and exhausting!) day. The boys really enjoyed The Backlot Tour, MuppetVision 3-D, Playhouse Disney live on Stage, Tower of Terror (Ryan and Mom went on that one), The Beauty and the Beast Live on Stage show, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, and even Star Tours. We tried to ... read more

Hello everybody! Just a quick entry - before I get ready to go to work - on how my first day behind the Front Desk at the Grand Floridian went. I turned up about 40 minutes early absolutely terrified and with no idea of where I was supposed to go or where I should meet my trainer! Luckily I ran into Tatiana, a fellow trainee, and her trainer Hank, who showed me where to go and wait for my trainer, Shereene - who didn't no she was training me. D'oh! No matter, she is really very sweet and is showing me the ropes until Thursday. The first time behind the desk was pretty scary but Shereene seems to think I'm doing good so I'm getting lots of practice. Although I was pretty alarmed when I was ... read more

Afternoon everybody! Today is the fourth and final day of my training at Disney University on how to be a good checker-inner. Last year I thought there was a lot to remember being a vacation planner (fact fans: did you know there are over 100 different ticket combinations available at Walt Disney World?)...it turns out that there's even more when you are on the front desk! You need to know about ticketing AND check-in, check-out, in-house procedures, groups, retail packages, wholesale packages, blah blah blah....AND, do all this while remembering to say 'assist' instead of 'help' and call them 'guests', NOT customers. No wonder I am so exhausted at the moment, my brain is being overloaded with information! My friend who I lived with last year was training me for the first couple of days which ... read more

Morning all! Yesterday was my very first day of work, consisting of an induction to my new workplace - Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, otherwise known at the Grand or the Grand Flo. I was not too impressed at having to get up at 6am, especially as I had gone out to PI (Pleasure Island, Disney's clubbing complex) the night before to 'bond' with other people on the program, which proved harder than expected. But more on that later! The morning consisted mostly of us doing a walking tour of the Grand Flo property, most of which was completed with my mouth hanging wide open at some of the sights and statistics thrown at us. For example: the most expensive room costs nearly $3000/night. The hotel has a big yacht that you can hire by ... read more

After a fantastic time in NYC I joined another Contiki group which was fantastic. Basically there were two options for this tour one was from NYC to New Orleans which is what I did and the longer option was NYC to LA which the majority of the group was doing. It was a fantastic group and we had a great time together so that was really lucky. Once again I have way to much to tell and don't want to drive anyone crazy reading it so I will give a bit of a summary and whole lot of pictures which are way more interesting anyways ... Day One: NYC to Philadelphia to see all the monuments and stuff, this is where the constitution was written and civil war stuff etc etc. Was pretty cool to see ... read more