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Published: November 15th 2007
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Hello one and all!!
It's been a little while since I last I last wrote anything, but it's certainly been a very busy week!! In between working odd hours and sleeping to get over the odd hours, I've been out doing stuff in the parks with my friends as much as possible, so there hasn't been much time to sit down and write all about it! But now, here I am 😊
Last week saw Disney start gearing up for Christmas - now in my opinion, Christmas starts on December 1st and not a moment before, but given that this year I am living in the very heart of the American dream I think I'm going to have to make an exception and just get into the spirit! Over the last weekend the annual Gingerbread House went up in the lobby of the Grand Floridian. This is a quaint little cottage consisting of a basic wooden frame, but then everything on top of that is made of gingerbread, stuck to the frame with fondant icing. It looks amazing!! It opened up as a gingerbread shop on November 12th and having been taunted by the smell of gingerbread for 8
hours I simply had to rush over there at the end of my shift and buy a gingerbread shingle, like the ones making up the roof of the house! The Christmas tree is going up on Monday, just before Thanksgiving...once that other very American holiday has passed, it's going to be all systems go into the Christmas season!
The parks have been gearing up for Christmas this week as well. Last Thursday I had a great afternoon in the Magic Kingdom with some of my friends from work. Firstly we went to a backstage area where a little something called Backstage Magic was taking place. Backstage Magic is surprise or planned events that take place for Cast Members only while they are at work - it can be as little as receiving flowers, or as big as the free all-you-can-eat BBQ and disco that we went to on Thursday!! The theme was Hawaiian, so we were all given leis when we went in. Lilo & Stitch were there posing for photos, and Stitch was stealing everyone's leis and hanging them from his ears in exchange for some crazy disco dancing! After that we all had some great free BBQ
food & drinks, got our free backpack, then headed to the dancefloor to dance like idiots. After our bit of Backstage Magic, the others headed to work while Miss Day Off (that's me!) stayed in the park to watch the parade. I used to do audience control at the 3pm parade so I went to say hi to my old friends there. They put me in the VIP area to watch the parade which was AWESOME, you get a completely unobscured view of the floats and the characters all come really close, so that was a lot of fun.
The following night the same crowd of Grand Flo people all went to the Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue at Fort Wilderness Campground. This is a Old-West style sing-a-long show performed by 3 crazy men in cowboy gear and 3 crazy women in awesome skirts. It was all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink, so we gorged ourselves on fried chicken and beer whilst laughing ourselves silly at all the shenanigans onstage. It was a LOT of fun!!
On Saturday night, there was an extra special preview of Mickey's Once Upon A Christmastime Parade, which takes place during the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas
Parties on certain nights in November and December. After the Magic Kingdom closed at midnight, all the Cast Members were corralled in Toon Town at the very back of the park until 1:30am - then we were allowed onto Main Street USA, which had been transformed into a little microcosm of Christmas!! All the Cast Member on duty were wearing Christmas costume, giant snowflakes were projected onto the buildings, and Christmas songs were playing over the tannoy. At 2am, the most amazing thing happened...the castle lit up with a big, snowy light blanket!! It was so beautiful...and then we got to watch the parade. Given that every single person in the park at that time - about 300 of us - was a Cast Member, the atmosphere was incredible and we all had such a brilliant time. The parade was amazing too, my favourite bit had to be the Cinderella carriage pulled by 6 little white ponies!
Back at work, this week has been incredibly hectic at work due to 250-odd of the most important people in the Walt Disney Company descending on the Grand Floridian for their annual meeting thingy. I am gutted, because the CEO of TWDC
(Bob Iger) came to say hi to everyone at the Front Desk when I was backstage in the bathrooms changing my costume!!! Could not believe it. Aside from that, we've all had to be on our very best behaviour, and some of us have been scheduled some very dubious positions. Yesterday I spent 8 hours stood in the lobby of one of the outer buildings just in case one of the VIPs forgot their key and locked themselves out. You know how animals in cages sometimes start pacing up and down to alleviate the boredom? That was me - walking round and round on the thin strip of marble that borders the carpeted area of the lobby. I also did some tap dancing. Thank God I won't have to do that shift ever again!!
But today the execs are leaving and normality will resume. Well, that sort of pre-Christmas non-normality normality. Nothing's every normal at Disney!!
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Tobias Schulz
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Merci beaucoup! Keep the reports coming! Don't worry: I missed Bob too, when he visited DLP last month... By the way, do you know where the idea for the "ice castle" comes from...? We've been enjoying this sight in Paris for a few seasons now... it's truly magical. But we don't have a gingerbread house... sigh... at least they start selling mulled wine in Fantasyland again. I love Christmas. ;-)