Dan@Disney

December 31st is the busiest day of the year at all of the Walt Disney World theme parks. On NYE every single member of podium was scheduled to work at least 12 hours – I was scheduled 15. I was working as a stocker in the bar.

If you ask all of the podium cast members most of them will tell you NYE was one of the best shifts they have worked so far in their program. While it is insanely busy the atmosphere out in the street is incredible and because it is so busy everyone pulls together to make one great team. My experience unfortunately was not quite so fun, I was working on my own stocking which meant I did not really leave the backstage areas of the Rose & Crown and had minimal interaction with any guests. It was a pretty stressful evening, at the busiest time I had to get 12 full kegs from across the street to restock what we had used and the round-trip took almost 35 minutes, putting me very behind on stocking other things in the bar. If I am honest it was a big disappointment for me, I had been looking forward to New Year for my whole program but it did not really live up to the hype.

The fireworks however were amazing and getting to watch them with the whole pavilion was amazing. After 4 hours sleep I was back in the next morning on triple time thanks to Holiday Pay and Double time for not having 8 hours between shifts. I came home that night and fell straight asleep for 10 hours before waking up still tired! I am still recovering from such an epic shift.

I have had a lovely couple of days off and I’m looking forward to putting my NYE experience behind me to enjoy the last 10 weeks or so of my program.

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It is almost the end of 2012. Tomorrow I am working a 15 hour stocking shift on the busiest day of the year. I am very excited although I am sure it is going to be a fairly crazy night. They are already predicting that it will take over 2 hours to get out of Epcot and back to housing. I am back in work at 11am the next morning as well which should make for very little sleep.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy as well. I have been working a lot of hours since the park has been pretty busy with the coming of Christmas and the holiday season. Before Christmas I went on one of the Epcot Segway Tours which was a lot of fun. You spend the first hour or so training and get a free breakfast at Sunshine Seasons before heading out to World Showcase to tour each of the Pavilions. It took some getting the hang of but once you learnt how to travel around it was really fun. It cost just over $50 for us which was really reasonable, I am not sure I would have paid the full price though.

I worked as stocker Christmas Day which was pretty stressful as it got quite busy as they day went on and everyone was in a strange mood with a lot of people feeling very homesick. Guests were also in a pretty bad mood which just made for a fairly unpleasant day for everyone.

This week also saw the end of David Sergison’s program, Dave has been a big part of my program and I am fairly sure there were weeks of my program where I spent more time at his apartment than my own. His last day of work ended with drinks in the Rose & Crown followed by fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. It made me think how little time I have left on my own program – it is really only 10 weeks until I leave now! I have already had to start thinking about what is happening in 2013 AD – After Disney.

This week I finally had 2 days off for the first time in about a month. The second day was spent with Kristen. We started in Hollywood Studios which was incredibly crowded, we left after about 2 hours and tried to get Kel to take us to IHOP for lunch. It took him over an hour to get to us through the horrific holiday traffic but when we finally got to IHOP we had some of the best service I have ever had. Our server, Heather, was lovely and amazingly attentive. In the end we all tipped her almost 50% – she deserved it! In the evening I went to see Dave for one last time to say goodbye – it was sad but I know I will see him again in the not too distant future. That night we also went tt Bahama Breeze for 3 of the girls birthdays, having already eaten 3 meals I was not very hungry but it was nice to drink and spend time with everyone – especially around Christmas.

Since then I have basically just been working – 28 hours out of the last 48 have been spent at work. Today was the busiest I have ever seen Chippy, we did not stop filling orders at full speed for almost my entire shift. I can;t wait for January now when we can finally get a well deserved break – just the craziest day of the year to go first.

See you on the other side – Happy New Year!