Dan@Disney

I have had a fairly chilled out week but the whole week has a lot of money related activities!

On my days off I spent most of the time just chilling out and enjoying the fact that I had 2 days off in a row but on the Monday I went over to Disney University to go to Partners Federal Credit Union (Disney’s own bank/building society) to open an account to help manage all of my money over here. This was the first opportunity I had to go as it was the first weekday that I had off and Partners is only open office hours Monday to Friday. Opening the account was pretty easy – all I needed was my passport, Disney ID, housing ID and social security number, but it took ages. I was in there for more than an hour and a half, it was not a difficult process there are just a lot of steps and it is not very efficient. My advice to anyone looking to open an account is to not be in a hurry to go anywhere! They do print your debit card then and there though so you are good to go as soon as you walk out. All I had to do was change my bank details on the HUB and my next paycheck will go straight in there instead of on to my paycard. They even transferred the balance on my paycard in to my new account.

On Tuesday I was back to work and the week started with a stocker shift followed by Beer Cart which was a nice easy start to the week. On Thursday I was Assigning which was a bit weird as I never assign Thursdays and as I discovered they are really quiet days which was not too bad although we did not do great numbers as we thought a storm was coming late in the evening and we cut walk ins a bit early – of course it never rained!

Friday and Saturday were my first GT shifts on my own. They went OK although it is really nerve-racking at times to know that you are responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in cash. I really enjoyed it though and hopefully I will get a few more scheduled in the coming weeks. They are nice shifts because they don’t start until 4pm which gives you most of the day to get stuff done, the only downside is that you are never back at housing before 12.30 at the earliest which is a pain as you are too late to go out. This week that meant I could not go to Cowboys on Saturday which I was pretty gutted about – next week maybe!

I was off again Sunday and Monday and both days were spent mostly chilling around the Commons as the heat and the late night shifts had taken it out of me a bit. I did get to meet with some Disney managers on the Monday though which was a nice chance to pick their brains about life, the universe and everything. It is nice to know that friends and managers from my previous programs still think about me and try and help me out where they can – Disney friends really are friends for life! I also got to spend some time in Magic Kingdom where I finally got to see the Rainy Day Cavalcade which is the replacement for the 3 O’Clock parade when there is rain (but not lightning) in the area. The characters come out in the Main Street vehicles wearing their rain gear and carrying umbrellas to a rain themed musical score. It is pretty rare to see it given the weather requirements but it was fun to go to the parks and actually see something new – given that I am coming up to a cumulative year of working for WDW that is pretty rare these days.