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.