As I mentioned in my last post in November, I'm no longer in Fantasyland. I am now at Market House on Main street. This is the Starbucks located inside Disneyland. I'd applied for Starbucks once or twice when I was living in Washington, but that was because I was in need of some sort of job. I've never DESIRED to work at a Starbucks, even though I thought maybe it would be fun when I was filling out the applications. I was never one of those people that always wanted to work at a Starbucks. Working at the Market House Starbucks is definitely a lot different than anything I ever expected to do. Apparently I had to leave Washington to work at a coffee place. Guess I missed Washington that much (not surprising). Over 6 months later, I still love working there. The only thing that I don't like about Market House is the lack of directly working with food. In that regards, it hasn't really been helping with my goal of becoming a chef, but I've been able to get more advice from my mangers and chefs here, which is probably more beneficial. I've also made quite a few more connections with other chefs and managers.
As much as working at Market House has been able to help currently, it's still not the final stop. Eventually I'm going to have to move over to table service (the sit down restaurants in the resort). My goal is to do this within the next year. Table service is considered a different department (I'm currently working in the quick service restaurant department. There's also many other departments such as custodial, attractions, merchandise, etc.), so I will have to do something called an internal transfer. Basically, I'll fill out an application as if I'm applying to work at Disneyland. If I do get accepted into the Table Service restaurants, I'd have 30 days to decide if I liked it enough or not. Within those 30 days, if the transfer doesn't work for me, my original position will still be available to me. However, I don't know how this would affect my chances of returning later in the future. Right now, my hold-up for transferring is my need for money to pay rent and insurance.
I am also currently enrolled in one of the local community colleges. Assuming I can get all the requirements finished in time, I will be able to start taking classes in the fall and finally start working on my culinary degree! I can definitely say I'm excited about that. In the process of making sure I have everything together, I have been to the college campus twice. As far as California goes, I really like the campus. It's really open, has quite a few grassy areas, and some trees. Every building also has a bike rack in front of it, which makes me really excited since I'll be riding my bike to and from school.
Let's see..... is there any other significant changes to talk about? I guess if I think of anything else, I'll include them in a future post (which, with my average will probably be August :P). On to the fun stuff!
Since January, I haven't had much chance to play in the park. Partly because life has recently been getting in the way, and partly because it's been too hard emotionally, as well as no longer having anyone to go with. I am pleased to announce that the last half is getting easier and easier. I have occasionally found people to go to the parks with me, and I have even gone once or twice by myself for a short time. As a self-diagnosis, I think I'll recover from the "Disneylandphobia"
Other than hanging out in the park with friends or by myself, I have also been able to do some new and unique things this year. 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the small world attraction. To celebrate this milestone, Good Morning America (talk/news show that's on ABC from 7 AM - AM weekdays, not sure about weekends) had a segment to celebrate. During this segment, they had choirs from all the currently open Disney parks sing part of the Small world song. Rehearsals were intense because of the times. During the week of this event, we had a rehearsal Monday night from 6-10. We then met "Tuesday night" at 3:30 AM - 8 AM (This is actually Wednesday morning, but they kept referring to it as Tuesday night). then the following day (Thursday morning) at 2:30 AM for final dress rehearsal, call time and performance. 12 hours for 22 seconds of tv. They filmed our segment and the segment for Disneyworld live. Everyone else was lucky and had their segment recorded. No crazy hours for them! Even Disneyworld was late enough that they didn't have crazy hours (since the show was at 8:30 for them).
Backtrack a couple years ago. Peter introduced me to a group of people he met back in 2008. These people are a part of what's known as the Disney Podcast Network. This is a site filled with various Disney podcasts. Back in 2006, they decided to create an event where the podcasters and fans could meet and spend time together. From my understanding, it is now more some of the fans that get together every year. This event is called Westfest (since it takes place in Disneyland on the west coast). Two years ago when I met them, I immediately decided it was a fun group. Fast forward to February. After everything that happened January and February, I was worried that I would no longer be able to join these people, and if I did join, I wouldn't be able to fit in very well. My (unrealistic) impression was that these were people that were huge fans of Disney and knew virtually everything from every date to every important piece of history, and I struggle with remembering all that stuff. Luckily for me, that wasn't entirely true, and also luckily for me, I was still asked to join them this year.
This past weekend was the 2014 Westfest. From the informal meetup Thursday night through the official end Sunday night as well as those still around meeting up Monday afternoon, the weekend was filled with so much fun. I met many new people from all over the country. The only thing everyone had in common? A passion for Disney. This doesn't translate to knowing EVERYTHING about Disney like I thought it did. This translates to people who love spending time in Disneyland. They may or may not know more than the average person, but most people don't know everything. This was evident when, on a couple different occasions, we were asked trivia questions and it took a while to come up with the right answers. One question, which 5 names are mentioned in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, took 3 people to get an answer. Another question asking about the date of an old Mickey Mouse cartoon took an entire group and several hints to come up with the answer. I can definitely fit in with this group!
While this last month has definitely had some fun things, it also meant it was really busy, partly why I'm only just now writing this. Even as I right this, it's only a "calm before the storm." Yesterday, I ran away from the heat, winds and forest fires of Southern California only to be met with....... heat, no wind, no forest fires. (It's the heat that I hate the most) It is the first day of May, and it is 87. At least it's slightly better than 102. I keep hoping it'll rain before I have to go back to work. Maybe if I get a bit of rain and cold weather, I'll be able to tolerate the warm weather a bit longer. I also blame the busy schedule for the lack of "humor" in this post compared to others. Maybe next post will be a bit more normal. Maybe one day I won't be going 50 gazillion directions. Maybe.... Or maybe not. But hey, I'm happy, I'm having fun. I don't care! (too much) And I'll also try and make these posts more frequent so that they're easier to read when you're short(er) on time. I've noticed that these posts become very long when I wait 6+ months between posts. More proof that I have too much to talk about regarding Disneyland.
P.S. Instead of my normal song video at the end of the post, I have posted the Small World segment from Good Morning America. I'm sure everyone that wants to has seen it already, but it means I can still post a song and be lazy at the same time! Actually, I just figured it fit with the earlier part of the post.
