Amber Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary (24 page)

About ten minutes later, Jeremy and I looked up from where we were lying on the ground between the East and West Towers to see Matthew and Hayley walking quickly to our agreed-upon meeting place. They accused us of cheating, and we had to repeat what our clues had been on both missions to satisfy their suspicious natures.

At some point we went back to the hotel to rest before dinner at Boma. Jeremy said he was starting to feel sick, so when we all packed into my mother’s car to head to the restaurant, he was forced to sit next to the window, just in case. That turned out to be a good decision, as not even five minutes out of the hotel parking lot, we were turning around to take Jeremy back to the hotel, Dad staying behind to watch him while the rest of us went to Hollywood Studios for dinner instead. We still had turkey on Thanksgiving, it turned out, but in the form of turkey legs. The Osborne Lights were on display by now, so after our dinner at Sunset Ranch, we made our way over to the Streets of America, wrapping up the night with dancing in the streets and hot chocolate.

The rest of my parents’ visit was spent touring the parks and resorts, and hunting out the different Christmas decorations. When they left, it was with the promise to return in a few weeks for Christmas.

Work was picking up a little, finally. Package pickup had been extremely slow, especially in the time between the end of the Food and Wine Festival and Thanksgiving. School’s in session, which means fewer guests buying things they want sent to the front of the park or delivered to their resorts. Runs took only as much time as was needed to drive to each location and pick up the one or two packages typically found there. But with the approach of the holidays, the flow of packages was growing. I was grateful for that, because it meant less chance for me to get caught reading at work during downtimes.

“THERE ARE SO MANY people, Amber! So many!”

I would assume it’s fairly common knowledge that Disney films their Christmas events ahead of time, way before airing them on Christmas morning. As Cast Members, we were able to find out what was happening each day, and do our best to catch a few of the events. Some, like the parades, were much more difficult to get into. Despite that, Cassandra and I made our way one chilly morning to Magic Kingdom, standing with masses of other people in front of the Castle stage.

We were there for the filming of the musical events. Neither of us was quite sure who we would be seeing, or if we would even know who they were. Both of us, however, were praying fervently that the rumors of a Justin Bieber appearance were false.

Standing in the crush of people, we received instructions from an enthusiastic man with a microphone telling us how and when to scream and clap and sing along. Scotty McCreery, a country artist I had never heard of, came onstage first, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed watching him. We saw him perform the same song a couple of times, the crowd screaming whenever they saw a camera pointed in their general direction. There was drama in between acts during the question session, when someone in the crowd pointed out that a star on one of the trees was crooked. Two men promptly came onstage with a ladder and righted the star, which soon slumped over again.

Cee Lo came out next, and unfortunately, I was starting to feel faint. Totally shocking, right? We watched Cee Lo go through his song once or twice, but he was less able to hold our attention than Scotty had been. Cee Lo had taken thirty minutes just to get on stage, and Cassandra and I had the feeling that his song would take more run-throughs than the previous performance. So we headed back to her car and drove to the area around Vista Way, where we had salads for lunch, and then made our next stop of the day: mini golf.

During the holidays, Cast Members receive little pamphlets of discounts and coupons. These include a greater discount on resorts, certain restaurants, merchandise…the Christmas holiday is a good time to work at Disney. Our booklet also included free rounds of mini golf. So after lunch, Cassandra and I made our way to the Winter Summerland mini golf course near Blizzard Beach, the Christmas theme fitting well with our day. The course was pretty much deserted, and we made our way around the holes slowly, taking an excessive amount of photos and trying our best to get our balls into the holes in a respectable time frame.

After Winter Summerland, we decided we had had so much fun that we drove to the Fantasia mini golf course. It, too, was fairly empty, and we had an absolute blast as we incompetently did our best to keep our balls on the course. At one point, poor Cassandra’s ball ricocheted off one of the fixtures and into the stagnant water, and she laughingly complained as I got photo documentation of her fishing her ball out of the water. At the end of the course, we asked a man to take our picture in front of the Sorcerer Mickey statue that served as the last hole. He assured us that we had picked the most qualified man for the job, that he took excellent pictures — looking at the photo after he had handed the camera back and walked away, we both agreed that he was a complete liar.

We ended the night by picking Chris up from EPCOT after his shift and heading to Beaches and Cream to attempt the Kitchen Sink. I’m not proud to say that I wasn’t a lot of help; I managed a few scoops of ice cream, and totally took out any and all cherries in the bowl, but it was Cassandra who did the most damage. I watched with respect and envy as the Sink emptied, though we didn’t actually finish the entire thing. One more person in our group, though, and we would have conquered it.

Manual’s birthday came around, and we made a day of it. YanYing and I came to Chris and Manual’s apartment the morning of his birthday and watched him open his presents before we drove to EPCOT. We chatted as we walked to Les Chefs de France, where we had lunch reservations. Waiting for our food, the boys noticed a little kid drawing on a kid’s menu. The next thing YanYing and I knew, they had pulled construction paper and crayons (we had brought them to make birthday cards for Manual) out of a bag and were drawing New Zealand (their homeland), discussing weather patterns — the grown-up version of coloring, I suppose. YanYing and I stared at each other, neither of us quite knowing what to do. We rolled our eyes and left them to it, discussing work and the fast-approaching end of our program.

After a phenomenal lunch, we visited a couple of pavilions before YanYing decided she really wanted to go to Image and have our photos taken flying around the Castle. We weren’t sure if Manual and Chris would agree, but ten minutes later we were chatting with our friends who were working there, filling out photo vouchers, and leaning up against the wall to watch each other clamber onto the green block and pretend to fly.

Our pictures taken, edited, and printed out, it was time to part ways, and I walked up to the North to change for another shift at package pickup.

December was extremely busy. One of the cooler things that came out of it was the Cast information event held to give the rationale behind the inclusion of James Cameron’s
Avatar
in Animal Kingdom. It consisted mostly of a screening of Avatar in one of the theatres in Hollywood Studios, but it was quite a cool event. We made our way backstage, past the office where last year I had been dragged in to explain why I had given a woman her shift rotation, and were handed 3D glasses upon entering the theatre. A man tried to explain how the themes involved in
Avatar
echoed those of Animal Kingdom, and how the mythical world of
Avatar
helped to finally incorporate the dragon that was part of the Animal Kingdom signage. It felt like a bit of a stretch to me, but I wasn’t complaining about seeing
Avatar
once more in a theatre.

After the movie, YanYing and Manual walked ahead of Chris and me, and as the distance between us increased, Chris and I slowed down to consider the option of going to watch the Osborne Lights again. Chris had become slightly taken with them, and I enjoyed listening to the music and watching the fake snow float down onto the heads of the small children who were totally astonished by everything happening around them. When YanYing and Manual didn’t even pause to check if we were behind them as they exited the park, we turned around and made our way back to the Streets of America.

I wanted to participate in Disney’s VoluntEARs during my first program, but any time I had had a Sunday or Wednesday free, VoluntEARs had already filled up. At the first Housing meeting, they had passed out information about volunteering to help needy children in a myriad of ways. I worked so much I wasn’t able to pin down a time when I could call and they would still have spots open, so when an opportunity finally came up, I jumped at it.

In December, all the locations set up cardboard boxes to collect donations for Toys for Tots. Sign-up sheets were taped to the desks near CDS, and Cassandra signed us both up to help sort toys for the drive.

We awoke early in the morning, and she picked me up at my apartment (the BMW had also stopped working by this point; it was not my fault — something about the alternator messing up). We found our way to a random warehouse that had formerly been some kind of grocery store. We got there early, clad in our Disney VoluntEARs shirts, and signed in. They had bottles of water set out for us, and soon, some men came in and explained how the sorting would work, and we made our way to where all of the donations were stored.

The aisles were labeled, first by age group, then by sex. We were given boxes of trash bags and grocery carts to fill with books, modeling clay, and puzzles that were stored in the freezer sections. Cassandra and I found an aisle that looked like it had the least amount of filled trash bags, and went to work.

It was an absolute blast. There were a certain number of toys and books we were supposed to put in each trash bag, and we had fun making themed bags and matching toys. We quickly found that some dollar store or another had donated hundreds of small army figures, and waged war on them, throwing one into almost every bag we prepared. A system developed, involving some other people who were working in our aisle. Cassandra and I took turns, one picking the two toys that went in the bag, the other adding something from the carts and piling the finished bag into the center of the aisle.

We worked for several hours, and then took a lunch break. The Toys for Tots people had ordered pizzas for all the workers, and we grabbed a few slices and snatched a drink from one of the coolers. We chatted a bit with other Cast Members who had come to volunteer, then it was back to sorting toys. Cassandra and I eventually switched it up and went to put bags together for little girls, where we found toys from our own childhood — and some that were extremely bizarre. As Cassandra loved the princesses, a lot of her bags revolved around them, and I tried to find some of the more less-pink things to put together. All too soon, though, Cassandra and I had to leave; Cassandra had work. We agreed to check our schedules to see if there were more days during which we could volunteer. Sadly, there weren’t.

Back at Chatham the next morning, I walked over to Chris’ apartment and collapsed in an arm chair, exhausted. Soon, though, we got up and went over to the area near the swimming pool, where the graduation party was being held. We picked up some of the free stuff they were giving out: more posters, a random wind chime, a photo box. Walking around the tables with plates of food in hand, we found Ryan, a friend from Future World, and sat with him, talking about how the end of our program was rapidly approaching. I was feeling sick again, so I wasn’t exactly invested in the conversation, and it wasn’t long before I was back on a couch, asleep.

At Future World West, the managers arranged a Secret Santa. I got Zhi, an adorable girl from Singapore, and Chris got Amy, one of the part-timers who usually worked the early stock shifts. I’m horrible at these kinds of things; I never know what to get someone, unless I know them particularly well. And as much as Zhi and I said hi to each other and chatted at work, she came to the West after I had been moved to package pickup, which meant that I didn’t work with her as often as I did some of the other people there. I ended up buying her a couple of fun things at EPCOT that I would have enjoyed, and I figured would at least serve a basic function, like some of the awesome soaps and lotion from the France Pavilion.

Chris asked me for advice about what to get Amy. I had just chatted with Amy not too long ago, and knew that things had gotten pretty stressful for her. I told him some chocolate, maybe stop by Basin and pick up something, and she would love it. Over at his apartment one night after work, he told me he had gotten Amy’s present that day at the outlet mall with Manual. He wouldn’t tell me what it was for a moment, and then confessed that he’d been suckered into buying an ice scraper. With a fuzzy handle. For a woman who lived in Florida. I thought for a minute he was joking, but then I realized that this was one of those things you can’t make up — it’s just too strange.

On the day of the Christmas party at Image, Chris and I made our way to EPCOT, bearing our wrapped presents. We had been promised food and fun; when we got to Image and went upstairs, we found it empty, with a small box holding presents and a table sparsely laid out with an odd assortment of mostly desserts. Richard, Nadine, Britta, and a few others made a brief appearance, but after a while, with still nothing going on, Chris and I left for the Polynesian, where we watched the holiday fireworks from the empty beach — much better than the masses of people I was sure were watching it from Magic Kingdom at that moment.

Of course, my family had come down for Christmas, and I spent Christmas Eve with them at Wilderness Lodge. We woke up relatively early and opened the presents that we had piled up under a tiny tree on the table. My shiny pink wrapping paper was a big hit, as were the stuffed animals that I got as part of the presents for my parents. Later, we went downstairs and had breakfast, sitting out by the pool and enjoying the strangely warm weather on Christmas morning.