I wish I could have taken a picture of my face today through my whole Traditions class. It would have been a mix of shocked, in awe, and just plain baffled. The things they told us were completely awesome. It was an entire four and a half hours of explaining the heritage that we as new cast members are stepping into. All about how many people save up all year long just to come to Disney World for a few days and WE are the reason why it can happen. WE are the people that help create memories that will last a lifetime for these people. WE are the people who will impact little kids' lives forever. No pressure, right? On the flip side, how amazingly cool?! Every day I go to work for the next four months, I'm creating someone's most treasured vacation memories. ME. Little old Zoe from Greenville, South Carolina am impacting thousands of people in just four months. Joining this gigantically influential company (over 67,000 cast members worldwide) made me a part of a huge initiative to bring magic to millions of people. Big shoes to step in to, but I am totally ready.
The WDW Company uses theatre words such as onstage, backstage, cast, costume. All words that I'm used to in a theatrical sense, but to hear them in terms of a company was interesting. They explained how all of WDW is a show put on for the guests and every single day is a new performance with a new audience and we, the employees, are the cast members that bring the show to life every day. It's a really interesting way of looking at the experience, however completely accurate. The show is all for the guests and it's all about keeping the magic alive. Every single cast member is a part of creating the magic people feel when they walk through a Disney park. It's incredible to know that I get to be a part of this.
The class I was in today was called Traditions. They defined traditions as the handing down of customs and beliefs from generation to generation. That means that these traditions go on and on and never stop. They didn't stop when Walt Disney died. His traditions lived on past him with the cast members that he trained and laid out his vision for. Now those cast members are imparting that knowledge on the next generation: us. Me. I get to carry out Walt Disney's vision for his company. Again, how cool, right?!
While we were in our class, we did a group activity where we all had to write as many animated characters that we could think of. Our tables were our groups. I'll give you one guess who my table picked as the leader: me. Of course. My team crushed it and we won! We had 41 characters. A big part of that was all the characters I could write from doing Aladdin, Jr. and Beauty and the Beast, Jr. with my middle schoolers at home, so shout out to them! Miss y'all! Anyways, we creamed everybody and got little "critters" (little plastic Disney characters) to take home. I got Minnie and Donald, so I'm starting a little collection. One of the leaders kept calling all the girls "Princess" and it was the cutest thing. I think he was just trying to be flirtatious, but it worked Disney-wise.
In the middle of the class, we went to Magic Kingdom and walked around. The point was to look for examples of the four keys to Disney's success, but it was totally just for fun! Two of the kids in our group had never been to Disney before, and to see their faces was just precious. One of them I had become friends with at my table and he and I walked together through the parks. He took pictures of everything and just had a huge smile on his face (however, I did both of those things too, so maybe it's just a Disney World thing). We also got to walk all through backstage Disney which was INCREDIBLE! You would never believe what is hiding right behind the facade! Practical things like extra water bottles, cast cafeterias and costume rooms (which I almost started crying when I saw. They are breathtaking. I wanted to run in and hide in them!) My new friend never been to the parks before but his job here is a character performer! I was thinking that might ruin the magic for him, but it didn't seem to. It was really cool to get to see someone's first time. It just made me all the more excited to get to work making magic for the guests!
We watched a lot of videos during the class and it amazed me how the background music set you right in the Disney mindset. A lot of the music was easily recognizable as Disney. It was really interesting to me how as soon as it started, I knew I was in a Disney mindset: full of magic and dreams and the hope that anything could happen. I took major note of it being that I'm really interested in sound design. That's one of the coolest things about being here in Orlando. Everything feels so magical and I'm always thinking that ANYTHING could happen during these next four months. My whole life could change. Something about this place just screams "Magical." I'm sure credit is due to Walt Disney for the empire that he built, not only in a business, but also in the reputation he has with every single person who has ever heard of anything Disney.
They ended the presentation with a video of all things Disney: Disney parks, Disney channel, the characters, ABC, Marvel, ESPN and a lot more. It was a huge montage of things that I recognized as Disney, along with ones that I had no clue Disney owned (like ESPN?!). Then told us we had just joined one of the biggest and most higly regarded families in entertainment. Talk about butterflies in the stomach! After that we got our official name tags! I never want to take mine off. All they talked about today made one thing incredibly real to me: I, Zoe Sneed, work for Walt Disney World the most magical place on Earth. Again, I wish you could see my face right now! I am so excited for this adventure!
Well, that's all the magic for today!
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