We got to clock in for the first time today. We have to swipe our Disney IDs on this old-school looking pad on the walls. It was exciting because it felt very official to clock in for Walt Disney World. This was my first day of training and it was a "Welcome to Entertainment" class since costuming is under the Entertainment blanket here. It was the first time since I've gotten here that I met other kids doing the costuming role. There was about two that were really nice and I could be friends with; the rest talked far too much and asked way too many questions and were very hard to relate to. Oh, and they were the theatre majors. It became blindingly evident to me that Upstate has a fantastic group of theatre majors with amazingly normal personalities that I appreciate so much more after today. So much more.
The very first girl I met already knew where she was working: in Animal Kingdom at the Festival of the Lion King show. I saw it yesterday and fell head over heels for the show, so I am incredibly jealous of her! I'm also jealous that she knows her assignment already, because I can't figure mine out. There's supposed to be a way to view it online, but my computer is not making it easy to find out. Anyway, in the class we went over a bunch of safety in the workplace presentations and they talked a lot about how entertainment is different from the other sections of the company because people really look to the entertainment and scrutinize it. Everybody wants their show to be as good as Disney's.
Then we went to lunch and I got my first backstage Disney cafeteria experience. You know those cafeterias they show in movies of high schools that have four different lines all with different, good looking food, on top of a bunch of different snack foods strewn about and drink stations galore? You know, the ones that don't exist in real life? Well, that's what this cafeteria was. On top of that, you're eating next to all the people that make the magic happen from costumers to food service workers to performers already in their stage makeup. It's pretty magical, even though no guests ever get to see it. It was magical for me.
Then came another tour of backstage Magic Kingdom. This time we actually went through all sorts of amazing rooms like a rehearsal room (where real characters were actually rehearsing!!!) and the costume room where they hang all Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy's dry cleaning (again, incredible!) and we saw into the cosmetology center as well where they style all the wigs and makeup. All pretty cool. Then we went out into the actual park and got to watch a show they do right in front of Cinderella's castle as part of our training! Then we talked about some parts of the show that take the magic away, so I won't share them with you. But, I'm not gonna lie, my inner theatre nerd loved it.
After the show we returned to our original building for the rest of training. We watched a video that was full of letters people had written to Walt Disney World all about how their vacation there changed their life or their child's life because of the magic brought to them in one way or another. It was a seriously touching video. Then we did two hours of E-learning about safety and stuff that just sucked all the excitement right out of me. The only interesting part was noticing how intricate WDW's scheduling system has to be in order to keep the tens of thousands of employees all in order. It's pretty incredible (even though it isn't working for me at the moment).
Once done with that, I was dismissed. Here's where the real nightmare began. I had to go next door to the main costuming building to pick up my costuming costume. Sounds redundant, right? It's not. At WDW we don't have "uniforms." We have "costumes" that we wear to work every day. Even the costumers. The shirts for our costumes aren't bad: just a color block windbreaker-type shirt. The nightmare was the pants. So the process is that you go in and pick up the pieces you need for your costume every day and sign them out. Then you can drop them back off when their dirty and pick up new ones if you want, or you can wash the ones you first pick up yourself. The building is really huge and lined from wall to wall with all the operational employees' costumes for people that work at Magic Kingdom. This huge building is only for one park's employee costumes! So I go in and pick out my shirt then start picking out black pants to match. Well, after trying three pairs on I was told that I was trying the wrong pants. I had to get the ones that had cargo pockets on the sides. So I go pick out different sizes of those to try on. All of the pants are HUGE. I don't know who they're made for, but these pants would look good on NO ONE. I feel really terrible for ever thinking a Disney employee looked bad in their costume, because they probably just didn't fit in it right. I scouered the place for an hour trying to find pieces that fit me. By the end, I just grabbed two pairs of pants that kind of fit and three pairs of shorts (which are capris on me) and tried to get out of there. Then I made the mistake of asking the man that worked there about getting a new name tag. Mine says that I attend the University of South Carolina and I'm trying to get Upstate added to it. Well he barely understood what I was trying to tell him, had to ask his manager, and once she said yes, he spelled it wrong! I leaned over the whole counter to be sure he did it right, and corrected his mistake. I have to pay for this new name tag so I wanted to be sure it was correct. Needless to say the whole experience was not a good one. And this was my first experience with the costume department directly! I'm incredibly nervous now. I'm praying that tomorrow will be 100x better and I can be happy to be here again. Today was very hard.
That's all the magic for today!
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