Everything's good, please send Vinyl's....

Ugh! So I picked up a bunch of hours on the hub this week, hence no updates (boooo!!) but there should be one coming. Including WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET SICK!! One person in the hospital with pneumonia and another out with strep.  Oh man... time for the vitamins. :)  Worked with Goofy and Minnie yesterday and it was great, as usual. :) 600 + with Goofy and 630 with Minnie, both two hour sets, plus a great Magical Moment closing with this Japanese couple who came through FIVE TIMES the last hour and a half just for pictures. And they kept giving the characters presents every time they came through, lol, from Disneyland TokyoSea (i think that's what it's called...) Man, it was so cool when they realized that they were going to get tons of pics with alllll five characters at once. :) It was great.

Ciao!

Fluff and Stuff

This post is all over the place, as it's stuff that's just been floating through my head and wanted to mention.
So if you're a potential Photopass member, you may be asking yourself, "i wonder how many photo's I'll take..." For comparison, yesterday I worked at the fountain in France (which is a beautiful shot!) and I took around 600 photo's in six hours.  Compare that to Monday where I worked in the C Spot for six hours and took over 1,300 photo's!!!  Yeah. So it really depends on where you are ( I worked Minnie, Pluto and Mickey that night).

Yesterday (like i just mentioned) I picked up a shift out in World Showcase, which will bring my work week to 39 hours.  Since I'm only scheduled for 32 a week, I've been picking up shifts on the hub to try and make some extra money. I will also work around 39 hours a week next week, which will be fun! Sunday is going to be interesting because I picked up a morning Hat Shift at DHS from 830-1245, then I work my normal shift at EPCOT from 1545-2145, so it might end up being a long day for me. :)  As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I told a friend that I would go with them to House of Blues that night... oh man...  We'll see how this goes, lol.

So the weather has been good, still warm from the last time I posted. We did have another girl go down the day after the incident with the little girl. This time she was a high schooler, but it happened at the exact same time as the previous day. So if you are coming down for either the CP or just to visit, make sure to drink LOTS of water. I know soda tastes really good, but trust me, it's not going to help you at the end of a long day.  Also, make sure you're really noticing how you feel. If you're tired, sit down in the shade or an air conditioned room. Give your body breaks!! I know you only have so much time to fit in the sights, but think how much time you'll save by taking a 10 minute break, vs a trip to the hospital.

So they announced the theme for our Formal Dance, and I'm actually really excited about it.  At Night of Stars, they announced that it was going to be a Villains Theme, called, "A Night of Oppulent Evil" which is sooooooo cool.  So my roommates and I immediately started planning on what to wear, and weirdly we started off going the costume route, which is kind of not what "formal dance" means, so we decided to wear colors and do makeup that hints to our villain. A bunch of us went to the Premium Outlets (oh man... so expensive...) and we ended up in BCBGMaxazria where Traci found an AMAZING dress that reminded us of Maleficent and is three shades of purple, and I found an AMAZING dress that fit what I wanted to do, which was go as the Hyena's from The Lion King! :) Then a couple days later the official email comes out announcing that there's a color theme of..... black and white.  Eh? So there's a theme theme, and a color theme?  Weird... But we're still wearing our dresses! I'll post pics later, but I just realized I have to go to work and I'm not even ready! Eep!

Hello, 911. Please state your emergency...

Sooooo.... Not a good day at work yesterday.  It was warm yesterday, but not as warm as it had been last week, and the humidity was pretty low as well. I started out at Entrance 3 for about three hours with mixed feelings and results about my photo's. I did take a really cool mini-photo shoot for this family and their two kids who looked about 3 and 4.  I can do that when it's slow, and especially if the parent's are receptive, as these were.  You really can actually do this when working any of the 3 entrance positions or as Rover (which requires special training) because everyone else is on tripods around the park. Anyways, cute kids, fun times.  Then I went to lunch for 30, Backside 1 for an hour before receiving my 15 min break, which i wasn't too happy about, but apparently they were running behind on breaks, and needed me to go on mine now so that i could go to Character Spot and start breaking people there.  This was to be my closing position.  I call in to get my assignment after my 15 and dispatch actually has me go to the View just so this girl (we'll call her Macey) can go on her 30, and then I'll be sent to C spot. Okay, cool, no biggie, I like the View.  Ohhhhhh mannn..... When I get there, there's only two Photopass workers for the four stations we have, and the line is out the door!!!! Okay.  Okay.... So Macey and I call base and tell them the situation, and it's decided that Macey and I will both stay there, bringing the count up to 3 to work through the line.  The first family I get is visiting from India, and the parent's accents are really thick; so much so that the kids are translating for me. A girl about 8 and boy around 11.  They go through their pictures, pick 15 they want, and then ask about packages. Okay, we have the capture the magic package which gives you 4 pictures for $30 (you get two 5x7's and two 4x6's). They get 3 packages, leaving 3 pictures to buy separately.  The dad says he wants all of them as 4x6's, oh, except this one, which he wants as a 5x7.  Now. In retrospect, if I had explained to him that it would be much cheaper to get all three as 5x7's, maybe I could have averted what was to come.  But they were really firm what they wanted when picking their pictures and borders, so I figured that I wouldn't be able to sway him on this either.  So when we get up to the cashier, he's taken aback by how much more it is.  He wants the other three as 5x7's.  Also, as I was putting together the package, I discover I printed one picture twice and now have to figure out which one I forgot. That takes probably 10-15 min's.  Then when we go to ring him up again, the math isn't coming out.  UUUGGGHHH!!!! Seriously?! And it was the poor merchandise girl's first day; she had been dispatched from a different park to work with us. So she had no clue where the shortcuts were to ring stuff up manually. Takes us another 10 minutes or so to figure it out. The dad stays super calm through all of this, which is really nice.  We finally figure out the register, the price is right, everything is good, and then the little girl faints, hits her head on the floor and starts convulsing.  Okay.... Okay.... Deep breath... So the parents pick her up, freaking out a little, naturally, and I turn to the Merchandise girl and say, "you need to call a manager and get them here right away." To which she responds, with wide eyes, "It's my first day! I don't know the number!!"  In short, I call my base, who calls the merch base to get the managers over there. I then call 911 and explain the situation.  The parents are confused with what exactly 911 is, as the merch girl is panicking a little, which I can tell because she's having a hard time explaining what 911 is, but due to the severity of what happened, and what other guests in line told me they saw, I knew she was going to need to be checked out. She was out for around 30 seconds and then was definitely out of it compared to how bouncy she was at the beginning of the interaction.  Paramedic's came and looked her over for a long time. It was really weird to have to continue working with guests while this was going on and I felt sooo bad, but Macey pointed out that I shouldn't feel bad because we don't know if it would have happened later when they were in the car ride home, and at least they were here where we had care available almost right away.

So! What have I learned from this, because it's only going to get hotter:

• Know the number to your managers
• Know the extension you're calling from (I did not, and it was embarrassing to admit that to 911...)
• I now know how to ring stuff up manually, which is important b/c we get a lot of merch people dispatched to us for some reason...

I had to leave before the situation was fully resolved, but I'm sure the little girl was fine. I think having stood for around an hour combined with the heat is what did it. Here's hoping today brings better experiences... : /

Work schedule 4/15-4/23

Friday 4/15 1600-00:15
Saturday 4/16 1500-2145
Sunday 4/17 1530-2215
Monday 4/18 1500-2145
Tuesday off
Wednesday off
Thursday 4/21 1616-0015 (*Note! EMH have moved from Fridays to Thursdays. weird...)
Friday 4/22 1515-2145
Saturday 4/23 1530-2215

this is one of the weeks where we were told that we wouldn't be having class due to guest occupancy levels; that we would in fact be working crazy hours, like 50+ hours.  While this is true for allllll of my roommates and friends who work for parks OTHER THAN EPCOT, us epcot people have a normal amount of hours.  I was actually looking forward to extra money :( I tried to pick up some shifts on the Extra Hours page,but everything that's available is for times I'm already working.  Laaaamme!!!

Work related post :)

So I left of with Minnie's camera issues, which did plague me the rest of my shift with her.  The coordinators were out there with me trying to trouble shoot it to no avail, and we went through a new pda battery, a new cable, and a new pda.  Eventually we just gave up and i just kept resetting the camera.  During one of the good period's though, I took this great photo of this cuuuuute baby girl.  She had obviously just learned to walk and was playing with Minnie when she turned around and saw me taking her picture.  She got this huge grin and started walking towards me.  I jumped back and zoomed in really close, taking a picture of her walking towards me with Minnie blurred out in the background.  It was soooo cute, i was really happy with it :) Hopefully the family will be too.
I seem to work with Mickey A LOT!! It even got to the point that the coordinators were laughing on the phone,s saying that he personally requests me.  I wish!! However, it's really just the luck of the draw.  Mickey really sets the pace for everyone else afterwards.  If I take a long time taking pictures at Mickey, then that slows the line down to get in, and yet allows the crowd in C Spot to thin out through the other four characters.  Its' not too nerveracking, but I know understand why some people only end up with 2 photo's with Mickey, while other's will get like 4 or 5 photo's with the other characters.  Especially if people don't have any sort of interaction before the posed shot.  We're supposed to get shots of guests when they first see the character, then the hug/interaction between them, then the posed, then the goodbye. But if a guest just walks up and stands next to mickey, then I only get those two shots, especially if they then walk off with only a wave.   (there's going to be a pet-peeve post coming soon, of stuff I wish guests either knew or didn't do so that I could take great photo's, lol).
Let's see.... Last friday I had my shift out in World Showcase, and I REALLY lucked out!!! There are around 4 locations, and I pulled the only one that has shade!!! Because it was REALLY REALLY humid.  I actually went out with two water bottles and drank both of them, lol.  I was at World Showcase spot 4, which is on the bridge leading to France.  I had a really good time because I was really close to where the British Invasion band sings, so I was rockin out to Beatles music every other hour for 45 mins. :) Beats the Toy Story soundtrack, lol. However, I was also right next to Great Britain, which I swear only has 4 songs on their soundtrack, and most of them consist of Greensleeves. That song can get really annoying fast, lol.  This location was on Tripod the whole time so there were no creative shots; just placing people so we could still see parts of France and the Eiffel Tower in the background.
That's really all the work related stuff I have. Another post will be coming up with fluff where I'll talk about hours, inspection, water parks and just general comments. Today I work from 15:45-22:15, only six hours, which really sucks.  Everyone has a lot of hours due to spring vacations and park occupancy, except for me. :( So it's ramen and pb&j sandwiches for a while. 

Come back rain!!!

Eep! Bad amanda! It's been a week! Just a note to say that I'm sitting down later today to write an update since i left off in the middle of one last week. But it's been STINKING HOT!! Ugh, i HATE humidity, and it's not even hot yet.  I'm so tired of people telling me, "oh this is nothing compared to summer."  I hate to say it, but I miss the cold rain....
Post and pics to come later TODAY! :)

I work with a real bunch of characters....

So I have to say that i LOVE working with the characters (although people look at you weird when you say, "Today was cool, I shot Minnie" to which my friend responds, "that's cool, she had it coming"...) I don't think I have ever taken so many photo's in my life.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  The last time was when I went to Vietnam and Cambodia for 2.5 weeks and shot 13 rolls of 36 exposure film... On my first day of character shots, I took 588 photo's while working with Minnie for 2.5 hours.  It was crazy!! Luckily, my trainer from WAAAAAY back in February had advised me to pick up Tender Tape. I hadn't had to use it before now, but luckily I always carried it in my backpack and so taped up my thumb before hitting the floor. Due to how I hold my camera, I pivot it around my thumb.  After Minnie ended, I discovered that I also need to tape up my middle finger, also on my right hand, as apparently I support most of the camera weight with that finger/hand. I guess I don't use my left hand for anything when it comes to holding the camera.  Now that I"m aware of it I"m trying to use my left hand more for support, but in the mean time, I tape up my thumb and finger.
The next day (day 2) I pulled the Fairies right off the bat.  Oh man, talk about intimidating! Due to the closing of ToonTown, the fairies have temporarily been moved to EPCOT. I spent 3 hours with Tink and Terence, and Vidia and Rosetta before my 15 min break. I then moved to the man himself, Mickey, where I spent the rest of my shift (just under three hours).  Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to how many photo's I took that day, as when you change out your pda batteries, it resets your data.
Sunday brought some frustration, but some cool photo's! I first pulled Goofy, who sometimes was in a great mood and super playful with the guests! Although this caused the line to back up quite a bit... Sometimes after Goofy went to check his fishing hole, he came back and just seemed to get through the line. With Goofy, I took 463 photo's in an hour and a half.
After Goofy I actually pulled Minnie again, where I had a lot of camera difficulties.  The camera wasn't communicating with the PDA, which means that the pictures weren't' uploading onto the guests cards.  In this case I have to then take a photo of the back of the guests cards so that when QA sees it, they know to put the previous photo's onto that card. Unfortunately it took me one family to realize what was going on, and so there's a family out there that didn't get their pictures, and another family who now has a strange family on THEIR card. :(

Ooop...I have to run to go to Blizzard beach, so i'll finish this later. :)