Give Your Dreams the Wings to Fly

I was thinking last night on my way home about how I was going to do this. I know a lot of friends and family are going to be really curious about how the internship is going and what all I get to take part of and will be doing during my time at Disneyland. Patti and my Aunt Barb are big bloggers, me...not so much. But I figure that when people ask me what I've been up to, after about the 3rd person I'll start telling less and less details. Now this is Disney!! So I don't want to leave any details out. So why not explain it all once, and you all can read if and when you wish :)

The title for this blog is a quote from Walt Disney, as it says. Today during our "Traditions" class, this quote was said repeatedly. Everything that Disney is today, started from steamboat Willie! I wouldn't be here at Disney if it weren't for that mouse. How awesome is that, I thought it was pretty cool! By the way, here's a little fun fact I learned in class today: Walt was planning to name "Mickey Mouse" "Mortimer the Mouse" instead. Thankfully his wife Lillian convinced him to use the name "Mickey". Leave it to a woman to find the right answer ; )

But I'm going to back up a little bit now. Last Wednesday my mom and I left for California. I started crying really hard as soon as I got in the car, partly because I was missing all of my friends but also because as soon as I shut the door Abby started crying/whining., my pupppppy :\. It was very very difficult for me the first several days. But we drove through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and of course California. I think Colorado was definitely my favorite, the Colorado Springs area and around the U.S. Air Force. Sunday we stopped at my Aunt Mary's and Uncle Rob's house for the night. VERY VERY nice to have a delicious home cooked meal (steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob) and to have a normal bed to sleep in.

Monday was when we arrived in Anaheim. We drove around a bit and I absolutely LOVE the area, very gorgeous, especially at night, perfect temp. to go on a stroll around here. The palm trees are wrapped in Christmas lights, there's like a city centre walk right outside my apartment with a bunch of little shops and restaurants. I live like 5 min (if that) away from Disneyland itself. My apartment is SUPER nice and new. Disney definitely hooked us up. But after my mom and I ran an errand on Monday we got back to our apartment and heard this loud noise so we went to the window and had a perfect view of Disney's firework show! The hearts, smiley faces, Mickey face, and shooting stars got me really excited to start my experience.

Tuesday was move in day!! I filled out paper work for an hourish then spent a couple hours moving my things into my apartment. It was very hot that day and a very slow elevator did not help at all. But about 5 trips, 3 separate trips to Vons and target, and a meeting later...I was officially moved in :) My roommates names are Stephanie (the girl who I share a room with) Chavalah (said like Hava) and Roe. Stephanie is sooo nice and such a sweetheart, looks a lot like Vanessa Hudgens and went to culinary school! So we all decided that we'd have her make us some good dinners every now and then. She is also my food buddy here, haha we're always hungry and always want to eat :) Chavalah Stephanie and I went to Vons that night to get our groceries, we spent a reasonable amount and it's nice to have the kitchen stocked with food.

Wednesday we had a meeting in the morning to get our pictures taken for or Disney ID and just listened to people talk a little bit about the rest of our week, what to expect, and mostly to talk about Disney University! We are required to sign up for at least one of their classes. I signed up for "Marketing You". In this class I WILL have assignments, papers, projects, just like any other class, but it's one of the classes that stout will actually giving me some credit for taking it. So instead of just 13 credits, i could possibly earn 15 or 16 now. That was about a 3 hour meeting. Then we had Disney orientation at night from 7-10, it was optional, but everyone went regardless. Here they talked about all the great opportunities we'll have at Disney (Behind the scenes tours of rides, the different parks, parties, angels games, ducks games, Jimmy Kimmel show, private movie premiers, etc) and then we asked questions to Cast Members (people who work at Disney) who are currently at Disney and had previously done the Disney program. They gave away prizes too, sadly I didn't win any. Thennnn, this was my favorite part :D at 9:05 they said, if you guys want to do this, we have to leave right now...but we can take you to the front of the park to see the fireworks! So we all got up and basically ran through backstage Disney into the front of It's a Small World and got the perfect spot for fireworks. It gave me chills, especially because in their shooting star fireworks, you could actually see a star. Amazing.

This is the Team Disney Anaheim Building

Todayyy was a very very busy day. We had to be at the Team Disney Anaheim auditorium for our "Traditions Class" from 7:30 to 4:00. Yeah, it was just as long as it sounds hahah. But from the beginning till like 11 they went over the History of Disneyland, sexual harassment, the Disney commandments, and all that jazz. Now let me tell you, that auditorium is FREEZING! oh my, not okay. Then we had lunch at the food court, very good food and reasonably priced. The Facilitators took pictures of us and then we broke up into groups for a tour. I was in the Cinderella group!! We got a detailed tour of the behind the scenes magic, which i cant tell any of you because I cant ruin the magic!!so shhhh! then we went through a tunnel that lead us to Frontier Land. Walked around there, to the HUB, toon town, and out of toon town to the back lot again. We stopped next to the dance/arts studio where people were gathered around a piano singing songs from high school musical, they were FANTASTIC and i was so interested I stopped listening to the tour and just watched them sing :P go me! OH! Starting today and from here on out we have to dress in business/professional clothes. No jeans, sandals, tanks, t shirts, polos, shorts, colored sunglasses, etc. So we had to walk around the park in our professional clothes dying in the heat, YAY! (even for our classes we have to dress up, every class is one day a week from 8:30-12:30) We finished the presentation. Then we were officially cast members!!!!!!!!! So they shut the curtains and started wrapping things up and said "Now you get your Disney ID's and in a second someone will pass them out to you" then the curtains opened and MICKEY MOUSE WAS THERE!!! awwwww it was very unexpected but very very cool :) As we left we picked up our very legit ID's which we need to have with us 24/7, its what gets me backstage, onstage (front of the park), free admission to the park, and free admission to those who come visit me! But after a very long exhausting, cold, hot, day we finally got to go home.

Tomorrow is not as bad as today. I have an orientation if you will to my line of work from 10:30-2:30pm. I'm very excited for what is to come, I Know I will be extremely busy, but I am definitely up to the challenge :)