Magic Kingdom: My day looking for Princesses

So today was my day off, so i decided to do a crazy amount of stuff today. I started with shopping at the disney cast member only store for a gift for my mom for her birthday which is coming up soon. Then I went grocery shopping at another cast member store that has food in bulk, so I now have 2.5 pound of cheese, two pounds of romaine, many potatoes, and a whole ton of tortillas. After getting that all home I decided to go explore Magic Kingdom by myself and wander around. I just wanted to people watch since today was a crazy busy day, however I saw that the line to see Rapunzel, who is my favorite disney character at the moment, was not to long, so I decided to see her. 

here I am waiting in line at fairytale hall. Left side (Cinderella and Rapunzel) was short so the entire wait was in the air conditioning. Right side (Anna and Elsa) was over double the length and was mostly outside. I will wait to see them during off season. 

There is amazing artwork on the walls. These two were my favorites.

and here is Cinderella's Glass Slipper. 

 Once inside I got to see Rapunzel and Cinderella, no I am not sun burned, it is just the lighting.

 Next stop was the hall of presidents (aka I wanted air conditioning while waiting). Then i went and saw Princess Tiana. another one of my favorites.

Then I got to see Merida from Brave, and Ariel. 

And I also got to see Jasmine! Another one of my favorites. Ok I have a lot of Favorites. 

I also got to see the new (ok newish) parade. Festival of Fantasy. It was amazing! I really want to audition to be in this parade, or any other disney parade. 

Beautiful dancers on the left in amazing costumes, and Belle and Beast

Cinderella and Prince Charming, and Anna and Elsa and Olaf. The closest I got to seeing them today.

Tiana and Naveen from Princess and the Frog, and the crazy swinging axes with Flynn Rider from Tangled.

Rapunzel, with a frying pan.

an amazing costumed dancer for Little Mermaid. 

Merida from Brave. 

One of the fairies from Sleeping Beauty 

Prince Phillip fighting the dragon. 

and the  dragon. Overall my day (ok really like three or four hours) at disney was amazing. I am so glad I get to go there all the time while I am here. There is so much magic in the air in Walt Disney World. 

My official first day as a disney lifeguard!

Well this was certainly an interesting day to say the least. I showed up for a nine hour shift, and really only guarded for 3 hours.... So to start off with I was scheduled to be there early by accident so I was paid to sit in the air conditioned guard office. It was nice because I got to ask all my last minute questions, then I went to break out which is our pre shift meeting. After breakout I got to scan in an get on stand at Coronado. After being on stand for 40 minutes the lightning started. We closed down the pool and moved all the important equipment under shelter, where it stayed for over three hours. The lightning just kept coming, and coming, and coming. No rain, just lightning and more lightning, oh there was thunder too. My main job was to warn people to stay away from the water and the deck because the lightning was so close. So I got to watch a stunning lightning storm until about nine fifteen at night, when we then reopened the pool. There was a huge conference at Coronado so the pool was packed with high school aged kids. They were all extremely polite. After one full rotation on stands (moving from Jag stand, to Corey stand, to Explorer stand, we have fun names for all the guard stands), it was 11 pm and we closed up the pool again for the night. It was an interesting first day!

Since the repair men are finally here to fix the floor and someone needs to be here while they are here I made a list of the characters I must see before I leave. Any other characters are bonus! 6 down 34 more to go! If you want to add someone to my list let me know!

Sorry for not posting for several days. I have been in crazy long training shifts which leads up to my test out tonight! I am very excited to test out and begin my job tomorrow at Coronado Springs and Animal Kingdom Lodge. I also haven't uploaded photos for a while, so here are a ton of photos ranging from where I work to visiting Magic Kingdom and seeing the fireworks show Wishes for the first time.

Now I have to jump all the way back to sunday. After finishing my lifeguard training, I felt like I needed a night away from the apartment. So Vada and I went to Downtown Disney to see all the tourists. We also wandered through shops I had never seen before like Goofy's candy company (photo below)

This place had amazing amounts of candy and sugary creations that are beyond imagination. prices are a bit steep for the original candies, however at some point I will go back right after pay day :)

There is some amazing wildlife here. Most of the animals stay away, like birds, and lizards, but some are a little braver like this bird that decided that the boat motor would be an amazing place to land. The squirrels are also very brave and will beg for food, they are annoying.

There is always amazing entertainment at Downtown Disney, sometimes it is the saxophone guy that places popular tunes, but on sunday it was the guy playing a double handle guitar and a didgeridoo.

And our last stop at DownTown Disney was TREX, or as I like to call it the Dino-store :) They have build a dinosaur there (like build a bear), and to celebrate both of us completing our training we built Rexie (The green one) and Pablo (the pink one). Mine is Rexie and here they are on the bus ride home.

Ok, now to photos of one of the locations that I work at. This is Coronado Springs Resort, which is a moderate plus resort at Disney World. I have only been able to take photos here because you have to be out of uniform to take photos, and I haven't made it to Animal Kingdom lodge. So here is the pool. It has a Mayan Pyramid and a slide that has a jaguar spit water on you. Its a pretty pool.

Here is el centro, the main check in area with most of the food for the resort.  Each section of the resort has slightly different theming but I think that this section is the prettiest. 

 And here is the map of the resort. The orange section is what is pictured above and the dig site is the pool. There are a whopping 1917 rooms at this resort and has a full convention center.

Final section of this post, I promise :) and this is the fun section! Magic Kingdom! To get there we have to catch a bus to a resort then catch another form of transportation to get there. There is sadly no direct bus. So I got to tour the Polynesian Resort, another deluxe resort that is worth taking a look at. Our first stop was meeting Tinkerbell. The theming was amazing, even having a thimble that was on display. Tinkerbell loved my hair :)

 And I have to have a selfie with the castle and if you look closely the statue of walt disney and mickey mouse is behind me too.

 The first ride I went on, the haunted mansion. These figures really freaked me out.

After serval other rides that I have not posed about so you aren't reading an epic, we waited for the projected light show on the castle, we were also have a crazy heat lighting storm, as seen in the photo below.

So they are able to project images on the castle and everyone should see this show, it is amazing. Here are some of the highlights for me. 

Alice in Wonderland's cheshire cat and Wreck it Ralph

 Little mermaid and the beautiful lanterns from my favorite movie Tangled.

 the left castle is when they were running through all the old princesses, and frozen on the right.

 representing more princesses on the left, and UP on the right.

and then there were the fireworks. Wishes, which is the title of the show was amazing and I won't lie I cried during it. 

 I miss everyone back in Oregon! Hope everything is going well for you :)
~Courtney

After three long days of training, I was able to test for my new lifeguard certificate with Ellis instead of Red Cross. I am happy to say that I passed the license first try through and not only did I pass I also scored perfectly! So now I get the ea key chain on my hip pack! 

Yay! Tonight I am going to the parks to have some fun before I start site specific training and testing tomorrow morning at 08:00. I am finally getting use to military time now that I have a watch that uses it and I am now used to being in Eastern Time instead of pacific! This makes early mornings much better!

meetings, training and more fun!

So this week has been a lot of trainings. Coronado Springs Resort and then today was Animal Kingdom Lodge. Both are beautiful resorts and have amazing pools. I am so excited to finish my training next week and be full time working. Working for Disney has been amazing so far, I am really enjoying it. Tonight was a welcome event called Off to Neverland. We got to have dinner and take photos with Peter Pan and Wendy. Tomorrow starts three more days of specific lifeguard training before being back on location and by the end of the week I will be done with training!