On Wisconsin!

I am currently sitting on the floor of my families house in Wisconsin. 1997 was a pretty good year for me; my little sister was born which has given me the privilege of watching her grow up the last 17 years. She's pretty nice but also sometimes sassy. Last night I surprised her on her senior night for volleyball. We waited until they announced her and came through the back door. The whole family was in on it as well as her coach. One of the best moments of our awesome sisters lives so far!

A few weeks ago I applied for a transfer within the company to concierge at any of the Disney resorts. After a 20 minute interview, casting said yes and everyone that was approved for a transfer were all on a wait list and would receive a call based on seniority. I waited about two weeks but I received my call this morning and they're transferring me to concierge at Art of Animation, the newest resort on Walt Disney World property. My start date is November 9th!

Life is really good right now and things are going really well! That's all for now. :)

"..we finish each others.. sandwiches!"

Here I am again! Blogging twice in one week.. it's a new record! WOOHOO!

The other day I went with some friends to Hollywood Studios to see the special event going on, Frozen Summer Fun. Disney really thought this one out before unveiling it! Complete with indoor ice skating, a play area filled with snow (aka shaved ice because former WI people know real snow), specialty themed food & cupcakes and a fireworks show. I was especially excited about the fireworks of course. 

 

When you enter the park Cast Members give you a super cute cutout of Olaf, where guests are asked to take pictures with him, share them on social media with #olafsummervacation for the chance to get into a video shown during the fireworks show. It's now my goal to get in that video. Some of the songs from the Frozen soundtrack played during the fireworks and at the end it magically snowed!

Above is a video I took of the finale and it's pretty spectacular. The event ends on September 1st right now and I'm going back again before it ends for sure!

Rain rain go away

The last few days I've been trying to figure out what to blog about this time and I've finally come up with something. I planned on going to see the fireworks show at Hollywood Studios tonight with some friends and of course.. BOOM.. rain. Rain all day. Not like drizzly rain..serious driving rain.

This is a view out my window of my car and Dan's van surrounded by our very own river. I call it "The Dream Ruiner", guess I'll just have to let it go, let it go can't hold it back anymoreeeeee (I'm done now).  

In mourning of the loss of what was supposed to be an awesome first day off in almost a week I've decided to do a collage of my favorite pictures of the fireworks I've previously attended. For those of you who don't know, there are nightly fireworks shows at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and Hollywood Studios at varying times. All are equally as amazing and some of my favorite things about Walt Disney World. 

This one was from awhile ago when I was on my college program. The different shapes the fireworks make don't always turn out so when I got this picture I was really happy about it! 

Nick took this one at EPCOT one of the first time we went to the park together with some of our other friends. I'm pretty sure it was 60ish degrees and I was wearing jeans and a fleece jacket. Don't judge me. 

One of the best pictures I've ever taken. Christmas is the most magical times of the entire year at Magic Kingdom and Walt Disney World. So so beautiful with the lights on the castle. I especially love the Walt and Mickey statue at the bottom. Cannot wait for this year!

These two are the most recent at Magic Kingdom and I think the colors on the castle and fireworks are beautiful. 

Although they are nightly occurrences at the parks, I feel blessed to have the opportunity to experience the magic whenever I want. It's sometimes tough to feel that way when the struggles of working, bills, life and rain get in the way but there's always a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of everydayyyyyy (carousel of progress anyone?).

Thanks for reading! 

I'm baaaaccckkkk!

I just got off the phone with my Grandma Jane and was multitasking while looking at my last blog post from November 20th, 2013 of which the first sentence referenced her thinking I needed to blog while we were talking about how I needed to get back to blogging.. so here is the short of the last few months:

I moved into an apartment not too far from Disney property with two roommates, Dan and Alicia, who were both down here on the college program last year as well. We live in a three bedroom, three bath so we all have our own spaces. It's pretty great.

After my college program ended, I stayed on with Disney as a Seasonal employee while I was waiting to hear about a part time or full time position. After what felt like forever, I was offered a role as a Vacation Planner at Magic Kingdom. I primarily work selling tickets but I really enjoy using my knowledge of the Disney Parks and Resorts to help guests have a fun and memorable vacation.

                                                 This is my costume.. pretty attractive huh?

As most of you may know I met my boyfriend, Nick, while I was on my college program. Due to the nature of this post being an update of my life, I told him he was getting a small paragraph about him. His response.. "Who even blogs anyway?" and "OMG I made the cut!". Nick is from Illinois, actually not too far away from us back home. Our families live about 2 hours away, strange since we had to move all the way down to Florida to meet each other. He's a Bears fan. I feel sad for him all the time just like most Wisconsin people reading this post will. He works as a Training Specialist for Jeff Ellis Management, a third party company working with Disney to train all the lifeguards. He's really great at it even though he won't say it about himself. Things are going really well and he makes me very happy, even with the whole Bears fan thing.

   

Other then that life has just been a whole lot of transitioning into doing things on my own thousands of miles away from what I known. I am blessed with the capability of visiting the most magical places whenever I want so I can't complain too much about how I spend my days off. I've also had some awesome visitors over the last couple months and others are also welcome to come down whenever they want!

Overall things are going really really really well and I'm happy with where I am in my life right now. Still, I'm always thankful for the support from everyone in Florida and back in Wisconsin. I promised Grandma Jane I would blog once a week so I'll be back then. :) 

That's all for now!

My life.. an update!

It has been forever since I have blogged and I apologize to everyone who has been waiting and waiting for an update! but especially to my Grandma Jane because I know she probably has been thinking "Deanna.. you need to blog!".

Since the last time I wrote a lot has happened in my life! Let me start with Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party that I attended on Novemeber 1st. Some of my roommate's friends from Georgia were planning on coming to Florida for the party and she informed me that we were supposed to create one of a kind Alice in Wonderland costumes. Obviously I chose the Mad Hatter because he's great and I could wear a ton of crazy colors together. My roommate was Alice, one of her friends was the Queen of Hearts and two were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb. The costumes turned out amazing and I thought we looked super awesome all together! We, of course, wore them around all day and got some compliments but also some "you know Halloween was yesterday" comments.. we of course didn't care very much about those comments. :) 

Once we finally made it to Magic Kingdom for the Halloween party, I was really impressed with all the cool things you could do. They had trick-or-treating, special changes to rides, special characters and a Halloween parade. The parade was amazing! It started with the Headless Horseman taking a ride down mainstreet... he was really headless and on a real horse. SUPER COOL. The parade following it was really impressive as well with floats dedicated to villians, the Haunted Mansion ride, traditional characters dressed for the holiday and many more. Right after the parade I waited in line forever to Jack Skellington and Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack is one of the first Disney characters to actually interact with guests through speech.. it was different but really awesome at the same time.

After my picture excursion we went and watched HalloWishes, the Halloween themed fireworks. Of course that was amazing and impressive and super great. Always impressed with what the company can do. After that we rode some rides and were really sad to leave when it was over. Overall it was a great day. Hopefully I can go again next year!

A few days after after the Halloween party I was lucky enough to have Aunt Lynn and Uncle Mike come down and visit me here in Florida! They stayed at Caribbean Beach Resort where I work and I was really, really excited to see them when they walked out on the pool deck while I was working. Luckily I was able to leave work early and go to Downtown Disney with them the day they arrived. We had some dinner and discussed what they wanted to do the next few days.

They started their trip at EPCOT walking around the World Showcase the next day and I met them for dinner after work. It was great spending some time together and catching up on everything I missed back home. We stayed for the fireworks, which are always aweomse. The next day we went to Hollywood Studios where we went on some rides then decided to go back to EPCOT for awhile. It was  a great day!

My most favorite day was the Magic Kingdom day, obviously because it's my favorite park. I had class that morning so I ended up meeting them . We hung around there for a while, saw the electrical parade and stayed for the fireworks, which they had never seen before! I was like 'OMG. WE HAVE TO SEE THEM.' I never get tired of the fireworks and I know they liked them too. 

The highlight of the trip was going back to Downtown Disney for Cirque du Soleil: La Nouba. It was literally one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. There were children doing backflips onto each other's shoulders, tight rope walkers, people doing ridiculous flips onto buildings from trampolines and other amazing stunts. I REALLY hope I can go back and see it again someday. So very thankful they included in their plans for the show! I was really sad to see them go when their trip was over. Having a little piece of home was really nice for a change. Hopefully they will come back again soon!

In other news.. I am still waiting to hear back about my internships I applied for. 5 more days. Really nervous about it. 

I'm also planning out my own surprises for when my family visits next week! I CANNOT WAIT FOR THEM TO VISIT. SO, SO, SO looking forward to having a few days off and relaxing with them while they are here. 

WELL... that's my update for right now. I promise to blog sooner next time Grandma Jane. :) 

4 parks, 3 days... GO!

Last week I had some really super awesome visitors from home, Lauren and Stephanie, come down and visit me and my friend, Erin, who is also on program. All 4 of us were on the same RA staff together so I was excited to have a little piece of my Whitewater life visit for a few days. We planned for their visit for a couple weeks and literally had to sit down and figure out exactly how we were going to hit all the parks in the short amount of time they were visiting. CHALLENGED ACCEPTED. 

They flew in on Wednesday night, where we surprised them with their very own Mickey ears, which they loved, or at least that's what they told us. :) We decided to start the vacation off right and go to Magic Kingdom the following day. Erin luckily got some fast passes for us and we pretty much walked onto every ride throughout the day. We knew Stephanie really wanted to see the princesses so we especially had to spend some time taking pictures with them. They, of course, were great and I am happy we got the chance to see all 4 of them. It was great to spend time with friends from home and show them all the cool new things Magic Kingdom has to offer. The park closed early for the halloween party so we went over to Downtown Disney for dinner and hung out there for a little while. It was a really longgg but extremely fun day.

The next day we went over to Hollywood Studios and spent a significant amount of the day riding rides, seeing characters and walking back and forth between attractions because the lines were long. Still not sure why it was so busy that day but we made it work. Unfortunately we couldn't make it to Fantasmic because Lauren really super duper wanted to ride Test Track at EPCOT so we took the resort boat over there around 7. Since Food & Wine Festival is still going on the park was insanely busy on the World Showcase side so we power walked over to the rides. It was still 60 minutes long but when we finally got on it was so worth it. I hadn't been on it since they changed it either and I would wait in that line again.. and I don't even like lines anymore! Another long and tiring day was over but it was still so fun to be with Whitewater friends!

Animal Kingdom was next.. I hadn't been there yet since I started my program so I was very excited. We went of Expedition Everest, watched the Lion King show, became Wilderness Explorers and met Russell and Dug. I am so impressed with the park and the commitment everyone has to the animals and the environment. Hopefully some of the things they are doing there will carry over into the other parks. I can't wait to go back when my family starts coming down. I NEED to spend some more time there. 

Overall, it was a really great to spend some time with them at the parks catching up and reminiscing. So sad they couldn't just move in with me forever.

"Taste your way around the world!"

The other day I had the chance to spend some time with friends at Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival. The festival includes more than 25 countries for the annual event including Mexico, South Korea, Belgium, Poland, Brazil and Australia to name a few. Before you start, Epcot Cast Members give each person a 'passport' to get stamped after purchasing and trying something from each country.

During the festival you can also sign up for cooking classes, have the chance to meet some chefs, and "Eat to the Beat", where some famous bands play at specific times of day. Yesterday supposedly Sugar Ray played.. pretty sure people only know one song by them but it was a huge deal according to Facebook. The park is also offering some really great merchandise right now including some Chef Mickey ears and wine glass shaped sunglasses. Totally want some!

We walked around the entire World Showcase twice before actually deciding what we wanted to eat. I personally chose Italy, Greece and Japan. It was delicioussss and of course now I want to try each country and get every stamp.. if only I had a money tree!

Can't wait to go back!