First days off

Hi again!

We're still in the middle of training. We've moved past all the welcome to the company/Animal Kingdom general training, and are working on Wilderness Explorer specific stuff now. So some work on interpretation (how to tell a story about something and connect it to guests' lives) and a lot of information about the specific animal stations we'll be staffing. This will continue for the next few days, with our scheduled first official day in the park on June 26th (happy birthday Dad!).

I had my first two days off on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. So Tuesday night was spent at Magic Kingdom, and all of Wednesday was at Animal Kingdom.  Highlights from those days:

• We watched Wishes (the fireworks show at Magic Kingdom) from behind the castle, which was a first for me. It was more immersive than I'd ever experienced before, because the fireworks were going off all around us 
• For some reason Animal Kingdom wasn't too crowded when we were there, so we were able to ride Expedition Everest (the major roller coaster ride there) four times. Including once at night, which was incredible
• One of my friends was able to get us amazing seats at Festival of the Lion King (FOLK), which was absolutely phenomenal. It's a Broadway level show that includes all of the songs from the movie and features insane monkey tumblers and a fire dancer and flying bird acrobats. 
• We also got to meet Mickey and Minnie, always a lot of fun :)

Splash Mountain at Magic Kingdom...notice my "RAWR" hands

The nighttime parade at Magic Kingdom

Awesome hidden Mickey at Animal Kingdom's Affection Section (petting area)

Front row for FOLK!

Bird/acrobat at Festival of the Lion King.  She is so amazing!

Tumble monkeys!

Adventurer Minnie and Mickey

With everyone

The Tree of Life at night

Thursday I did "big girl" things: grocery shopping, laundry, getting gas, writing thank you notes. My friend Courtney and I also explored and went to Cast Connection, which is a cast member (CM) exclusive store with Disney merchandise available at a crazy discount. I'm talking $100 Vera Bradley bags available for $20-30, character pillow pets for $10-20, and tees for $5-15. And lots else. And, kind of randomly, food. Also for a really good price, so I did some of my grocery shopping there.

Friday was another full day of training, followed by Finding Dory in 3D! We went at Disney Springs and had some time before the show started, so we ventured out and found the vegan bakery here. I had vegan chocolate soft serve ice cream (coconut milk based) and was a very happy Katie :)  The movie was really cute, you should all go see it!

Vegan bakery nom nom nom

Very happy Katie :D

Finding Dory!

Nothing super exciting to note about today, just more training.  Things I am getting used to:

• Not having my weekends actually be Saturday/Sunday
• Just being able to go to the parks whenever...
• Fireworks at night are a regular occurrence, so you can see them just driving around

That's it from me for now!  Hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer.

Happy early (only by a little bit) Father's Day Dad and Pop Pop! I hope you both have an excellent day and I'll talk to you tomorrow.