A Blog-Worthy Night

Or at least that's what Tyler 1 said (I'm Tyler 2... for now). I'm gonna make this a blog-worthy weekend, as I never got around to publishing this weekend.

Each of the four parks has one night of the week that we stay open extra late for guests staying at a WDW Resort hotel. Epcot's night is usually Friday night, and for us it's usually a snooze-fest since the families with younger kids that frequent our ride usually go home before it gets that late. HISTA is equally boring when you're only spieling to 30 people or stacking 30 pairs of glasses. BUT, we got some excitement last night around 10:30.

I was standing at the podium inside the HISTA theater with mic in hand to welcome the next group of guests, but about 30 seconds after the music cue, I figured we had an empty show. Then my manager came through one of the doors, which I figured was a bad sign. He said we'd had a Signal 25 over at the ride, which is Disney-speak for fire. We have lots of Disney-speak terms, some are used in reference to the "show" that we're putting on (cast member, audience, costume, backstage, onstage, etc), and some are used so as not to alarm the guests or reveal too much info (that would include a signal 25). Anyway, the ride was being cycled-out and we were evacuating the entire building just in case. The building includes the ride, HISTA, and the Imageworks gift shop and play area. It's a lot of building to clear out, luckily we weren't too busy.

I met the rest of our crew out in front of the building and together we blocked off the Imagination Pavilion and told guests that we were currently experiencing technical difficulties. I found that it can be challenging saying this without revealing too much about the problem, since most guests ask further questions. We just did our best to direct the guests to other attractions. In the meantime, the fire truck had arrived and the crew was checking out the building. I'm not even sure if the cause of the alarm was determined, but it seems like it was a computer error, all the sensors were fine in the ride. We grudgingly returned to our posts to finish out our extra magical evening. The otherwise uneventful evening did end with Guest Service Fanatic cards all around (a kind of caught-being-good reward system).

Saturday night after work I had my Encore Cast Orchestra audition. I was scheduled until 9 and auditions went to 10:30, though I was doubtful I'd make it with our sort-of-reliable bus system. LUCKILY my co-worker Margaret, who has a car, agreed to drive me out to Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK) Wardrobe where the auditions were being held. I ended up being the very last to audition that night, but I felt it went alright. The judges had their poker faces on, and there weren't many others there, so I have no idea how I did in comparison. I did make a new friend there, however. His name is Tyler. He lives in my apartment complex. And he plays the violin. Any Tyler who plays the violin must be pretty cool, right? I'll hopefully get an email from the orchestra directors in the next week. I'll let you know how it went then.

Today's work wasn't super exciting. Ride and show operated without problems. We are now required to wear actual safety goggles when we're down in the maintenance bay washing glasses. I don't really see why, since the machining tools that maintenance uses are back behind a huge vinyl welding curtain, and they only ever use them at night, but I guess it's not a huge deal. We have been washing some new glasses in our machine these last few days. They're the latest from Dolby, and they're a lot cooler than the flimsy yellow glasses we use in the parks. These have some serious frames on them, they look like Oakleys, and the lenses are clear, except for a redish sheen on one side and a greenish sheen on the other, which comes from the polarized lenses. We are sending quite a few pairs through each day, some are getting taken out of the cycle as we go along. The glasses will be sent back to Walt Disney Imagineering at the end of the week so they can determine the results of the durability tests. From what I understand, Disney currently uses similar glasses to show 3D movies on their cruise ships. Each pair of glasses costs quite a bit more than our flimsy yellow ones, so they're embedded with RFID tags that set off an alarm if they get taken out of the theater. Cool stuff.