Song of the South

For once I’ve kept myself somewhat busy this past week, which was fun. Monday after work I stayed at the Magic Kingdom to meet a friend for the afternoon. We wandered around, rode a few rides – I got to finally ride Big Thunder Railroad. I cannot remember the one in Disneyland Paris well, but for some reason I felt the Paris one was better, no idea why though. It was still fun and a long ride so it’s worth the wait if you don’t fastpass it. Tuesday Alex, one of my roommates, and I went to Blizzard Beach since our free entry to the water parks expired yesterday, and neither one of us had been to that one yet. It was a fun day, but nowhere near as fun as our water parks back home – we have a lot more rides and more worth the money in my opinion.

Wednesday brought along my first Spare shift at Animal Kingdom, which turned out to be very eventful. I got to make a new friend – Brer Fox – who appeared on set with Brer Bear. The first two sets was nice and sunny, the third they were only out for about 10 minutes when it started raining. Since they were not under cover, they had to make a run for it offstage for shelter. The rain continued, sideways might I add, and Animal Kingdom doesn’t follow the same rules as the rest of the parks, so the characters were out in that, which in my opinion was ridiculous. The Brer’s were moved to the Kiosks where normally there’s one character in each kiosk, but since no one expected spares the characters had to be moved around, and in the end the Brer’s shared a kiosk with Pocahontas – slightly odd pairing. So the characters still had to go out in the storm, which again: why? Every time they came back from onstage they were soaked, I’m sure the fury character such as the Brer’s, Baloo and King Louis didn’t enjoy it too much.

The follow two days was Crystal Palace, where a guest pulled on Eeyore’s big nose, hurting him. Saturday was my Magic Kingdom Spare shift, where I got pulled for Contemporary Breakfast. Now that brings me to yesterday: Brave Event – Highland Games. Very different from what I’ve been doing for the past 5 months. It was the first day the Games have been open the whole day since there was no rain until later last night. My goodness it was hot. My usual job is hot, but it’s different. A little hard to explain, but where I’ve been for the past 5 months you sweat like there’s no tomorrow for 45 minutes – running down your face, the works. But then you can change into new clothes. This is a different type of heat. You’re in the sun the whole day. Slightly sweating, but not crazy like my usual job, I got sunburnt – I now have a lovely mark where my watch was. You faint. You get sick. Thank you heatstroke, two people ended up going home because of that, I had less than two hours left so I stayed. After being in aircon to cool down I felt a lot better. What I’m worried about is: that was day one. What will the other days be like? Oh. And guess what. I’m stuck there all next week too. Not too pleased about that, plus the fact I was talking to some fellow Cast Members who said that we’re all most likely stuck there until July 8 (the end date of the Games). In that case: LAME, because then the next day my brother comes, by the time he leaves I’ll have 2.5 weeks left of being a performer. I feel like I’ve been cheated, since I expected I’d have a bit more time to say goodbye to my ‘friends’. Oh well, let’s just hope these weeks fly by, and that I don’t get too burnt.