Welcome to the Family: Disney Traditions

You know how once in a while you'll wake up and you just know it's going to be an especially good day? (If you don't know, you may need to lighten up on life a little bit.)

For me, this day was last Thursday. It was finally Traditions day! Traditions is a mandatory 4-hour orientation/class all about the Walt Disney Company. During Traditions, you get your company ID that let's you into the parks, a behind the scenes tour of Magic Kingdom, and your Disney name tag.

After check-in, my roommates and I had a couple days before Traditions to relax, see Les Miserables, and get some shopping done. We had one housing meeting on Tuesday, which sounds boring, but of course Disney made it really fun and interactive, despite all of the rules we had to cover.

With these couple days to spare, I woke up on Thursday well-rested for the first time in a while! Not to mention the sun was shining for the first time since we had been here (believe it or not..it was mostly overcast before). Cat had Traditions from 8am-12pm, and the rest of my roommates and I had it from 2-6pm. Luckily we caught Cat as she was coming off her bus as we were about to get on, and got a quick roommate photo!

Our bus driver to Traditions was hilarious. He was singing along to the radio and cracked sarcastic jokes like "I'm so cool, I sleep in the refrigerator at night..." We got off at Disney University and were split up into classrooms.

Traditions was overall really fun! They showed us videos throughout the class of Walt Disney himself and what it meant to work for the company, and honestly they made the whole room tear up. But not me of course....

We learned the four key basics of working here: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency. (in that order.) But we also some played games such as trying to name as many animated characters as we could in 30 seconds. My table came in 2nd place with 36, and the table that won got 37. So close! 

After our tour of Magic Kingdom, we came back to the classroom and someone paid us a special visit!

Mickey Mouse himself brought us our name tags!

As I looked around the classroom, everyone else was staring down with their eyes glued to them.

After Traditions was over, you better believe the first thing my roommates and I did was rush over to Magic Kingdom with our brand new free passes!! 

We only had about 2.5 hours until the park closed at 9pm. (Off-season hours...) In that time, we watched the Electrical Parade, went on Haunted Mansion, watched the Wishes fireworks show, and rode Space Mountain. For a Thursday in January, it was surprisingly crowded! If you can imagine the fish trying to "swim down" in Finding Nemo, getting through the crowd was like trying to swim up.

But the real adventure began after we were ready to go home.

Since we took a bus to Traditions, and another to get to Magic Kingdom, you would think we could just hop on the bus to go home right? Wrong.

We finally found out we had just missed the 9:30 bus, and the next one wasn't until 10:30. So we killed some time by looking at a small gift shop near the bus stop at the exit of the park. We were starving, the very first thing I bought with my 40% off discount was a cherry coke and a bag of potato chips. Then we proceeded to sit on the sidewalk with about 20 other CPs for the next 40min waiting for the bus. After check-in, we assumed our "sidewalk days" were over, but I guess not!

Magic Kingdom is easily the busiest park, with (I think) the most college program kids working there. So what happens when the bus finally arrives to our rescue? It's completely full. The next bus wasn't coming for another hour. 

Not taking no for an answer, the bus driver gave us a tip to walk over to the Polynesian Resort where there was a different bus stop. We get there only to find out....

The next bus wasn't coming for another hour.

WHAT IS THIS!? It was almost 11pm and all we wanted to do was go home only about 7 miles away!

Luckily, my roommates had a different plan. We stealthily snuck away from the group of CPs waiting on the curb, and searched for a cab hub at the resort. (Which by the way, is BEAUTIFUL! I literally felt like I was in Hawaii...but 11pm after a long day was not the ideal time to explore...)

We found ONE small cab waiting outside, and crammed the six of us into what should've been a 4-seater. At this point we were happy and laughing about what had just happened and couldn't believe how difficult it was just to get back! 

We felt a little bad for those left behind (or at least I did)...and I still wonder sometimes how much longer they were out there for at the Polynesian.

That night was when it hit me that I'm living here. Every time I go to Disneyland or Disney World I dread having to leave and wish I could just stay forever. Being able to call this place home for 4 months is a real dream come true.