YayKelsey

Oh, I loved the Boardwalk costumes! I wish I'd taken pictures of mine, but I never got around to it.

Yeah, it has discounts and everything on it. I'd offer to get back on, but it takes a ridiculously long amount of time to load for me and I don't have time to wait, I'm on my way to work. I think Cirque is 50% off, but you have to buy the tickets on the day of the show and it's based on availability. There's all sorts of random discounts. I always ended up just asking wherever I was if that had CM discounts. Quizno's had I think it was 15% off which was fantastic because I ate there almost daily. They knew my sandwich.

Nope, you are absolutely not allowed to accept tips. If you refuse three times, you can take the tip and have to give it to a tipped position or to management. Yes, there are blackout dates. I looked them up on the portal and for 2007, they were: Walt Disney World® Resort Magic Kingdom® Park: July 4, December 25 - 31, 2007 Epcot®: December 31, 2007 Disney-MGM Studios: December 27 - 31, 2007 Disney's Animal Kingdom® Park: April 2-11, December 26-30, 2007 So it doesn't say anything about New Year's, but I'm sure you can find out when you get there. And it could change for next year. How the tickets work, is this. It's kind of weird to explain online. You get a main entrance pass. Since we are CPs, they are the blue main entrance passes. You are allowed six visits throughout your program. With each visit, you can bring up to three people into the park with you. Even if you only bring in one person with you, it still counts as a full visit. You have to be with your guests when you enter the first park and you are held accountable for your guest's actions. You do not receive actual paper tickets until you go to the park and you get a comp. one-day park hopper ticket for each person with you. And you'll have to show at least your CM Id and sometimes a picture ID. Did that make sense?

If you are doing bell services in any position except for bellman, you are NOT allowed to accept tips. If you are found accepting tips, they can and will terminate you. I never knew a CP as a bellman.

Oh, there is a new apartment complex. It's not replacing Vista as far as we were told, but they had it on the Portal. Opening 2008 sometime.

Bell Services is strictly luggage. The pargo driving role that you're talking about is called the Front Desk Runner. Technically, you must be trained in front desk in order to be a runner. At my resorts, the runners were all front desk people. But I have heard at other resorts, in desperate times, bell services would help out. But just to take like an amenity to a room. They never worked full shifts or anything.

I'd have to agree and say I thought it was the tackiest park centerpiece between all the parks. You can really tell Disney put no thought whatsoever on the thing when it came around to building it. I definitely think they could have done a lot better. The hat originally went up for the 100 Years of Celebration. Strong rumors in the GMR cast have it that it has to stay up because the owners of the Gauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and Disney are having disagreements about copyright infringement. The hat allows pictures of Disney-MGM Studios to be published without Mann's Theatre being visible.

Okay, thank you. I definitely tried to forget about the non-CPs. A lady that had done DRC since it opened tried to tell me how bell services worked when we were training for front desk (Telling me by screaming at me about DME in the middle of training, even though I had been working on DME for months). Thank goodness the facilitator took her aside and she almost got kicked out of the class. All in all, it's great for some people. I think there really just needs to be a reality check before people go. I packed up and left in the middle of the night, and most of my building helped me saying that they wished they could leave like me, which is a sad reality. A lot of people quit. Or get terminated, but I was really surprised by how many people quit. But the CP is a factory, they can just churn more people out faster than you can snap your fingers.

Joker's Revenge. Thank god it's not at my park anymore, I hated it.

Disney World: Alien! Encounter Tower of Terror Rockin' Rollercoaster Stitch's Great Escape Soarin' Expedition Everest Uh, and I don't know if anything opened this year. Disney's a blur now. And that's probably it, since I pretty much lived at my home parks growing up. (SFOT 1989 - 2004 and SFFT 2004 - Present)

Stuck outside in bell services, that is. Oh, I worked at Six Flags for 2 years. It's not even comparable. Guests are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on their hotel stay vs. $40 for a Six Flags ticket. It's a whole new magnitude.

Oh, by the way, RS was my favorite resort to work at doing bell services.

You get bitched at. A lot. Pretty much non-stop, all day, every day. If there aren't enough bellmen there, they have to wait, which is your fault. If they decided to wait until 5 minutes before their bus leaves to try and get to the front of the resort, it's your fault. If their plane was late, it's your fault. If it rained, it's your fault. If they hate their kids, it's your fault. You're the first ones they see. Also, you're usually the first ones that call about anything. I became an expert on anything and everything about the resort before I ever trained for front desk, from housekeeping to rec to busses to food. Oh, and Disney Magical Express...you'll learn to hate it more than anything else you have ever experienced. See, the DME reps don't bother telling guests that it'll be 3-4 hours (on average) and 5-7 hours (during peak) AFTER they check-in for the luggage to be at the resort. So, when they check-in and their luggage isn't there, guess what? It's your fault. And that one is the worst of them all, because you really can't do anything about it besides apologise a lot. During my last week, I picked up a shift outside, and was even yelled at by a guest for apologising too much and they're just never satisfied. Dispatchers also will receive and organise the DME luggage. Think getting about 100-200 bags every 30-60 min. and having to sort it by guest, write it all down, scan it into the computer, look up gst's room number, and find some bellmen to take it up, as they're usually gone. But when it's not busy, it's a great job. No sitting down ever though. And it's sweltering and you're pretty much SOL. Bellmen are very tempermental too! They bitch and moan if you go out of order or if someone didn't give them a tip or something, your fault too. My roommates always felt sorry for me. I came home with insane stories. Oh, it's not really a hard one to be chosen for, I think they only put CPs in there when they hired too many for hospitality. They usually put the older, retirees as door greeters and the people from other countries that aren't so great at English as the lane greeters. Pretty much every CP I met in bell services (and there weren't many, especially outside of my resorts) had been hired or wanted front desk and got stuck outside. There def. weren't any bell service CPs at Coronado or Caribbean. There was one guy that did DME at Grand. And there were several at Riverside, but not at FQ.

They try their best to put you in the housing you request as far as number of rooms goes. Keep in mind that Vista Way only has 2 and 3 bedroom apartments so if you want 1 or 4 bedrooms, you will more than likely end up at Chatham Square (they have 2 and 3 bedrooms as well). Also, at Vista all the 2 bedrooms are on the third floor...something to think about when packing. When I was going through the paperwork before I went down in 2003 they were trying this thing where you fill out a questionnaire and they try and place you with similar people. I.E. late night person vs early morning person. I'm still not sure how successful that is, as the people I ended up rooming with were people I was standing next to in line with the same check-out dates (as it had been all the years before then). Yeah, they scrapped the questionnaire this most recent season (quite unfortunate, half of my roommates were nightmares), but the CP rep lady at VW said they were going to try to do it for at least next spring, maybe this fall, because she said they had had a ton of complaints about roommates this season, so they're trying to make it that you can get your roommates before hand and at least sort out who's bringing what so you don't have 4 TVs. (We did.)

Oh, I did bell services. I was hired and drove across the country and statused as front desk, but they refused to train us for 3 months. So they stuck us in bell services for those 3 months, so ask away! They're okay about giving you the apartment you request. I told them I wanted whatever was cheapest, so I was offered 3 bdrm in Vista or 2 bdrm in Chatham as my only options, and the Chatham was $12 a week more. So I opted for Vista. And I went with a friend, and we ended up rooming together. My other roommates arrived at all hours of the day, so I don't know how we all ended up together.