The last three days were definitely a new experience--every day I had a new responsibility that I had literally 0 experience for. If you know me, I’m like a grumpy little old man: I hate change, I hate new routines, etc. So, while this had me entirely stressed out, when it was all said and done, I was really impressed with how much I liked it.Â
So, two days ago at Fantasmic!, I was our sandwich stocker (surprisingly, we don’t have sandwiches at the cart, only churros and ice cream). So, I asked the coordinator a brief rundown of what I had to do, and basically it is to totally stock the cart up with soda and ice cream, prepare the displays, get the churros prepped and ready (the cooker on our food pad actually cooks them), and make our famous Sorcerer’s Lemonade. I was running around freaking out because I had never worked this cart before and I was so scared I was going to mess something up. I asked our ICC (the overall stocker for the show) if I had done everything right and her exact words were “For someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, you sound like you know what you’re doing”. I was really happy about that! The rest of the night was just spent with me filling orders with our register, making sure we had enough popcorn, chips, chocolate sauce, etc., and then cleaning and unloading our stock at the end of the night.Â
The next day was definitely the worst day I had had at work, and it’s not because of anything anyone did, it was just a weird day. So, I was scheduled to work a 2.5 hour shift before Fantasmic. When I went to clock in where I normally do, it said I was deployed to Studio Catering Company. So I had to run there and clock in there and figure out what was going on. I got put on trash bussing for the entire shift, which isn’t ENTIRELY terrible, but I definitely will not be asking to do that again. At one point, someone hadn’t double bagged the trash and garbage juice got all over my arms and I actually cried because I was so grossed out. The weird part of the day is when I went to Fantasmic. Somehow, my deployment got messed up and I had to totally clock out of the system and then get re-added into the system to work my Fantasmic shift. God bless the people at Cast Deployment is all I have to say because I had noooo idea what was going on.Â
Yesterday was also an interesting day for me, as I started in our Pretzel Kitchen. I looked at one of the coordinators and said “Uh, I’ve never done this before!” and he laughed and said “Welcome to work!” I was really uneasy at first because I had no idea what I was doing, but it ended up being such a fun shift. I helped in cooking our famous Mickey Pretzels, the churros, and the cinnamon pretzels, and I learned how to go to the different wagons and restock their pretzels and such. Definitely a low-stress, fun shift. I also really liked the people that I worked with. It’s a lot of predicting supply and demand, because you don’t want anyone to run out of their stock, but you also don’t want to overstock them to the point that they aren’t selling what you bring them. Afterwards, I headed to our nut cart in front of Great Movie Ride to finish my shift. That was ALSO an interesting shift. Somehow, the motor on our nut cooker got stuck because so much sugar had caked on it and dried. Luckily, all it took to fix it was some hot water and a little bit of time. We were pretty slow yesterday, but I did get to make a magical moment for two boys. Their dad came up to me and said “These poor children have been deprived of a dessert after dinner and they’re looking to have some ice cream.” The older one wanted a sandwich, and the younger one didn’t want anything. So I asked him if he HAD to choose one, what would he get, and he told me just a regular Mickey Premium Bar. So, I grabbed them both out of the cooler and said “Since you have been so greatly injusticed by not having dessert today, it’s on Mickey!” They were so excited, and the dad was really happy that we did that for him. It’s stuff like that that really makes love my job.Â
