TRAINING DAY ONE- THATS ENTERTAINMENT!

Training day 1 (Friday May 30th)started pretty early in the morning. We had to be at the DAK wardrobe building at 8:15, which meant catching a 7:45 bus. On the bus, Sabina and I met Adam, Jackie and Trista, from Canada and Hong Kong respectively, who had completed earlier auditions and were also in our training class. We waited outside the building, and once again were picked up by a white 15 seater van. Apparently these vans are popular in our department. This one had Jo-Ellen at the wheel, the first of our trainers. She took us to Main Gate, a WDW office building with the entertainment training facility at the very centre of it. There we met Anne, our second trainer, who had the most happy laugh I have ever heard, and Karley, a floridian also in our class who was training to be fur and face characters-- Ariel is her face friend.
We began our training with Anne, who took us through the basics of animation and the importance of our role to many people. We watched a video of a little girl named Maggie who said to Mickey Mouse, "I've been waiting my whole life to meet you". It was touching... most of us cried, cause that is us now.
Halfway through the morning, we were interrupted by a crash at the door. When we opened it, there was no one there. A few seconds after we closed the door again, the door crashed open and the boss himself trolled in, waving a huge white hand. Mickey Mouse had arrived!
After greeting all of us, Mickey helped Anne demonstrate various picture poses and dos and donts of our job. For example, if a woman is in a bikini top the only approved pose is to link arms with her. In any picture, bot of our hands must be visible at all times.
We then went to lunch at animal kingdom's backstage cafeteria, called the Pride Rock caf, and got connected to the cast member website called the Hub in the Disney Learning Centre there. After lunch, we visited an off set location, where entertainers wait for their next set on stage to begin. This was my first time seeing people half in costume and it was a little jarring.
We went into camp Minnie Mickey and watched a set, observing things we had learnt that morning. It was very cool. At one point, mickey posed in a girl pose, and was subtly but instantly corrected by his photographer and attendant. Goofy forgot his hat, and had to go back for it, which was also kinda funny to see.
After our observation, we went back to main gate to practice walking and posing like a girl or boy character. this was cute, when we were boy we walked to I'll make a man out of you from Mulan, and when we were girls it was the Feminine song from aristocats.
Then we went to the T-lab for a bit and did some courses we had to do and then, we played a game called prices please, where we had to guess the costs of each part of a character costume. Lets just say they are expensive, and the buzz lightyear costs more than many cars. Once that was finished, we got to try on our heads, hands and feet for the first time. I was mickey, and the first time I saw the world through mickeys eyes was very memorable, I loved my job instantly.
After that it was time to head home.

We wantedto see Sex and the City friday night, and a bunch of canadians and brits headed out to disney in the hopes of seeing it, but it was all sold out, so we went to magic kingdom, taking a water taxi from downtown disney to coronado springs resort and then a bus to MK.. We went on the Pirates of the Carribean and the Monsters Inc Laugh floor, and didnt watch either spectro or wishes, which was wierd for all of us, cuz it was the first time i'd been in a park and not done the fireworks/parade. Lines are def shorter when everyone else is focusing elsewhere, and you can hear the fireworks inside louder than I would have expected.

And then It was home and sleep for me-- it was a long exhausting day!