Monday, July 5, 2010

The Glitter, Duke, THE GLITTER!

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Yes, I know I'm a day late, but the 4th happens to be one of the busiest days at Magic Kingdom. So I was working all day, and then managed to get off just before the fireworks. So a friend and I tried to head over to the Hub to see them from in front of the castle, but we got stuck at Liberty Square. Oh well, we enjoyed them anyway.

But as far as work goes, it was busy. I mean really, really, really busy. We reached capacity sometime between 4:00 and 6:00, which would have happened earlier except it was drizzling all day. Lines were HUGE. Even in Fantasyland. It's a small world had a 40 minute wait and Peter Pan had a 70 minute wait. And those were just the two I happened to see.

And me... I was stocking the Princess store. It was my first time stocking that location, and although that store is always busy, it was almost ridiculous how crowded it got in there. I couldn't even get people to move out of the way so I could put stuff on the shelves. It was insane. There were two of us stocking in there yesterday and even then it looked like a bomb had hit the store.

For my readers who've never been to the parks and been in a store of this kind, I'll give you a quick rundown. We sell princess merchandise of all kinds. One side of the store is dedicated to toys, dolls, frames, books, etc. while the other side is all of the dress up merchandise: the dresses, wigs, shoes, crowns, gloves, and other assorted accessories for each princess.

And if you haven't seen the princess dresses we sell at the parks, let me tell you they are very, very glittery. And to add even more to the glitter, we do a magical moment where we "pixie dust" little princesses (and their families too) by sprinkling superfine glitter in their hair so they can make a wish. So I was already glittery from the stupid dresses. And then one of my fellow cast members ambushed me with pixie dust, so I had glitter ALL OVER. It even got under my shirt, heavens knows how...

And if you don't believe me about the glitter, I'll leave it at this final image. The stockroom upstairs for this store is pretty much just dresses. Everything else has to be brought up from the downstairs stockroom in our dumbwaiter. So there's probably about 200 dresses of assorted sizes hanging on two racks along the walls that are perpendicular to each other. In the corner where these two racks overlap is the portion of floor where excess glitter and pixie dust get swept out of the way during the day. The glitter on the floor here is 1/4"-1/2" deep. No joke. It looks like very sparkly sand. And that's just from what falls off the dresses. Lots more of it stays stuck to them. Or gets on me when I'm stocking them apparently.

Three more fun things from my shift yesterday:

1. About 3:00 we got this family who had a little girl and a baby boy in a stroller. About every minute or so the kid in the stroller would shout "NO!" at the top of his lungs. Just randomly. Not in response to anything. His parents just ignored him, so I assume he'd been doing it for awhile. I think somebody had just learned a new word.

2. There was a mother who really wanted to buy her little girl (she looked like she was maybe 2 or even a little younger) a Belle dress. But the girl wasn't having any of it. So Mom finally grabbed her and (literally) shoved her in the Belle dress. And of course the girl started screaming bloody murder. So one of my coworkers brought her a mirror and as soon as she saw her reflection she stopped screaming. She stayed perfectly happy until they left the store.

3. A little girl and her big sister were walking through the store when she tripped and fell. And although I don't think she really hurt anything, she started crying buckets. Her mom knelt down to see if she was okay, and as Mom hugger her, little sister caught sight of the princess barbies over Mom's shoulder. The tears instantly ceased and she skipped over to the toys perfectly fine. Mom just rolled her eyes and apologized for her little drama queen. We gave her some pixie dust and sent her on her way happy as a clam.

So that's it for me today. I hope you had a safe holiday!

Oh, and for those who are wondering about the title of this post, it's a sort of parody from this Popsicle commercial I always used to see as a kid:

Don't know why, but it seemed to fit the glitter (in my head anyway). And I love you can find stuff like this on YouTube...


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Have a Disney-related question about the parks, movies, or even about me? Check out the Ask A Cast Member feature and send in your questions!