Under the Cap: Traditions & Wishes

Before Chatham 9201 became official Disney employees, we spent a day as close to the parks as possible - resort hopping! We took the afternoon to simply walk around the different resorts by Magic Kingdom including the Contemporary Resort, the Polynesian Village Resort and Spa, the Grand Floridian, and the Wilderness Lodge; all of which are gorgeously themed!

Our first stop was the Contemporary Resort. The Contemporary and the Poly were two of the original resorts on property when the park opened in 1971, so they've got their own little 70's flare to them :)

left: monorail passing through the resort

right: center "aisle" area of the resort. the rooms are along the sides

Chatham 9201 ladies!

We then hopped on the monorail inside and went to the Polynesian Village Resort and Spa (called the Poly for short).

left: beginning our walk through the poly, you can just barely see the castle in the background and space mountain

right: taking clear note of the warning signs around the beach of the poly, also these are the bungalows at poly; if i had a million dollars i'd definitely stay a night here!

The water in front of the Magic Kingdom area (same that is shown in these pictures) is a man-made lake called the Seven Seas Lagoon and Disney has its own fleet of course made up over 750 watercraft! We hopped aboard the Explorer which was the very first launch boat designed and built for the park. The Explorer took us to the Grand Floridian (which was gorgeous!! wish I had more pictures), before we capped off our afternoon at the Wilderness Lodge.

from left to right: the dock for the launch boat, space mountain in the far distance, the explorer (our launch boat), the contemporary resort, the polynesian bungalows

grand floridian lobby

wilderness lodge lobby; very similar to the grand californian in disneyland

The next day was SUPER EXCITING!! My first day on the job at orientation! Traditions! You go through all of the customary work orientation details, but of course there's a Disney flare to it all! Disney trivia was worked into the mix and we took a little break to explore the Magic Kingdom!! Yep, we went into the parks for part of part of our orientation! So much fun and interesting to enter the parks from that point of view. We entered the park through the Utilidors which is WDW's backstage area that is located beneath the park. The park itself is technically the second floor created when they dug out the massive lake that is in front of the park.

left: the exterior of Disney University

right: being greeted by pluto as we entered a classroom (goofy was also hanging out of the ceiling at another part of the building)

murals on either end of our classroom

visiting the castle during our class; we came just as a show on the castle was beginning!

When we returned to Disney University after our little excursion, the boss man himself came into the room to welcome us to the Disney family! And then the magical moment came where we received our nametags!!!

boss man mickey!

we received our own pair of classic mickey ears and our name tags!

Three of my other roommates also had traditions in the morning, so when we got back to the apartment, we fully intended on changing and getting right back to the park... instead... we all accidently took three hour naps! We all woke up around 5:30 that morning, so I guess a nap wasn't totally out of the question :) We finally got ourselves up and headed over to the Magic Kingdom! We got several rides in and we watched the fireworks show and the electrical parade!