Tuesday, June 19, 2012

I Had a Realization Today


I never really thought about it before, but most people who will be doing the program have never been to Florida for an extended period of time. I lived here my whole life and when I'm reading blogs about people currently doing the program, I think to myself, "Yeah? Lizards and Muscovy ducks, that's normal. What's the big deal?"

I just never put it together that people in other states actually don't HAVE these types of problems. (Then I'm quite envious, to be honest.) I can't count how many times I've been chased by an angry Muscovy or how many times I had to catch a lizard (or make my dad do it.) The bi-polar weather is nothing new to me, and wait till the dreaded lovebug take over. (Boy are you all in for a surprise.)

Muscovy Duck
Muscovy ducks are originally from Mexico and South America, but they have slowly made their way to the Sunshine State. They're very territorial and can be very mean. They have been known to chase dogs and people when they feel threatened. Not only are they ugly, but they also are considered pests. They eat away natural vegetation from lakes and ponds and then proceed to poop everywhere else. The males are bigger than the females at 34 inches long, and roughly about 10-15 pounds. The females are only 25 inches long, 6-8 pounds. So yeah, they're huge AND ugly. Wonderful. Pretty much, my only advice for you is to leave them alone and for the love of God, don't feed them.
The joyous lovebug

Lovebugs are harmless little creatures that's only goal in life is to annoy the hell out of everyone. They do not bite, they're just EVERYWHERE. About three times a year in Florida, we have a "lovebug season" where it seems we have black "snow" falling from the sky. This is not snow my friends, this is much worse. This is snow that once it falls to the ground, it gets back up again to fly about. There are so many lovebugs in the air that you can't walk outside without having hundreds of them swarm about your face.  There is no possible way to keep them out of your house, unless you barricade yourself in until it's all over, but even then you might get a few stragglers. Lovebugs have a simple life. They are single, the find a mate, attach to said mate to the butt, and fly around doing nothing for a couple of days until they lay eggs and die. The sad thing is, if you kill one of the attached bugs, the dead one will stay attached to the live one and the live one will carry it around until it too dies. Tragic, I know. But it's okay, you'll have a few hundred thousand take that ones place. (A bit of a side note, if you get a whole bunch on your car after driving it, try and rinse them off occasionally, the decaying bugs will eat away at the paint on your car.)

I have read that people are having a problem with frogs, also. Not big frogs, but the tiny tree frogs that are super abundant in Florida. Don't worry, they're not poisonous, but be warned, they do in fact pee on you. You go to catch it, to get it out of your home and back safe into the wild where it belongs, and BOOM your hand is now covered in frog pee. Cute, right? So, I advise that you wash your hands once you get the little one out on its merry way.

Lizards. They're pretty self explanatory. I can just say that don't grab it by the tail, it can pop it off whenever it feels like it. So you can think your crafty and grab its tail, but the lizard will make its grand escape and all you'll have is a lousy a souvenir to remember it by. So, if you have to grab one, try and get it on a newspaper, or paper in general, or grab it in the middle. I don't know if they bite, because I try to avoid all contact with them, but I wouldn't be surprised if it tried to. Fun, huh?

The flying cockroach from hell
But the fun does not stop there, my friends! There's no way you can properly be welcomed to Florida without a lovely greeting from the giant flying cockroaches from hell, Palmetto bugs! They look a lot like cockroaches, but do not be fooled. They're 1 to 2 inches long, and can FLY. Yes, you read right, they can FLY. It's personally my worst nightmare come to life, because roaches are the only things I run away from screaming. Add flight into the mix and I'm reduced to a crying 3 year old girl. Another lovely fact, when you "disturb" them, they produce an odor. A "disagreeable" odor, to quote Wikipedia. They like to stay in warm damp places, so, try to keep things dry. A plus side for those brave enough to go after the winged beast, they're slow. So if you can swat them down from the sky, you have time to kill them twenty times over. Have fun!
This can happen to you.

As for the weather, I can't determine how we thought it was a great idea to be called the "Sunshine State" because clearly we are the "Weather Can't Really Make Up It's Mind" state. Every day is humid, we have three days of spring, a week of fall, a few months of "cold" winter, and all the rest is "rainy, hot, sticky" days. We have flash floods all the time in the summer, it rains sideways for about 10-20 minutes and then there's not a cloud in the sky. The humidity kills every inch of your hair and decides that "frizzy" is the best look for you that day. Don't try and tame it, it won't work. You don't know how thick your hair really is until you come to Florida and the humidity decides that each strand has to be completely messed up. My advice, try to look up helpful de-frizzing anti-humidity hair products. I can't really suggest any because my hair is too short now to have a serious problem with humidity. Don't get me wrong, it's still annoying, but it's not as bit of an issue to me anymore.

There's no real point to this post, just that I've never thought about how different Florida might be to other people before. I've been more focused on what's going to happen at Disney when I finally get to work there, that I've completely ignored the fact that most people have to adapt to the weirdness of Florida. I'm lucky (un-lucky?) enough to be able to skip that step. (For the most part anyway.)

Image sources: http://www.ducks.org/hunting/waterfowl-id/muscovy-duck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_frogs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovebug
http://www.city-data.com/forum/florida/70177-palmetto-bugs-2.html
http://www.sheknows.com/beauty-and-style/articles/827105/fast-and-sneaky-beauty-boosters

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

It's Official! And the Roommate Search is OVER!

I'm moving out soon.


Yeah! Stuff!

Today my mom came home with a whole bunch of supplies I would need for my apartment at Disney World. She bought me a bed set for my room and a bunch of kitchen supplies and brought them home to show me and I just stood there in shock. I'm so ridiculously excited, I don't know what to do with myself. The next day she brought me a mattress pad, a egg carton cushion (because apparently the beds are uncomfortable...) and stuff for my Mickey Mouse themed bathroom.


Everything just hit home, in 68 days, I'm moving to Walt Disney World to pretty much have the experience of my life! My mom and I just started looking around at clothes to find me some business casual dresses for Traditions and my Disney classes, but we're having trouble finding ones that are long enough, because I'm freakishly tall for a girl. Haha.

Last night, I had a G+ Hangout with my roommates. It was AWESOME. I love all of them already. I'm super excited to see these girls in person and to spend almost five months with them. They will be my Disney family and we'll be celebrating all of the holidays together, which is a big deal for me. A brief description of all of us:

  • Alex- She's working Pirate's League, she's the only one who knows what she's going to be doing already. She's the shortest out of all of us, she's planning on doing a character audition, and she's pretty much the cutest person I've ever met. She's very bubbly and LOVES Peter Pan.
  • Brandi- She is the one who will be sharing a room with me, hopefully. She's going to be working merchandise. She wants to work at Magic Kingdom, somewhere in Adventureland. She's the oldest out of all of us and she's pretty much into everything I'm into, which is really awesome. We have a lot in common. She loves Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo, and she also shares my love of Captain Jack. ;)
  • Daurie- She is the one who seems the most down to Earth and calm out of all of us. While we're bouncing off the walls, excited about Disney, she's sitting there watching us, agreeing, and smiling. She's the one who has all of the Disney-themed board games that she'll be bringing so we can have game-nights. She will be working Quick Service Food and Beverage, she wants to work at Pizza Planet in Hollywood Studios. She lives the furthest away from Disney out of the four of us. I don't actually know which movie is her favorite, but she is the only one who will be flying into Orlando.
  • Katie (me)- I'm the techie nerd of the group. I'm the one who knows how to fix technology (most of the time) and I'll be the one drawing pictures for everyone. I'll be working attractions, and I only know that I'd want to work at either Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios. I love Pirates of the Caribbean and Aladdin, but my main man at Disney World is the Mad Hatter. :)
We all agreed that we want to live in Chatham Square in a Wellness (under 21) apartment, but nothing else has really been discussed. We all agreed that we'll be meeting for dinner the night before check-in, but we haven't decided where. Any suggestions?

Favorite Ride at WDW

For lack of anything better enough, because I don't have anything to update on my DCP yet, I'm going to post a story about my favorite ride in all of Disney World. (Ironically enough, it’s not even in Magic Kingdom as everyone expects.) While I love a LOT of rides in Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios Twilight Zone Tower of Terror holds a place near and dear in my heart.

Words cannot describe how much I love this ride. Not only is it fantastic, but I have one of my fondest Disney memories on this ride. In the spring of 2009, I got to perform at Downtown Disney with my theater group and not only was that a dream come true, but I got to spend two days at two parks with my closest friends. The day before the performance, we went to Magic Kingdom and stayed basically all day there. The next day, we performed for hundreds of people and then split up into groups to go to Hollywood Studios. This was the one park I had never been to before. I went with my four closest friends to explore the park and begin our adventure back in time to the 1940’s Hollywood scene.

We got to the area with ToT and Rockin’ Roller Coaster, we grabbed a fastpass for RRC and headed over to wait in the 15 minute line for ToT. At this point, we interacted with the cast members there who were trying to scare my youngest friend out of riding and provided a lot of entertainment for all of us. We finally got inside the ride and the lobby was BRILLIANT. The cobwebs, the time period furniture, the AIR CONDITIONING, I loved it. We got to go into the room to the right, and we stood back, not knowing what to expect.

When the lights suddenly went out after a rather convincing lightning strike and the TV appeared out of the bookcase, I was completely enthralled and sucked into the story of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Being a huge Twilight Zone fan, I enjoyed the short episode telling the story behind what went wrong in the Tower, and then being told that I was to be the star of the next episode in my own still working maintenance elevator- lets just say…I was excited.

After walking through the boiler room, we boarded our elevator and rode the ride, I won’t explain much else just so people can ride it themselves and be as surprised and excited as I was my first time. But I will say that we loved it so much, we rode it two and a half more times throughout the rest of the day.

That’s right, two and a HALF, because my friends, on our fourth ride through the ride STOPPED. Right before we got to the point in the ride where the elevator would drop, the ride stopped and after sitting a few minutes in the dark, the lights came on with the kind audio telling us that our ride has indeed stopped. With nothing to do other than wait for the Cast Members to get us, (Because someone in the other elevator had a panic attack and had to get off the ride, and because of that they couldn’t just start the ride again, they had to evacuate and reset the ride) we began to talk to everyone in the elevator with us. We found out that we were riding a group of kids visiting from Wisconsin and one of them had never ridden a ride in her LIFE. NEVER. So instantly, we blamed the whole ride being stopped on her (she was a good sport about it) and then everyone in the whole elevator began singing random Disney songs.

We were just finishing our rendition of There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow when I decided to look at my phone and see what time it was. By this point, we were stuck in the ride for 30 minutes and my group was now late for our check-in time to leave. I had to call our troupe leader and explain that we were only late because we were currently stuck on Tower of Terror.  At first she didn’t believe me, but I was never one to lie to her so she told me that it was okay, to take my time and to keep her posted. When the CM’s finally came to get us, the Wisconsin group decided to sing Kumbaiah and we were let off the ride. We were offered to cut the line and ride again, but since we were late, we couldn’t.

My best friends and our Cast Member savior
So my friends and I got to ride the real working elevator in Tower of Terror and to prove it we took pictures on my phone with the official cast member manager of the ride on the elevator. We ran all the way to the entrance of the park only to have the entire troupe, minus our leaders, not believe that we were stuck on the ride. We had the pictures to prove it and they still didn’t believe, but I don’t really care about that.


The only picture of me, and it's blurry. Gross. (I'm the girl in the black shirt)
 Being stuck on that ride was one of the best experiences at Disney that I’ve ever had, and not a lot of people could say that about being stuck on a ride, but it’s true. My friends and I tell that story all the time and even though we’re all in college now and we don’t get to see each other as much, we still talk all the time and try and visit whenever possible. But Tower of Terror gave me that moment, and it will always be my favorite ride in Disney World, no matter what anyone says about it. :)

(Sorry for the long post, I’m seriously missing Disney right now. Only 68 more days!)