Back again!

The last few days have been quite varied which is nice. On Sunday I was on a special event again, and when I came in I found out that the prince has requested lots of extra characters on DOUD, including the seven dwarves from Snow White - I was Grumpy! The costume was quite comfortable but the head was literally humongous! I really enjoyed doing the parade though - it is the first time I have done it as a character. I just had to walk the parade route behind the romance float and I just marched along looking Grumpy really. I was moving my head a lot though, and about halfway through the parade my cerre tete unclipped itself from my head, so my massive Grumpy head was essentially balanced on my own head for the rest of the parade, I probably looked like a nodding dog.

After the parade I was told I was Chip on Main Street USA. I was with my Dale, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto and there was only one ACC. They are all VIPs, and we were in pretty much the busiest part of the park just before Fanti and just after Fanti, so when we went on set we were literally mobbed! Dale and I just ran around a lot, and jumped in front of other people's photos and generally put on a bit of a show to avoid getting cornered by the crowd. It's so annoyed when that happens because you end up just doing autograph, photo, autograph, photo, autograph, photo etc. and it is really hard to animate properly because people are tugging at you from all angles. It was really windy as well and with such a big head you really get blown about, I quite enjoyed it though!

When we came back after first set, Fanti was in our breakroom getting ready to go out, and as they started to leave the breakroom to get on the floats, we sat on the sofas and put our feet up.About 10 minutes later, Goofy noticed that his head had gone missing, but left in the breakroom was a Goofy Fanti head, which has a really sparkly hat. A lot of panicking and rushing around ensued, as Classic Goofy ran out with his huge feet to catch Fanti Goofy before he went on parade, and Dale ran behind carrying Fanti Goofy's head. You probably had to be there but it was really funny!

After our last set, which was quite late at night but still really busy, we got in the traffic to go back to EPC. However, Minnie's handbag had been stolen from the breakroom! She was devastated as it contained her Disney ID, purse, Navigo, university books she'd been reading, phone etc - basically her whole life. It must have been stolen by another cast member which is really sad. She was really crying, understandably, and I didn't really know what to say to her to make her feel better because I know in that situation I would be inconsolable!

I got in quite late from work and went straight to sleep. The next day I started at 1.15pm, and at Character 1 I found out I was on three parades which was cool as it is the first time I've done all three parades in one day. I was Remy on Stars and Cars, which was really fun. We only did the roulage because Ariel was inapt so couldn't dance, and there were no other Ariels around. This meant that we didn't have to get off of the cars and do the show, we just had to stand/sit in our cars and do the dance to the Christmas roulage song.In the Remy costume you have to look down all the time because you see through the mouth. If you look straight, his nose and eyes are poking upwards, the head is really heavy as well. This meant I did the whole parade looking at my feet and my neck hurt quite a lot afterwards, but I still enjoyed it even if I couldn't see the audience!

Straight after Stars and Cars I checked DOUD sign in, hoping to be Winnie or Jessie, but I was down for rope carrier. I didn't mind too much as it meant I got to wear make up and have my hair done which is always nice when you spend a lot of time wearing an attractive balaclava and no make up. I wasn't too cold this time, although loads of kids grabbed onto the rope and were pulling it down and it was really annoying. A guy from guest flow was really good and walking backwards in front of the rope trying to get the kids to wave and clap to take their hands off of the rope, and trying to get the message to the parents 'tell your kids not to grab the rope'. However most of the parents were oblivious or just didn't care which I am starting to find really annoying. I have certainly seen some bad parenting here in Disneyland.

After DOUD I had some dinner in Imaginations and checked sign in for Fanti. In the morning I had hoped to be Chip or Dale or one of the fairies from Sleeping Beauty, but after dinner I was really tired so I was pleased to see that I was on 'portes' (doors). This involved wearing some super sexy security shoes and black overalls, and just opening the big gates to let the parade out, and closing them after it has all left backstage, then walking through the park to the end of the parade, and opening the doors to let it through, and closing them again! I quite enjoyed getting a front row seat on the parade. I took some pictures of my friends who were playing Chip, Dale, Pluto and Goofy and the Green fairy which was good for them.

After work I decided to go with Courtney and Lauren to L'Agape, a bar in Val d'Europe where there is Karaoke on Mondays. I was wearing my trackies and wellies so I wasn't really dressed to go out, but there were quite a few people from Disney there and a few people from my formation turned up later, so I ended up havinga couple of drinks which was nice.

Today I started at 10am on a spare parade shift, I had got used to lie ins after my last three late shifts so getting up was quite hard! Character 1 told me I was Dale in Park 2 and then I was on DOUD. I got ready and got the bus to the breakroom. One of the Team Leaders came in and told me and Chip that we shouldn't have our Christmas outfits on, but they were given to us by costuming so it wasn't our fault. We only ended up doing two sets in the morning. On the second set, Chip fell over and hurt his (her) bum, but she carried on. I was getting really annoyed at smoking parents today, I see so many parents with a fag hanging out of their mouth taking pictures of their kids and barking orders at the characters. Today there was a sweet little girl in a wheelchair who was obviously quite ill, and she also had a toddler brother, and both of their parents were smoking! I was so angry that parents can be so unbelievably inconsiderate not only towards their children but towards other peoples' children and all of the guests around them in the crowded park. I really think that the parks should be non-smoking. Towards the end of the set, the prince arrived (is he ever going to leave?), but I didn't know that at the time, so I was really confused when ACCs were coming at me from all angles and dragging me from place to place, and then I was in a crowd with Chip, Timon, Rafiki, King Louie, Peter Pan and Wendy, posing for photos for a guy with a big camera. I only found out after the set that it was for the prince!

Everyone in my breakroom had been told by Character 1 that we were on DOUD, but we were told before lunch that we were actually all on full time sets and only Peter Pan (my friend Bruno) was on DOUD. We were told to get traffic back to the breakroom at 2.50pm and we would have only one set in the afternoon, which seemed a bit pointless. I had lunch and got the traffic back, and all of the characters went on set except for me and Chip who were told we were on standby, so we ended up doing nothing all afternoon. We got back to EPC at 4pm and my shift didn't finish until 6pm so I sat reading in the breakroom.

I'm off home tomorrow after work for my days off and I'm so excited! I'm all packed and just waiting for bedtime really! I am going to leave my laptop here so I probably won't update whilst I'm at home - I don't think a blog entry from home really counts as 'off exploring'! I have a 9.30am shift tomorrow which is another special event so hopefully my day will be quite interesting and won't go too slowly.

I'm pretty worried about my Eurostar home tomorrow, I really hope it isn't delayed too much or cancelled - I bet my old work team were just about finished clearing the old backlog of snow complaints from last year and now they're going to have loads more which must be highly annoying for them.

Merry Christmas everyone - maybe see some of you at home in the next few days!

xxx

ps. Lady Gaga is here at the moment apparently although I have yet to spot her, I will keep an eye out!