Find Your Park: National Park Service Centennial

This year is the centennial of the US National Park Service! If you've ever been to any of the parks you know how amazing they are! If you haven't gone to one yet or just need to get your nature fix in head over to the National Parks website at Find Your Park and head to one soon! 

To celebrate there was a special Ranger Mickey topiary at this years Flower and Garden Festival. I LOVED it!!! It reminded me of my Wilderness Explorer days and made me so happy to get the exposure of our beautiful parks to all of the Disney goers out there. On the weekends there was even a small booth nearby that was maned be people from the NPS and there occasionally was a ranger dressed in their uniform nearby! They were hoping to connect people to a park that may be near them and hand out goodies like temporary tattoos, stickers and sunglasses. I chose the elk tattoo since the Rockies are some of my favorite parks and even got a sticker to display at my desk!

Temporary tattoo from National Park Service
Booth at Flower and Garden

Roommates and I in front of Ranger Mickey
celebrating National Park Service Centennial

When my family came to visit in May we were even able to find my first park in Florida. I know, I know. It's a shame that I have been here two years and still haven't made it to the Everglades, but I hope to cross that off later this year. One of the days my parents were here we decided to venture over to St. Augustine. I hope to do another post on our overall experience there, but the great thing is that we were able to head over to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. It was SOOOO cool. I can't say it is anything like Yellowstone (but that is a National Park and not a monument) but it was so cool to visit a Fort that had so much history. 

The monument was originally a fort built by the Spanish and is the oldest masonary fort in the continental United States. The fort walls were beautiful as they are made with a unique rock called Coquina, which is largely made of little shells. It was crazy being in the rooms and seeing the walls with thousands upon thousands of shells! The fort sits on a beautiful site on the bay and gave amazing views. At first the fort didn't look like much from the outside, but inside I learned a ton about the history of St. Augustine and even was able to see a cannon firing demonstration! The day we visited was extremely hot, so we picked up some water from the gift shop and they even had a water bottle refill station inside that reminded me of my days at the Detroit Zoo.

Overall it was a really great experience and I totally recommend it if you are in town. I even picked up a new limited edition Park Passport. I totally recommend getting these. I have a little one from when I was growing up and it is so much fun to get all the stamps from where you visit. My old one was getting full so I talked myself into buying a new bigger one for the Centennial. It even has nice descriptions and maps of all the Parks, Lakeshores, Preserves, Monuments, etc all over the US so you can #FindYourPark!

Find Your Park and National Park Service Centennial pictures are from www.NPS.gov

Earth Month is Every Month

Okay, I think everyone should treat every month like Earth Month, but in reality the world officially celebrates it in April. One of my favorite things about Disney is the Company's commitment to the environment. We even have a word for it: Environmentality, which basically means to keep a commitment to act with the environment in mind. This is something that I always cared about a bit, but now live even more intentionally mostly due to my time being a Conservation Education Presenter at Animal Kingdom. 

Now, I could make countless posts about ways to live intentionally using Environmentality in everything you do so I won't go into too much detail in this post. Additionally, the longer I have worked for Disney I still continue to be amazed by the efforts that I am continually learning about. With a resort as large as Walt Disney World we sure do produce a lot of waste, but the Company has teams of people that work to find ways to divert that waste from landfills, wether it is your basic recycling, making dog toys out of old costumes, participating in Clean the World, composting, and the list goes on! 

Wearing my Environmentality button from
Old Key West's Earth Day event showing off the
homemade jam I bought at the Team Disney
farmers market

For Earth month there were a lot of activities around property including local Earth Day events at the various parks, resorts, and office buildings, voluntearing with nature preserves or recycling efforts, and even seminars and webinars as well! 

Spending 7 months teaching thousands of guests about conservation, it is still something I am very passionate about. So I attended a couple of Earth day events, including one at Old Key West, one of the resorts I work with, bought local goods from a farmers market set up at team Disney (I even won a raffle!), and I was even honored to be invited out to Saratoga (another of my resort partners) to help with a Purple Martin nest check. These birds are a migratory bird that is threatened of lack of nesting space so people around the country use these birdhouses and gourds to give them a place to nest. Disney has a bunch of them on property and we check and band the birds so we can see how the populations are doing, band for future observation, and make sure parasitic birds-birds that lay eggs in other birds nests- don't take over the nests.This was such a cool opportunity and I felt honored to have been asked to participate. I even got to hold a baby bird, even if it did poop all over my hand! 

Baby purple martins!

To show off my Environmentality every day, I have added elements to my desk at work! I collect the Disney Conservation Fund buttons. These are fun to collect and the money donated goes to a great cause! I also was lucky to buy up a few old Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund signs to add to my wall to show off some of the amazing work that we contribute towards. Lastly, one of my favorites is a picture of some vultures at Animal Kingdom Lodge signed by members of the keeper team thanking me for helping out with enrichment training on World Vulture Day last fall! I'm continually adding and love having these reminders with me every day and enjoy the conservation starter they can be to people that stop by.

Now get out there, keep environmentality in the back of your mind, and learn more of the small things you can do to celebrate Earth Day every day!

Some old Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF) posters that I bought

My treasured vulture picture

My pin collection which I am very proud of!

Ilvermorny House!

While I work for Disney, I have LOVVVVVED Harry Potter since I received the first book as a birthday present when I was about 7. My dad would read them to me at first, but by the time the 6th book came out I read it in a fury the day it released so nothing would be spoiled. I have long claimed Ravenclaw as my house and even sport a Ravenclaw case on my iPhone.

What's awesome about this world that JK Rowling created is that it still resonates with so many people and it is continuing to be expanded on. One of the exciting parts of the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie is that she has begun to flesh out the wizarding world in America. While I have to be honest and wasn't the biggest fan of what was released a few months ago about magic in the US, I have to say that with the new information about the American schools for witches and wizards, Ilvermorny, and it's founding has at least partially restored my faith and excitement. The history of the founders and how the sorting ceremony differs was so exciting and was something that I connected much more with than the seemingly poor research on Native American history aspect that had previously been released. There is even a new sorting ceremony on Pottermore for the school, so naturally I had to take it to find out what house I would be in. The result is...

Thunderbird!!!

As Pottermore states, "Named by Chadwick Boot after his favourite magical beast, the Thunderbird, a beast that can create storms as it flies. Thunderbird house is sometimes considered to represent the soul of a witch or wizard. It is also said that Thunderbird favours adventures."

I have to say at first I wanted to be sorted into this house because it had the coolest sounding name, but once I read the history of the houses I felt a little torn that as a Ravenclaw I should have gotten the Horned Serpent. However, the more I think about it, I think that Thunderbird does represent me well. I do love knowledge, but I am not one to sit upon that knowledge. I love exploring to see what else I can learn and experience, but I can also leave a bit of a storm in my wake as I sometimes get defensive or argumentative when I don't think that people are acting rationally or challenge my intelligence. I also really value the intentions of individuals and I often feel guilty myself if I don't do things for the right reasons so I think the soul aspect fits since a person down to their core is important. Plus I am so interested in why people do the things they do and what life experiences have shaped them to where they are or if the way a person acts is because of their base deep down. Therefore, I think in someways with the limited information out there about the American houses, I think that in some ways Thunderbird might fit me even more than Ravenclaw does (but I guess that partially happens when an author leaves a lot up to their readers imagination to fill in ;) )

Now if you are even just a casual Harry Potter fan I would say to get over to Pottermore and read the new info on the founding of Hogwart's American counterpart, Ilvermorny, and get yourself sorted!

Florida Food Bucket List

A while back someone linked a Florida bucket list from a website called onlyinyourstate.com . I started checking out the site and as the name might point out, it has a lot of articles of cool things for every state! I saw a couple of food based articles and decided to combine the lists to one that includes places that I would be most likely to go (basically ones in Central Florida from Tampa to Port Canaveral). 

I've already tried two of these!
-4 Rivers-basically amazing!!! The one I go to is in Winter Garden and has my mouth watering as I type. Definitely recommend!

-Pub Sub at Publix- Only actually tried this this week. I tried a chicken fingers sub (I was told this is what I should get) and I wasn't overly impressed by all of the hype. I mean, it is a decent sub for a decent price so I am not opposed to getting one again, but I am not rushing back either.

nom nom nom. 4 Rivers!!!

Two more were on a list from some friends.
-Keke's Breakfast Cafe- My roommates swear by this place. We were going to go once together but the wait was long and Sam had to work that day so we passed. I will get there one day...

-Old Spanish Sugar Mill De Leon Springs- This one's been on an imaginary list since my first PI. If you weren't already aware, Manatees come and winter in the wonderful springs of Florida. Some friends told us about how they went at saw the manatees and got to make delicious pancakes from their table! My roommate and I tried to find our way here, but ended up at a different springs. We may not have gotten to have pancakes, but we did get to see a lot of manatees! Next winter for sure.

A couple more I recognized the name of.

-Yellow Dog Eats in Gotha- Some people at work have mentioned this place before. I can't remember any specifics, but when I came across the name I made a mental note
-Frenchy's in Clearwater-When I saw this name I remembered passing it when I went to Clearwater with Nick 2 years ago. We almost went here but went for a delicious pizza place instead. Supposedly the Group Sandwich is the thing to get here!

-Columbia Restaurant (Ybor, Clearwater, Orlando)- This one I recognize from my trip with my family to St. Augustine 2 weeks ago. We almost went to a Columbia Restaurant there (and we actually parked at it!) but went for a more local, hole-in-the-wall, authentic Cuban (and also cheaper) restaurant down the street. I'm glad we tried that one there since Columbia has a few in my neck of the woods

And then there were some that I hadn't ever heard of (which really means nothing since there is still so much in Florida I have yet to explore). Maybe I'll try and visit a handful of these in the future!
-The Beach Shanty Cafe in Clearwater
-Three Coins Diner in Tampa
-Aguila Sandwich shop in Tampa
-Wright's Gourment House in Tampa
-Brocato's in Tampa
-Pinky's Tampa
-Mediterranean Deli in Orlando
-Teak Neighborhood Grill in Orlando

Hopefully I can make it to a some of these places in the future, but I bet I'll come across a ton of other places to eat as well

Resident Summer

So in April I was lucky enough to volunteer in a Cross-Utilization capacity to be a Disney Media Representative for the National Media Awaken Summer Event (you can read a little here:  Awaken Summer).

Well, the media outlook that I worked with (105.1 WOMX Orlando's Mix) apparently didn't get completely sick of me during our Disney's Animal Kingdom at Night Preview and Disney's Animal Kingdom Broadcast the follow day. I apparently was tolerable enough for them to ask for me to work with them again for out Florida only media event for Resident Summer! I was so honored to be asked to hang out with them again (oh wait, I guess it was considered work).

This time both their morning and afternoon shows came out and it was so much fun to meet them all. They were all great people and I was happy to be able to help introduce them all to the new Town Center at Disney Springs (let's just say that I am addicted to D-Luxe Burger now...)  and all of the great new offerings this summer, including the new Soarin' Around the World video and Frozen attractions at EPCOT, Star Wars fireworks at Hollywood Studios, Jungle Book show with the new Animal Kingdom at Night, along with the new stage show at the Magic Kingdom. Some of these thing are already open, but there are a ton of things opening today, June 17th!

If I didn't have enough fun working the event,
they even gave me this yummy treat!

If you search #ResidentSummer on your favorite social media device you can probably find a lot of the things that the media posted from the event! 

I hope that I can work some of these events again in the future. I love my job in Revenue Management, but the opportunities like this to get out in the parks and interact with our guests, media ones or otherwise, really helps keep the magic alive!

Media partners CJ and Carly with Mix 105.1, Marketing Manager
Jane, and myself after another successful broadcast!

...and a new era with Fall 2016 interns!

Today was the first day at Team Disney for the Fall 2016 interns. This is my second round of new interns since starting at Team Disney. It's so funny because on the first day it is sooooo easy to tell the interns apart from everyone else. 

First off, they are all dressed really nice. Now, this isn't to say that everyone else dresses like a bum. However, the beautiful thing about working in a non-guest facing role is the Disney Casual Look. So in reality most people are in jeans and a not-too-casual top. However, all the interns are dressed super business-y the first day (and generally pretty nice for the following week or so). Now don't think I am too judg-y, because I TOTALLY did the same thing during my second PI at Maingate and during the first week or so of my full time position at Team Disney. I think it is definitely the way to go when starting a new position. You don't want to underestimate what your area wears and not get off on the best foot possible.

I literally just want to go up to all of them and introduce myself, but I don't want a reputation of being some creepy, over-eager person. I also keep reminding myself that the number of people you meet in the first week or so is so overwhelming. I figure I'll let them know the people they actually need to know first and then maybe I'll introduce myself.

I only saw the F&B interns for a tiny bit today when I saw them going on a tour and sitting in their cube at the very end of the day. I think they were in a conference room for the rest of the day. I think I want to give myself a goal with each set of interns. Last set of interns I wanted to try and introduce myself and become friendly with the F&B interns since they sit right outside my desk. I think this round of interns I want to get to know these new F&B interns AND make myself try and get to know at least one other set of interns. Right now I am thinking I will stay on my floor which means the largely MSI cube or Decision Science cube. Honestly, many people in decision science intimidate me. Many of them, including at least some of the interns, have PhDs. They are all just SUPER smart and I feel very inadequate around them. So I think I will lean towards the MSI cube. I will still probably try and get closer to the F&B interns since there is less than half the amount of MSI or Decision Science interns so it will be less pressure to just stop by and I literally pass by them a dozen times a day.

If you are an intern just starting, I hope that wherever you are working your first few days are going fantastic and that you are enjoying the magic!

End of Another Intern Era

Now that I am full time it is really weird to see interns come and go. 

I have to preface that my team doesn't have interns, but many of the teams we work with have them and the teams that sit around us have them as well. In Team Disney (at least on my floor), off the main walkway there are 4 intern cubes. These are megacubes. On our floor each person has their own cube (except the hourly DVC Stat Associates), but the interns have ones that are 3-6 time bigger than a normal persons cube, but that's because a bunch of interns share it. Like I said, my team doesn't have any interns, but I pass the food and beverage pricing and revenue management intern cube every time I walk in from the elevators or have to go to the bathroom. So pretty often. Therefore these interns are the ones that I see and interact with most often. In the office I even refer to them as "the interns" when they aren't even on our team. 

When I started in my current role the Fall 2015 interns were already 2 months into their internship. They were all settled and I never really interacted with them much. Partially, becasue I was so overwhelmed by all of the other people I needed to get to know, and a little because they weren't the most sociable bunch. One just wandered the halls 90% of the time with his headphones on or sat at the intern cube with his feet up on the desk watching videos on his iPhone. To say the least, my team wasn't his biggest fan. The second wasn't awful. I think he was just shy or socially awkward. He was say hi, but would look away and kind of avoided conversation all of the time. 

The third was the only one I semi-conversed with on any sort of regular basis. He was by far the nicest of the bunch. He is also the only one still left with the company. After his PI in F&B pricing ended, we accepted another PI doing something with Disney Cruise Line in Celebration. But a couple of months ago I started seeing him around Team Disney again. Every time I saw him I was either rushing to a meeting or he was in the midst of conversation so when I finally got a chance to talk to him I found out he had received a full time position in Planning! I was so happy that of the 3 of the Fall 2015 interns that he was the one to stay with the company. I still don't see him much but it's nice having another friendly face in Team Disney.


Last week the Spring 2016 interns finished up their PIs. I was really, really sad to see them go. I made an effort off of the bat to introduce myself to them and would try to periodically stop in and chat. Admittedly I didn't talk to them AS much as I wanted to, but it is amazing how time flies! I loved this group. The 3 of the F&B interns were so nice, actually had personalities, and really seemed to actually want to be there. I think a combination of these things really helped them out, because all of them are staying full time with the company?!?!? It's crazy in that they all found out in the last two weeks. The one pricing intern found out on a Friday that she was going to be staying on the F&B pricing team full time. The second found out on the following Tuesday after memorial day that she was being offered a Finance position. Last Friday was a little awkward because the F&B Revenue Management intern didn't have an offer or any plans after the internship. The others in his cube were all staying and the pricing interns had had so much excitement in the last week when they found out. However...he just had to wait another week and he was offered a position as a Merchandise Business Insights Analyst. It's kind of exciting that he will be going to my old home at Maingate and gives me another reason to go back and visit!!!

There was also 4th intern who joined their cube from another area that needed space a couple of months into the internship, but since she hasn't been in this cube as long I don't know her as well. She just extended into another PI so I guess more time to get to know her!

It really is amazing how quickly the last 10 months as a full timer has gone. It is also going to be crazy for all of the new Fall 2016 interns to join Team Disney on Monday. I am excited to see all of the nervous, excited faces all dressed formally in business clothes getting their building tours on Monday. With such a great group to live up to, I am exciting no meeting the new group of faces that I will walk by a dozen times everyday for the next 6 months. I hope they are another fun group joining the Disney family. And who knows, if they are as good as the last set of interns, perhaps they will be around for a long time to come :)