Splash Mountain!

So I found out today (and after eight more hours of [paid] lecturing) that I'll be working on Splash Mountain all summer! The reasons I'm very happy about this decision:

1) Splash Mountain is one of the best rides. And it involves water.
2) There are lots of trees in its surrounding landscape. Trees = shade.
3) Good music. If I could choose any attraction music to listen to repeatedly for ten weeks, it'd be Splash Mountain's.
4) There's a Laughing Place involved.
5) It's in Critter Country, which is pretty much the backwoods of Disneyland. Hardly any guests!
6) My costume consists of: khaki Carhartts, a flannel shirt, and suspenders. Basically, what I already wear every day. Except for the Carhartts. And the suspenders.

The meetings today were fairly mundane. I learned more about how to keep the magic alive during my workday (read: playing a "part" AT ALL TIMES). Also, I'm afraid I'm going to be peppering casual Disneyland conversation from now on with terms like "Backstage" and "Onstage" and all that good stuff. It's like when people come back from studying abroad and call their houses "flats," except this is legit because I fucking love Disneyland and have been waiting to say stuff like this all my life.

This afternoon's highlights included eating lunch with a 70-year-old security guard named Smitty who regaled me and a bunch of other dorky College Programmer's with tales from Disney lore that he personally witnessed. I was enthralled. Smitty has a bit of a hearing problem, though, so the conversation was pretty much one-way. Also, on today's more extensive tour of the park we visited many more backstage locations, including the area right around Space Mountain's backside that houses Disneyland's bomb-sniffing dogs. They're pretty cute.

A few more things:
- I'm not keeping a journal this summer (wow... writing that out made me feel incredibly guilty, and I can already feel my future self kicking my current self. Is this a bad idea? Give me advice...!) so my blog posts will be much more frequent, if not tell-all.
- My first actual shift requires me AT splash Mountain's base by six am. This means I've got to be up at, like, four! And I'll be in the park before anyone else!
- I'm still not tired of Disneyland!
- It seems a lot of you are pretty intrigued by my roommate Stephen's antics, so I'll keep posting about the crazy shit he gets into. Last night's story: he washed his two custodian uniforms (which are required to retain their crisp white color) with a ballpoint pen... that exploded sometime during the dry cycle... and ruined absolutely ruined both of them. For the remainder of the night, he ran around the apartment, screaming in his high-pitched southern accent, "My life's a shambles! My life's a shambles!" It was funny to watch.