Picking My Nose and Staring Out the Window...

... Is NOT what I was doing when I came up with the title for this blog post. At any rate, the last week has really been insane. My good friends Bird, Caitlyn, Sarah, and Ben all came to visit me and run around Disneyland during the same two day span, so my 48 hour break from Splash Mountain was spent within a half-mile proximity of the attraction waiting in line for everything else. By the end of my Tuesday/Wednesday weekend, my feet were blistered, my good spirits exhausted, and my work week just beginning. I've only now begun to recover. We had a great time, though, and many shenanigans were had. Bird and I even treated ourselves to a spendy lunch at the Blue Bayou before everyone else showed up.



Otherwise, I've been working. And working. And working. My detestation of the "Base of C" position has sunk to new depths, as my previous least-favorite shift, "Merge," has proven itself manageable once the cast member responsible for its functioning knows what the hell they're doing (read: I've been at Splash for over a month now and am no longer fresh-faced to the ways of its world). "Merge" consists of standing at the point in line where the Fastpass and Standby guests collide, which is about 100 feet away from the load station. By this point in time, Standby guests have been waiting in line for anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes, and they've been watching Fastpassers whizz by them at disconcertingly unfair rates. So, when I heave my bulk in front of the Standby line to stop its flow and allow an obscene amount of Fastpassers to cut - just when it seemed there was nothing left to obstruct the Standbyer's from their logs - people get PISSED OFF. Like, seriously pissed off. They swear. They push. They spit. It's not a fun time. I've heard so many lowly stories of how long people have spent waiting for Splash Mountain now that all I can do when I hear a "new" one is stare in bemusement.

Anyway, my new system is this: stop both lines until there's practically no one in front of me (but not so few as to give the loaders no one to work with), and then let in the Standby line up to a designated person who I've picked ahead of time that's standing at the bend in the rabbit hole queue. Everyone after this person has no idea what's going on, because they can't see me until they've rounded the curve. Then, I stop the Standby line again, wait for the area ahead of me (my "buffer zone") to clear out, and let in everyone who has a Fastpass. The official ratio of guests I'm supposed to allow past me at a time is 45 Fastpassers to 5 Standbyers, which is a ridiculous proportion and not one I follow. My system allows for at least 20 standbyers to every 45 fastpassers, and it hasn't backed up on me yet. Wohoo!

In other news, my roommate Kyle totally sucks. He wasn't too great a sport about three of my friends sleeping on our floor last week, and since then I've said three words to him (which were: "hey," "okay," and "night" [as in, "goodnight," which I found too appallingly long a word to communicate to him with, and so abbreviated for my own sanity's sake]).