They call it training, we call it FUN!

WDW Mom's training 182
Originally uploaded by mefries23

They call it training-really more fun

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Sunday December 7, 2008
So after quite a bit of pampering the first day and a half, it was time to get to work. We had a working breakfast this morning and were joined this morning by a few members of various online Disney groups who were starting to gather in preparation for Mousefest later that week. We got to meet Deb from Allears.net-that was great!

They rotated around the table and joined us to discuss the panel. We all survived our first press encounter and I haven’t seen any pictures yet of us with food in our teeth-so that is good. After breakfast, we moved into the adjoining room for our first look at the site.
Michael walked us thru how to log in and move around the site. Having visited the site many many times-it was cool to see the "back side" of it and how we would receive our questions and answer them. We were very "rudely" interrupted about an hour into training by some strange man looking for a family reunion. Michael tried very hard to convince him he was in the wrong place but he would not listen. LOL—it was Guitar Dan from AK and he had wrote a very catchy little tune to welcome us. We had previously been asked to email Laura with some unknown trivia about ourselves and guess what it was used for..yep...catchy lyrics to the song. We all had a great laugh-learned some new tidbits about each other and gave him a standing ovation for his hard work.
Next we had some discussions about media and paper-work issues and then grabbed some lunch. Lunch was a working endeavor, and of course delicious, as we were joined by the heads of the Disney transportation department. This was a very informative discussion explaining the transportation around WDW and testing our knowledge-I think we did great. We also had a chance to ask questions and this was a huge help to make sure we had our "facts" straight.

After lunch we headed back to our computers for a look at the upcoming "What Will You Celebrate" promotion. After a long day in "the classroom" we were ready for our first real test of our PR legs. We gathered on our bus and headed over to Epcot for a filming of a video. We all did really well-minus quite a few re-takes to avoid plane noise or the occasional screaming tourist. The funniest part was all the people that kept gathering to take our pictures even though you could tell they had no idea who we were.
Video taped and producer happy we were on our own again for a little while. Dinner was at Jiko tonight and we had about three hours to either go back to CSR or play on our own....give you one guess what we did. Epcot was again calling, so the majority of us stayed. We split into groups to do some shopping and riding and I spent my time having a blast with Diane C, Doug, Jackie and Jodi hitting some rides. Time flew by and we had to grab a Disney bus to head over to AKL. We met up with the rest of the gang at Jiko. It was incredible and the chef came out and described each course. We were joined at dinner by the heads of the food departments and they spent the evening walking around meeting us and letting us ask questions. Duncan was able to join us again and altho the dinner was "work" we had way to much fun to classify it as anything other than a great time with a lot of really amazing new friends.

Tonight was the night that Cathy (the panelist that was selected to spend the night in the Cinderella suite) was headed over to MK. She had pulled five other panelists names out of a hat to join her (six can stay in suite) so they were picked up in front of AKL for their adventure. The rest of us-fully stuffed-rolled our way back onto the bus for our ride back to CSR. Because the night was still young, (not really-think it was now near midnight) a few of us headed to the lounge for a nightcap. As exhaustion set in we finally said good-night and headed back to our rooms. The magic was not over though as tonight we were greeted by a beautiful Mickey basket filled with Mom’s panel items. Another fantastic end to our day.


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