Apologies again for my tardy blogging of late! I find that when I get home after work I don't have a lot of energy to sit and type and think and describe!

On Thursday (7th October) I had my opticians appointment to get coloured contact lenses for Malef. and Queen at the medical centre in Val d'Europe. However, when I got to Character 1, they told me it wasn't until 4:20 and said to go to the Face Training office and get my envelope for my appointment and then come back and get a character to do until then. So, I went to the office and got my envelope and went back to Character 1 to get a character. They said I was to play Rafiki in Adventureland. So I went to costuming, got my head and staff, got my costume and put it on. While I was waiting for an ACC and traffic, I was talking to Tom (Jennings) who queried my character and asked me to stand up and put the costume on properly so I obliged. But when I did so, you could see my neck and the costume wasn't long enough! So off I went back to Character and told them the problem. The guy behind the desk asked my height and when I told him (179) he said "Oh right, you're too tall" which is silly because he asked my height when he was looking for a character the first time!! I waited patiently for him to give me another character to play, but there was no-one else I could play! There were lots of Tiggers already out there, another Sheriff and two Gepettos! So he said "I have nothing for you" and I went back to costuming to give it all back, put on my normal clothes and decided to go around the park by myself.

I knew quite a few people were working in various places and the first person I saw was Laura as a Tweedle brother so got some photos of her and t'other Tweedle. Then I went up into THE Castle which is "Sleeping Beauty's castle" and took photos of the inside like the stained glass windows and tapestries that tell the story. After that I walked around Alice's Curious Labyrinth, and took a video of it, but it would take FOREVER to upload and I don't have the patience or the internet capacity to do that! I wandered through into Adventureland in search of characters but I think they were on break so I went on Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which is just a boat that goes around and you can look at various Piratey scenes of skeletons and treasure etc. It wasn't exciting but it was nice to see the Paris version of the ride that inspired the film. In the same area is the Indiana Jones ride (which no longer goes backwards too... Shame) and they queue wasn't very long so I went on that too. When I came out of the ride, the characters were back out on set so I went to say hello. My friend Lewis was Baloo so the ACC let me push in and have a quick photo or two.

After Adventureland I walked through to Discoveryland in search of Vania and Jamie who were playing Tic/Tac (I can't remember which!) and Goofy, but I couldn't find them. To kill some time (it was only early afternoon!) I went into one of the arcades and played Time Crisis for a while :P Then I walked through Main Street to the Cast Member restaurant and had some lunch.

When I got out of the cafeteria I remembered I hadn't given my Rafiki staff back so I had to go all the way back to Simba Building and give it in. I still had a few hours 'til my appointment (which had changed to 4) so I headed out to Val d anyway and wandered around until my appointment time. The Ophthalmologist was over 30 minutes late, but my appointment only took 10 so I still had time to get back to work and had them my prescription/order form and clock out for 6. When I was waiting to clock out, a few friends were talking about "Deano's Hip Hop class" that was going on at 6:15. Always wanting to try something new (and with nothing better on that evening) I went along too. Deano is another cast member who often plays Sully (cos he's SO tall!) and he'd been allowed use of one of the studios until 8. It was a really good class and he taught us more commercial hip hop rather than popping and locking etc. and I had a lot of fun. I didn't get home 'til around 9ish and was exhausted but managed to cook myself some food before going to bed. I went to bed earlier than usual too because I was doing a 7am-3pm shift then next morning at the Disneyland Hotel (DLH) and had to be up around 5.30 to get a bus to work.

The DLH shift was okay. I was Tigger and it was exhausting! Because the hotel is obviously heated for the comfort of the visitors, wearing a thick costume made it incredibly hot and uncomfortable. And Tigger doesn't get treated very nicely sometimes. An awful little Spanish boy punched me in the stomach and then kept putting his fists up to me so I grabbed them, came down to his level and shook my head at him. I don't know where his parents were but it was really careless to leave him unsupervised, especially as he obviously has violent tendancies. But that was the only really bad thing about the shift. I got 2 and a half hours for lunch which was great and the sofas in the break room were really comfy so I could nap in my breaks and long lunch. I had finished by 3:30 so I just came home and relaxed and chatted to Alaina. I stayed awake for a long time and only realised when I went to bed that I'd been awake for 17 hours with only a few 15 minute naps at most! I wasn't working until 10 this morning though so at least I wasn't up again at 5.30!

Today was a VERY tiring day. I was Tigger in Park 2 in the morning and did 4 sets. Tigger gets mobbed when he's out in the park it's ridiculous. And parents are worse than the children! Everyone pulls the tail and knock the head around and parents push their children in front of you and shove autograph books in your face. They adults just seem to forget that there's a person in the suit and then all crowd really close and I kept getting backed into kerbs and fences. It was quite intimidating to have that many people. And none of them seemed happy! It was such a stressful situation but I was relieved when my ACC pulled me aside a few times because there was a girl wearing a genie lanyard meaning she's from the Make a Wish Foundation and she was one of the prettiest little girls I've ever seen. It was so nice to just be calm with her and give her lots of cuddles and play with her for a bit, and ignore all the other guests, I was sad to have to say goodbye to her! The second time I got pulled aside was to see some handicapped boys (I think they were twins) in wheelchairs. They and their family were English so it was nice to hear them speak and understand easily without having to try and translate in my head. However one of the boys kept grabbing the head and he was really strong! He wouldn't let go and he grabbed it at the mouth and gripped and pulled so hard that he pulled a bit of the mesh off the inside of the head! Luckily it was my last set so I just went back to EPC (Simba building), told them and changed my head. I went to get lunch and when I got back to EPC I found out that I was down to do Green Army in the Parade again, so I didn't need to swap the head at all!

I ended up doing the "Chief" part in the parade so it was cool to do something a bit different in the routine. Although the green goggles were broken and wouldn't go tighter only looser AND the head was loose too! So throughout the whole parade I was trying not to jump too much in case they fell off and kept having to push them back up so I felt really unprofessional :S Apparently it didn't look too bad though and they didn't fall off which was a small relief. I've got the day off tomorrow so I'm planning on doing some washing and catching up on sleep! Today was so exhausting I need a day to recoup. Although I only have tomorrow off before working ANOTHER 5 day week, but I've got the whole weekend off next week and the weekend after that which is quite nice.

So that's the last 3 days! Will blog again soon after the weekend!

xxxxx