"Welcome to the wildest ride in the wilderness!"

Howdy Folks! Nestled in our rustic Frontierland ya'll will find the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad! Now this railroad has a lot of history and stories behind it... but reader beware, this is a story of ghosts and curses so stop reading now if the title "U.R.Daring" doesn't fit your personality!

A long long time ago during the gold rush a mining town was built at the base of Big Thunder Mountain. So many people piled in with the high hopes of finding gold that the population reached 2,015 coyboy's and girls. But the Indians in the area (you can say Hi to them from the Disneyland train or the canoes) soon informed all of the inhabitants of the new town that they were living on top of an ancient Indian burial site and that they needed to move... asap.

Well I don't know if you've met any rustic miners before but they're pretty stubborn. So the good folk of the town stayed and kept looking for gold.

This didn't sit right with the Indians, and the spirits of their ancestors started to scare the people of the town away from the mines. Eventually people began to move away from the town, until the population dropped to the 38 people that live there today (if you look around while waiting in line you can actually spot the population sign).

Well these 38 inhabitants couldn't find any Gold and needed to make money somehow so they built the Railroad that would take guests on tours of the mountain. Sounds like a great idea right? It would have been if it wasn't for the not so happy Indians! They put a curse on the railroad as a final warning to the miners....

Part of the curse is that the train always leaves the station before the conductor can get on, which is why the ride never has a conductor...

Now a train without a conductor controlling it? That's one wild, crazy, fast ride and you better be bold, brave, courageous, daring, fearless or hearty to get on (these are the names of the trains).

When your on the ride you can see horse shoes above the track in some places. At the start they point up but they slowly start to tilt and eventually point down, like the miners luck.

Sounds pretty bad for the miners huh? Half way through the ride however, when everything seems to be at its worst and the walls are about to fall in on you, you can see gold nuggets falling from a crack in the mine above your head. (This is the happiest place on earth after all.)

Apparently that gold is enough to keep the train running because you can still catch a ride on it today! Disney has also kept to the trend of keeping really stubborn individuals in Frontierland by placing the Disney Pin traders pin trading location in Frontierland (seriously these people are extremely stubborn about which pins they will trade and which ones they wont, but the pins that they have are so rare and cool to look at you should definitely check it out, just don't like like you know what your talking about if you really don't. Trust me, they will know).

Well, that was the story of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad! If you have a favorite ride or event in Disneyland that you would like me to find some information on/the story behind it go ahead and click the "message me" button and ask, or write in the comment box! I'm going to go hang out in the bay area part of Disney California Adventure (yes I admit that I'm a tad homesick) before visiting my roommate on the Nile river on the Jungle Cruise.

Have a magical day!

"It has that thing - the imagination, and the feeling of happy excitement- I knew when I was a kid."

Today I completed my second day of training, and boy has it been exciting! Work is absolutely amazing, wonderful, entertaining, challenging, extremely difficult at times, but over all extremely rewarding. Being on stage and "making magic happen" is one of the bestfeelings in the world.

And while I can't really get into my job that much... A magician never tells his secrets (or hers)... I do have some more fun park secrets to share with you all...

One of the most important things about Disneyland is keeping the heritage of the park, all the way down to what foods are served in the backstage cafeteria's! One of Walt's favorite foods was Chili! He loved it so much that he always wanted it to be available for him to eat at any of the backstage cafeterias, so no matter where in the Park he was, he alway had the option of having Chili for lunch! Mmmmmm. This has been carried on even in the cafeterias that are located backstage in Disney California Adventure.

For everyone from NorCal reading this going "wait a tick... I thought it was Disney's California Adventure?", the name has now been changed to just Disney California Adventure. The big "California" letters outside of the entrance?They've also been removed.

Everyone who's name didn't start with a C-A-L-I-F-O-R or N jump for joy, you no longer have to feel left out that your profile picture on Facebook isn't you sitting on the first letter of your name.

Today I got off around 4 so my roommate and I decided togo hang out in the park for the evening. Our goals: find some hidden Mickey's, get some autographs, and ride the Jungle Cruise at night....

Right off the bat we run into Mickey and Minnie on Main Street. (Ah Disney magic, do you ever stop? No, no it does not.) We were also able to catch the Princess photo sessions at the Princess Faire over in FantasyLand where we saw Cinderella, Aurora (personal favorite even if she is a bit lazy, but what 16 year old doesn't sleep all the time?), and Snow White. Each Princess is accompanied by a few royal guardsand when we met Cinderella she immediately tried to set me up with one of hers.

"What do you say Princess? Looking for a Prince? Look at Luke! Look at the nice velvet hat he has!"

I politely said No, thanks and let her know that this Princess already had a Prince.

"Oh but does he live in a far away kingdom?" Nope... The Kingdom of Newport is luckily only 20 minuets away from the Kingdom of Anaheim.

So autographs? Check.

Next we adventured onto "It's a Small World", something my roommate had not been on yet. I was happy to see some old friends....

as well as some new friends...

afterwards we went to Toon Town, somewhere I don't usually go to since it's usually packed with children, but running around it at dusk was a lot of fun and I even went on Roger Rabbit's wild ride for the first time!

By then it was time for Fantasmic! and corn dogs. Speaking of corn dogs... there is a hidden Mickey on one of the more popular corn dog carts at the end of Main Street....

Anyways, towards the end of Fantasmic! (totally worth watching again and again by the way) we ran to Pirates. My friend had recently informed me that originally all the skeletons in the ride were actual real skeletons. Now over time guests began to be rather "creeped out" by the idea of real skeletons being on the ride so they were all replaced with the fake ones you see today.

Except for one...

Now, I'm not going to tell you exactly which one it is, but I will tell you it is not the full body and it's in a room with lots of treasure... also you will know which one it is when you find it (it's old and decaying) but it's hidden behind the main subject of the room.

While on the ride we also found a few hidden Mickey's. One that we found was in the last room when the ceilings are caving in and the Pirates are on either side of you firing pistols at each other. If your a hidden Mickey pro and are smugly reading this thinking to yourself that you've already found that one, put on your glasses and look behind you next time your on the ride. There is a smaller one hiding in the shadows, but you'll only see it if you look back.

More hidden Mickey's were discovered in the ride of discovery... Indiana Jones. We couldn't find the one in the projection room (but we did find the Eeyore parking sign, random I know) but we did find another...

A hint? Follow the instructions everyone gives you on the ride... DON'T LOOK INTO HIS EYES! Serious though, don't look in his eyes but just below his nose. The shadows from the statues nostrils and the cleft in his upper lip make up a hidden Mickey... now try to find out which face it's in.

Another hidden Mickey on the ride is more like a dead Mouseketeer: a skull with a Mickey ears hat on. It sounds random, is random, but is in pretty much plain sight. So how is it hidden you ask? Um... have you been on the ride? At what point are you not half closing your eyes/flinching/screaming at every turn? I challenge all of you to find that skull in the middle of all of that.

Finally we went on the Jungle Cruise. My roommate works the ride daily but still loved going on it with me. At night the animals look a bit more real and the ones in the water are a tad scary, making it a thrilling nighttime adventure! Since she works the ride she was able to tell me a few secrets, like the fact that a turtle actually lives on the banks (over by the Aladin Oasis) and catfish and minos (real ones!) are actually swimming around in the waters. Try to find them next time you sail down the Nile with us!

Tomorrow is another busy/early day so I'm going to get some sleep now, but I wish you all the best this week. See ya real soon!

"Disneyland is a show."

Tomorrow is my first day of work (Finally!!) so today, in order to get used to my surroundings, I went to Disneyland on my own to figure out where everything is (mainly all the bathrooms since that's the number one question I'm sure I'll get). Since Disney started as a studios, Disneyland has many influences from movie studios and sets.

Disneyland is a show, but the park its self is a stage. When I'm finally working, I'll be "on stage". Disneyland is such an amazing place because our Guests, you, get to not only watch the show, but be apart of it.

As soon as I walked in the park, there was Mickey in main street leading the Disney band around the flag pole. I snapped a picture of him as he walked back to his home in Toon Town, luckily my whistle is so loud it caught his attention and he pointed and nodded my way.

After walking around Adventure land and New Orleans square a bit I walked back to Main Street to catch the train. While in line I sat next to an adorable little girl wearing Minnie Mouse ears and huge Mickey Mouse cartoon gloves on her tiny little hands. She was extremely eager and excited to tell me all about her account on Toon Town on Disney.com.

"Mickey is my favorite because he is the leader of the group! I'm a leader too, just like Mickey! Did you know that these are hands like Mickey's? I'm dressed up for Toon Town, but not the one online, the REAL Toon Town. Have you been to Toon Town? This is my first time."

I told her little things about Toon town to look out for, including Goofy's rubbery bouncy floors in his house ("How silly!"), and how there were fish in the gas station ("Now that doesn't seem very smart").

Anyways, the train finally came and after she got off at Toon Town I stayed on for the whole tour around the park. If you've ridden the train all the way around before you'll recognize the next photo, and if not I recommend taking the train next time you visit and taking the detour into the past...

These guys are one of my favorite parts of Disneyland as they seem so lifelike and daunting. When people started taking pictures using the flash on their camera's the conductor creatively told us all:

"Ladies and Gentlemen please don;t use flash photography as you see the Dinosaurs are scared of technology and will charge the train unless you stop... thank you!"

This quick thinking and story telling is all part of being on stage at Disney. As your host we make sure to always make you feel like your in a different world than the one you came to us.

As I stepped off the train back into Main Street I ran into my two furry friends Chip and Dale over by the fire department.

The fire man band was out playing some cheerful dance music for everyone to boogie too while these two messed around with their equipment and encouraged everyone around them to join in the dancing with them.

Since my goal was to go into every store in as many lands as I could to know where everything was, I headed on over to Fantasyland where I was surprised at how many cute little places I had overlooked or never even knew they existed.

And some not so cute... occasionally you can spot Snow White's evil Queen step mother in the tower above the Snow White storybook ride. I waited next to the Peter Pan ride to get the shot below...

Next I went up inside Sleeping Beauty's castle which I hadn't been in since they re-did it. The new technology that they used inside the castle to re-tell the story of Sleeping Beauty is absolutely amazing, as are the paintings they did in the books lining the castle walls...

By this point I was getting hungry and started to walk back to the front of the park, but on the way I once again ran into a group of people playing music and celebrating a sunny day in Disneyland.

Also as a side note, automobiles have priority in Disneyland:

Walking back through Main Street I remembered a story that I hadn't shared with you all yet...

When your walking down Main Street you'll notice the Cafe, Blue Ribbon Bakery, and the Gibson Girl ice cream shop... all three opened up around the same time in the 50's when a family of three sailed into Disneyland on the Great American river. The Dad had set out to find a new town to open up a Cafe. After he opened his Cafe the mother, who's baked goods had always won her the Blue Ribbon at county fairs, opened a Bakery next door. These two had one daughter who didn't want to be left out and so she opened the Gibson Girl Ice creamery. And that is how those three stores came to be on main street!

Hope everyone is having a magically Monday, until next time!

“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”

Probably the greatest thing about working here for me personally is that I get to tell stories constantly. And if you know me you know I pretty much do that all the time anyways.

As Hosts to our Guests, we are encouraged to interact with as many people as we can. My job on it's own includes getting 350interviews done every shift I have no matter how long the shift is, but besides just interviewing Guests I'm encouraged to curtsy to any little princesses that walk by, dance while walking past parades to get guests to do the same, sword fight with any recently trained Jedi's from our Jedi classes and more.

I haven't started working yet, but when I was in Disneyland two days ago I couldn't help but start interacting with the kids. I was in line for Indiana Jones with my old co-worker Micah and his girlfriend Julie when this little boy with a lightsaber and a Woody cowboy hat kept swinging on the line posts next to us. I made a comment about how I had never seen a cowboy Jedi before in my life and the kid instantly turned around and started grinning ear to ear.

"Not only a cowboy Jedi!" he replied, "A SHARK cowboy Jedi! Rawr!"

He then continued to make chomping noises and act as if he was going to bite me. We started to make up a story about how a shark could become a Jedi cowboy, how I was really glad to have him in line next to me going into such a scary temple, and how he better keep his lightsaber put away so he doesn't accidentally cut off my hand like Luke's (this was his mom's favorite part of the story). Our story not only entertained other people around us but also made the 45 min wait seem to fly by.... or swing by in Indiana's case.

But that is the best part of this job and the meaning behind Walt's quote (the title for this post). Disneyland will never be completed, or the same. With so many different imaginations colliding and building off of one another no day in Disneyland will ever be the same.

That same day I watched Fantasmic! for the first time. If you haven't seen it I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE IT I had goosebumps the whole time. And if you have seen it before they just redid it and the dragon is now about as tall as a three story building (yeah... they have a DRAGON). The plot is Mickey's dreams where good dreams and nightmares have to battle each other. It's fantastic fantasmic!

Anyways, while watching it with my roommates and two friends a girl around the age of 5 sitting next to me put her little hand on my shoulder and eagerly started pointing out her favorite character to me. At first I assumed she mistook me for her family member but after pointing out to her that her mom was on the other side of her she simply said "I know" and continued to talk/cheer/ooh and ahh with me throughout the show. And that's another thing I love about Disneyland. Imagination and childlike wonder is everywhere, and everyone is happy to share the experience with strangers because we're all feeling the same giddy happy feeling inside us.

After the first Fantasmic! show is the Magical fireworks show. My roommates and I decided to run over to splash mountain because the line would be shorter at that time. It was two roommates first time on the ride so it was extremely entertaining to see them react to everything but the best part was something we hadn't even planned...

We had perfect seats to watch the fireworks =)

and that my friends is Disney magic.

..And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows, and no doors... which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out!

Two of my roommates are going to be doing attractions in the park, so part of their training is to learn all of the stories behind the rides (Jealous? Yeah so am I...).

So last night while we were waiting for thunder mountain at 11:45pm Kelli told me the story of the bride of the Haunted Mansion and it was so good that we immediately had to run over at midnight to make the last ride and find all the hidden backstory clues.

Once upon a time...

A long time ago in New Orleans, there was a beautiful, young woman who was extremely greedy and snobby. Her name was Constance Hatchaway and her goal was to marry into wealthy families to make a name for herself... and eventually she did. Things turned terribly wrong however when she realized that her husband was not the wealthiest man she could have married...

Not wanting to break her vows, she decided to make "till death do us part" happen a little sooner than planned, and so she beheaded him and set off to marry her next husband.

This pattern continued for quite a long time, as you can see on the ride in the attic. If you look around there are frames of married couples scattered around the room. The woman is always the same woman, and the man's head slowly disappears as your doom buggy floats by.... at the end of the attic the ghost bride stands giggling to herself and reciting a twisted version of marriage vows. When she gets to "till death do us part" an axe materializes in her hands and she starts laughing hysterically to herself. (Remember her name is Hatchaway...Hatch-a-way).

Now about the time she was on her sixth or seventh husband, a pirate from the Caribbean was sailing on the Rivers of America when he decided to retire in New Orleans square. If you've ever been on the ride "Pirates of the Caribbean" you'll remember the creepy old man in tattered overalls sitting on his rocking chair playing a banjo right before you dip into the ride. This is that retired pirate (fun fact: the ride was originally built to be his memories from his days of pirating, pre Jack Sparrow installments).

Well (as we know from the Pirates ride) this retired Pirate had quite a bit of riches with him. While in town he met a woman who captured his heart, and so he bought her a huge, beautiful, southern mansion and married her. (Bad move pal.)

The woman had saved all of her old marriage photos (for some twisted reason) and stashed them all in the attic of the mansion. One day the retired Pirate went up into the attic and found all the photos and became extremely angry (or he caught her with a younger man in the town, either way he's angry). He then either killed his wife and hung himself after, or she hung him and then jumped off the roof of the mansion. The first part makes more sense to me though, she already killed so many husbands before him, why would she jump now? Anyways...

...as you may have guessed the retired pirate is the man hanging in the elevator when the "Ghost Host" says "there's always MY way out". Also, one of the stretching pictures shows a woman sitting on top of a grave of a man named George with his decapitated head sitting next to the head stone and a bloody axe laying next to him. We can assume George came before the pirate.

And that is the story linking the two rides! If you have good eye sight, or glasses, you can see that the wind vane on top of the mansion has a ship on it, adding to the pirate backstory. Little things like that are scattered around, try to find them next time you're here with us!

The ride will be closed soon to get it ready for the Holidays but will be reopened mid September decked out in "Nightmare Before Christmas" decor. I highly recommend seeing it, as does this couple....

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

Last Saturday, (after little to no sleep), I woke up early early early for the trip down to Anaheim. I would like to point out early on that all photos I'm posting are just from my phone as I can't find the cable to upload pictures from my camera yet.

Anyways, I got ripped away from my roommates like a kid not wanting to leave a play date (mom: five more min girls! us: shut the door and maybe she won't find us), and by play date I mean the best four years of my life. But time goes on...

The drive went really well, we drove past a huge accident/fire but it was on the other side of the highway so we were unharmed.

We stayed the night at Auntie Barbra's and Uncle Hoyt's that Saturday night

where we had an amazing dinner. Hoyt pulled out some Disneyland tickets from back in the day that he still had with him that only cost 4.50! O the good old days...

The next day I moved into my new place. I love all my roommates and it's big enough to fit all five of us.

I'll be back on this blog to update it, just wanted to get it started. Time to go do some chores though! Wishing you all a magical day =)