Days Five: Traditions, New Friends, EPCOT, and MK!

Friday was Traditions! It was also a huge thunderstorm with tornado watches... Oh joy.

So right off the bat it was kinda disappointing. I had heard so many stories about how amazing Traditions is, how much you learn about the company, and I guess my expectations were to high. First we walk over to Chatham to catch a bus, and it's just a regular bus, nothing special. No games and fun facts like they did in the past. It was nice because I did end up making a new friend, Rachel who it turns out lives in the apartment directly across from ours, which is so cool! We got to Disney University (DU) and were immediately hurried inside and split into groups. Rachel ended up in my group, so we stuck together for the day.

As for Traditions? It was painful and boring and horrible. It is very different than how it was in years past. No trivia games, no history of the company, just this very cut and dry, here is the information you need, remember it. They had a couple times where they asked questions and were supposed to be handing out little figurines, but most of the time they forgot to hand them out. Honestly, it was a lot like sitting through a giant lecture hall with a professor who feels extremely self-righteous.

To top it all off, we weren't able to go to Magic Kingdom and tour it because of the weather. I am very much aware that it is not Disney's fault, they cannot control the weather, but it was just the icing on the cake of a bad morning. As a die hard Disney fan, I was looking forward to my one and only chance to go behind the scenes, learn about the Disney Company, and experience things first hand. As is, we sat in our classroom and simulated what we would have talked about if we had gone.


I got my name tag and blue ID though, which was great! They had to put Hannah instead of Sunny on my name tag, because it isn't a derivative of my first or middle name, but hopefully I'll be able to change it once I get to my location! It's all beautiful and great and I am so excited to be able to go into the parks with my friends! It's kinda weird to think about the fact that they don't even make the name tags until we start our class, because they can remake the name tags if something is spelled wrong or you want a different name.









Of course, the sky completely cleared up as we walked out of class, so Alexa (my roommate), Rachel and I headed to EPCOT for a quick drink after a long day! We walked the world show case, wandered through a couple shops, and ended our journey around the world in France with a macaroon ice cream sandwich... yummmmm!


After that we headed to Magic Kingdom to meet up with Sami and a friend she had met on her way over from Traditions, which is a thing we can do now that we live in the most magically place on Earth! We went on Haunted Mansion first, where Sami insisted she, Alexa and I could all fit on a doom buggy... can we? Yes. Is it the most comfortable thing? No. What it is, though, is a crazy amount of fun. We laughed and giggled our way through the entire ride, squished together and happy as could be.

If you don't know me, you probably aren't aware that I have a horrible, terrible fear of unstable heights (i.e. roller coasters with big drops) but somehow (without all that much trying) my roommates managed to convince me to go on Space Mountain with them. I spent the entire 45 minutes we stood in line going "This is a bad idea, I shouldn't be doing this, I should go back out." The wouldn't let me, and in the end I'm really grateful, because I loved it. There weren't any huge, ridiculous drops that I couldn't deal with, and I can't wait to ride it again.

After that we made it out just in time to see Celebrate the Magic and Wishes. As we walked up to Main Street the Electrical parade was ending and they were allowing people back on the street, so we managed to make it to the 10th row back directly in front of the castle. It was an amazing view, and I was so excited to begin my Disney journey with friends!