Epcot Orientation: Discovery Day

Today was a day of new experiences, new memories, and definitely some new discoveries. Once Traditions is over, you get a special themed training for you location. For example my orientation last year for the Polynesian was called Aloha Day and it was centered around Hawaiian culture and the history of the resort. Today's orientation was called Discovery Day. Epcot is all about learning and embracing cultures and new technology. The core of our orientation was diversity, progression, and culture. To start the day we went back to the original storyteller and man behind Epcot, Walt. In the fall of 1966 Walt put together a video pitch to the state of Florida for his new Disney World and titled it The Florida Project. Walt was ill at the time of filming and sadly died in December of that year and never got to see his Disney World and Epcot built. The Epcot that we have today is different from what was planned, I actually am really curious as to what it would have been like if it went according to plan. Epcot has always been a constantly evolving park, the way Walt intended. We watched part of this video in orientation today and I definitely recommend watching it if you're a Disney buff. The intro is a lot about Disneyland and Walt starts his Epcot spiel at about the 5 minute mark.

Watching videos of him always makes me cry :'( 

After that, we went into the park! We had two really great orientation leaders that made lots of great jokes and provided us with lots of Epcot facts. Did you know that Epcot has the 2nd largest parking lot on property and can hold 11,646 cars? The largest is Magic Kingdom's parking lot and that alone can hold Disneyland's Magic Kingdom. That's a lot of cars! Another fun fact, Spaceship Earth is made up of a series of triangles. How many are there you ask? 11,324 triangle panels make up Spaceship Earth. These panels play a key part in the structure of Spaceship Earth. If it's raining, you can stand underneath it and not get wet because the un off water from Spaceship travels through its own drain the be put back into the fountain view near the entrance and World Showcase lagoon. This water also helps to clean Spaceship Earth and it only has to be cleaned by Cast Members about twice a year. Now you know!

We did a lot of walking around the park going over locations of things such as first aid and guest relations, going over the history of the park, visiting key areas, observing Cast Members in action and even riding some rides! As a group we got to go on the ride within Spaceship Earth, Project Tomorrow. This ride features the history and future of our planet and has some great animatronics within as well as you travel throughout the 18 story icon. In addition, we also got to ride the Friendship Boats as a group before they were opened to the Guests. These boats take you all along the pavilions through a sealed boat on World Showcase Lagoon. Our guides gave us a bunch of facts and tidbits along the way. Something I knew beforehand was that Morocco, not part of the opening pavilions, was built with special influence. The prince of Morocco sent over his personal architect to work with Disney in making sure the construction of the pavilion was authentic. It actually happens to be one of my favorite pavilions. I also learned something new! In Norway when Christianity was brought to the country, they built churches without the use of nails. There is a replica of a Stave church in the Norway pavilion that houses a museum on vikings, I didn't even know you could go in it!

There is a part of the tour that I have sworn to keep a secret. Seriously, we had to raise our hand and repeat an oath swearing to never ever, ever ever, share the secret so help me Mickey. You'll just have to come work for Epcot to find out! It really made us feel at home. In fact, everyone did. We didn't have our name tags on in the park since our tour guides wanted us to be 'their Guest' but we had our IDs around our necks. Every CM greeted us, waved, and welcomed us to the team, it really felt like a family. 

After that at about 12ish, I finally got to go see the bakery! I was met by a leader who took me to get my costume and locker, answered some of my questions and took me to see the bakery! It is actually underground under Innoventions, I never would have guessed that! We bake numerous desserts for a majority of the pavilions and restaurants like Coral Reef and Sunshine Seasons. I got to meet my chef and she was so nice and welcoming, I felt really comfortable with her and in that kitchen already. Last year I remember being a bundle of nerves and then we met the GM of the Polynesian and it was as if he just took them all and threw them away. She made me talk about myself and what I expect to get out of this. I mentioned I was a bit nervous but excited but she emphasized that she doesn't want me to feel stressed, she works to have it be a stress free environment and to not feel pressured. She said we will get tired of course but have fun doing so. I really feel confident working under her. I met the rest of the crew, I'm the only CP, but they were all welcoming and friendly and one of the girls gave me a tour of the kitchen. It's even smaller than our kitchen at ShopRite, there's 2 ovens to bake for all of Epcot! But a lot gets done so I will see on my first day on Monday!

I had a little chat with my mom and feel even much better after that. I feel like it's going to be harder for me to make friends this time around. I'm living and working with people not necessarily my age. My roommates are 25 and 30 and being the only CP in the bakery makes me the youngest. At 21 I thought maybe I would go get drinks in Epcot with my roommates or like last year my roommates and I would have little dance parties in the living room and goof around, that's what you get with college kids! I work well with everyone, at my work back home I'm the youngest there too, but on a college internship you expect different. But this is week 1, come fall more CPs are coming to the bakery for Food & Wine and while a lot of my rep friends are leaving, one of them is coming over too. I also do hope to meet people from my other blog and make friends through that as well. I'm just a Disney person, I want to go to the parks all the time, I want to go out and explore Orlando and go to Universal and Sea World and the Titanic exhibit and stuff, and I know that even if I do that on my own it will get done, but I wish I had more people to go with but I think that will happen over time. Just like Epcot, this program is full of new discoveries!