Lifeguard Boot Camp
Sunday, June 28/09
Okay. I’m up, showered, dressed and ready to update the blog. Here we go!
Well because I started late at Typhoon Lagoon today (I’ll explain the whole shift thing later), I wanted to do something with my morning. So it started with me, Jacqueline and Dana going to Property Control. Well, guess what? It was closed. What’s even worse is that Jacqueline and I had already been through the whole “closed on Sunday” situation and we completely forgot. You really lose track of time working here. Your “weekend” may be Tuesday and Wednesday so you can get really thrown off sometimes.
After wasting 45 minutes with that little adventure, we drove back to Vista Way and went to the pool for a bit. I didn’t get much of a tan. I pretty much just swam for about 45 minutes.
One of the things on my “list”. Have I told you about the list? I think I have but I’ll explain it again. There are so many things that I want to do while I’m here so I decided to make a list. I wrote it on the back of my first Wal-Mart receipt (from the days without a car) and I am continuously adding to it. It gets longer every week. Anyways, one of the things on the list was Checkers Burgers. I remember going there when I was younger when we had our house in Florida and I’ve always wanted to go back. Well, there was one right down the road from Target so I decided today I was going to go.
Jacqueline worked at 2:30pm just like me, so I called her up and sure enough she wanted to go. I love Jacqueline. She’s always up for something and it makes me happy. Oh, and since she gave me a shout out on her blog, I’ll do the same. Please read her blog. It’s pretty much the same stories but from a different point of view. I always enjoy reading it. Click here to read the blog. And have I told you that Jacqueline and I believe we were separated at birth? We have so much in common it’s insane. I don’t have time to list everything because I don’t have 7 hours, but one of the things that really creeps us out is our blogs. Jacqueline and I both started blogs before we came here and before we even knew one another existed. Guess what the title of her blog is? Jac at Disney. This is the full link: http://jacatdisney.blogspot.com/. Isn’t that crazy? We’re basically twins.
Back to the story, Jacqueline said yes to Checkers, so we hopped in the car and drove away. Checkers was amazing! It was super cheap and ohhhhh soooo gooooood! I love it! The fries were those crispy, seasoned fries and the burgers were really good too. We both love it!
Now it was getting time for us to go to work so we drove back to Vista and got ready. Today was the first day Typhoon Lagoon started split shifts. Because the park hours have been extended, it’s too much to have all lifeguards and slide operators working 12 hour days so they split the day into two shifts: AM and PM. AM is from 8am – 3pm, and PM is from 2:30pm – about 8:30pm or whenever the park closes. AM shifts are more desired because the go by faster and you can actually do something with your day because you get off early. Today I had a PM shift, but I was scheduled until 9:45pm which I found weird. It turns out it was for in-service which is mandatory when you work a PM shift. In the AM it’s optional.
Anyways, I got to work and got used to checking in backstage. They had me and a few other guys go around the park getting the water coolers from stand and refilling them. I got backstage a little after everyone had gone on stand and I got my rotation. I went and bumped the guy off that was covering for me and continued the rotation from there. I was on shallow, by the way, but I didn’t really mind. I was on deep for the last few days and tonight was pretty easy because it was only a 6 hour shift. I would rather do a deep shift for a 12 hour shift. Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Although there are split shifts, you can have a double shift which is 12 hours.
The whole night was pretty much a disaster. The people that were bumping me were late along with many other people which completely destroyed the rotation. Lets just say that the coordinators were NOT in a good mood. I called one of them when my bump was 25 minutes late and I got yelled at. It was ridiculous and I was extremely mad. So mad that I may have dropped the f-bomb in front of guests. I was mortified that I did it, but luckily nobody heard me.
So after work and the messed up rotation, it was time for in-service. There were TONS of lifeguards so they split everyone up into two groups. The first group went to the wave wall and the 2nd group (my group) went to one of the lazy river (creek) entrances. At the creek we practiced some extractions (getting victims out of the water on a backboard) and different scenarios. It was fun! After about 30 minutes of that the 1st group came to the creek entrance and our group went to the wave wall. This is there the title of the post comes into play. It was literally lifeguard bootcamp, but I loved every minute of it!
We started off with jumping off the wave wall which is always fun. Then we swam across the wave pool, up the stairs, then jumped back in on the other side. We swam back across the pool (keep in mind Typhoon Lagoon has the largest in-land wave pool in the world) and back up the stairs where we jumped in again. Then we had to tread water for two minutes with our hands out of the water. It was pretty intense but so much fun. At resorts, they DEFINITELY don’t get to do this sort of thing haha!
After the wave pool exercises, we walked back up the 40 stairs and over to another lazy river (creek) entrance. From there we had to swim about 1/4 of the lazy river. Upstream. Agaist the current. Like salmon. It was pretty hard. No, it was VERY hard! We were only allowed to stop at certain sections and the entire swim must have been about 1/2 a mile. It was really intense and everyone was huffing and puffing afterwards. I came in 2nd though! Right after the coordinator.
And that was it for in-service. It lasted until about 9:30pm, but I was scheduled until 9:45pm, so I just waited around for 15 minutes and got paid for it. I love my life.
After work Tim and I were driving back. Remember Tim? The British guy that lives across the hall? We were actually scheduled together for once so we drove back together. He had been working at resorts for the past two weeks so he was happy to be back at Typhoon Lagoon. Anyways, after work we were hungry and guess what’s kind of on the way home? Checkers! Yes. I went to Checkers again and it was goooooood! I loved it even more than the first time.
So we finally got back home around 10:30pm and I went to visit Kinga, Hayley and Helena. Remember that Sunday is House of Blues night so they were all getting ready. I was really planning on going but as the night went on I was just getting more and more tired. Then we found out that it may not even be open. It turns out it was, but there was a private event that lasted until about 10pm so there was some miscommunication. Guess what the event was? Pat Benatar. Yes, the “Love is a Battlefield” singer. They ended up going to HOB, but I stayed home and I think it was a good decision. After all, I had an AM shift tomorrow that started at 8am so I really needed to get some rest and getting back at 3am wouldn’t have helped.
That’s it for Sunday. I don’t have any pictures but I’ll have some for the next couple days. Next post title? “BARBARA JEAN!”
