Today was the day many of us had been dreading working. I was one of the lucky ones who had been allocated a 15 hour shift during the one day of the year when the park is open 24 hours.
There were two themes to the day. 1) Rock your Disney side, and 2) Heroes and Villains.
As the night went on all the villains came out in the park and guests were able to meet character that are not normally out and about. Such as the Evil Queen, Malificent, Hades, Jafar etc.
Anyway, my whopper of a shift was from 3.45pm till 6.45am. The park had opened at 6am and would close tomorrow at 6am. This happened at both Disneyland in California and Magic Kingdom in Orlando.
Before I got to work though I had to return my warm red coat. They have called them all in for a clean I guess, as it isn't that cold anymore.
There was a suprisingly large amount of guests. I didn't think there would be, but they stayed it out the whole long night.
Lots of guests were dressed up too. There aren't many days in the year when adult guests are allowed to dress in Disney costumes. But today was one and they didn't disappoint. There was a rule out though that guests were not allowed to pose with other guests in photos as that character- if that makes sense?
We had so many Eric and Ariel couples come through. I guess we were a bit of a magnet for them. But other costumes were absolutely amazing. We had a rafiki come through, Hurcules and Meg, lots of Anna and Elsas, and also Anna and Kristoffs. The hundreds of costumes we saw made our night more interesting.
We also had a massive amount of queue jumpers tonight. Normally we get one or two a night, but tonight it was so so many. It always happens in the fast past line. They have to walk in and along past the loading area to scan their passes for the second touch point. But tonight they didn't seem to think this was necessary. We had to shout out to a lot of guests urging them to not go over or under the chains and make their way right through the queues entirety. For some reason they didn't like this. We also had one lady stop and change the lay out of our chains, holding one open and allowing a whole group of guests to bypass a proportion of the line. She found herself being talked to by a somewhat angry Cast Member (not me).
As we were waving through the final guests off Mine Train and out through the castle a young boy and his Dad came up to the human wall we had made. The father said to us that they were extremely grateful for all of us staying here overnight, he said he was aware that most of us were CPs and wouldn't ever have to do this again. But he wanted to emphasise to us that himself and his son who had dressed up as Christopher Robin for the day, had had a wonderful time and were extremely grateful for what we do. They were so so lovely and I then didn't feel so bad.
Didn't mean I was less eager to get on that bus home. But I was extremely lucky and was offered a ride home from one of the new workers Paige. She saved me so much time getting home and this meant I had more time to sleep before heading back to work at 6.30pm.