Core Class Training

 My role a WDW is a Vacation Planner at Animal Kingdom, which is basically Disney's glorified version of the people who sell you tickets to events or in our case, to the parks. (my costume for DAK to the left)

Our training is one of the longest, if not the longest, of all the roles you can choose from in the college program. Officially it takes 10 days (5 of core class and 5 on the job), but it is actually a role of continual learning.

I found that I picked up the information fairly quickly in core class. They would show us how to do it and after two times on my own I was pretty good. 

Random fact #4 - I have always been a great practice player but not always the best game time player.

So I had tons of information slammed into my brain in 5 days and thought i would be fine going into on the job training. I have worked in a ticket booth before and worked in customer service a lot so I thought I'd have a leg up. Unfortunately for me, none of those things helped at all. I mean interacting with people is easy because I do that every day. Its the interacting with the computer system that's the challenge. 

First off there are sooooo many different ticket packages! Then there are sooooo many different ways to process tickets, but not all of them are the right way. We must do it the right way or it screws up the system. That's the hardest part of the job. 

On the job training is where we have someone who is experienced breathing (ever so lightly) behind our backs, whispering in our ears as we make mistake after mistake. You learn a lot of cool tips and tricks on how to remember things and how to make each transaction a bit easier. 

The last day of on the job training for me was Sunday. It was my assessment day to see how much I learned and if I was ready to be a vacation planner. I passed!! Praise God because I was stressing out about my assessment. I felt so unprepared and like I was way under-performing. Still not confident I should have passed but whatever... However, even though I passed, i'm not taking off the "earning my ears" red ribbon quite yet. It is a way of letting guests know you are still in training so they are nicer when it takes you a bit longer to process. And even though i'm no longer an official trainee, I did not get to practice as many transactions as I would have liked so i'll keep it on a few more days till i'm comfortable.