plenty of time, and we grabbed two seats together. We sat there for a while in silence, purely because we were both tired. I closed my eyes a few times in hopes of getting an extra 5 minutes of sleep on the bus, but my brain was too excited, even though my body disagreed.
It was 6:52. The bus hadn’t left. I said to Abbie, “I thought the bus was leaving dead on 10 to 7; why haven’t we left yet”. Finally, the bus doors closed, but just as it was pulling away, a guy came running up and banged on the door. The driver was nice and let him on. The guy was wearing dark jeans and a shirt. He looked a mess, and far too informal for a Traditions class. He was heading to the back when he saw a spare seat behind us. I was still half asleep at this point, but it was only as he sat down that I realized it was Creepy Mike, the Canadian chatterbox from orientation the day before. I pretended not to see him and whispered to Abbie, who I’d already told about him, that it was him . We pretended to be asleep the whole journey to avoid communicating with Mike, but to be honest, it was 7 o clock in the morning, and I wasn’t really pretending most of the time.
The bus pulled up at Disney University on schedule. I had seen pictures of this place online and had always thought that its sign had been Photoshopped. I didn’t know such a place existed, and why I couldn’t go there to study. We headed inside to around all the people who had stopped outside to get their picture in front of the university sign. We decided to get ours later, when we’d look more alive.
Inside the building, we sat in the entrance area and glanced at the Disney cartoon playing on a TV behind us. There were Disney models on display, Disney paintings hung, and Disney quotes written on the walls. I absorbed every detail. I particularly liked Chip 'n' Dale floating down on parachutes from a missing ceiling tile gap. Before I had time to look at everything, we were split into our groups. Abbie was taken away from me at this point, but luckily I had Shauna with me, and a Canadian girl, Paige, who shared an apartment with Shauna. As we followed our leader up to our classroom, I tried to look at every wall, because each time you turned there was a new picture to see and story to read. One corridor had pictures and some writing dedicated to Disney animation artists. I love facts and trivia, and I really just want to stop and read them all. This building was practically a Disney Company Museum.
We stopped around the corner from the Disney Animators’ hall of fame in a waiting area where one wall had Disney heroes on it and the opposite wall Disney villains. The montage of pictures was amazing. Best waiting area ever!
As the line started to move, I stopped focusing my attention on the walls and looked forward to see a table full on shiny blue cards. Our IDs! This was the holy grail of cards. Having one meant we were officially Disney cast members, it meant we were awesome, it meant we could go to the parks for free, it meant we had proof that we have the coolest job in the world, it meant we got discounts on Disney food and merchandise, it meant we were the coolest of all the cats.
After getting out IDs we headed into a room, which had even better walls than those outside in the corridors. We wanted a table with three spare seats so we could sit together, and we had to act quickly to find one. More people were coming in behind us and taking up the space. Finally, I spotted it, a table right at the front, and we grabbed it ahead of others with the same intention. In front of each seat was a baby blue workbook with a red stripe down the side, dotted with white Mickey heads. In the top right-hand corner was a empty name tag-shaped image. Then, in the middle, an even lighter blue watermarked “D”, in the Disney font, and “Traditions, brought to you by Disney University” in black. Of course, looking at the front cover just wasn’t enough, I had to have a cheeky