The Happiest Place on Earth

So i took a week off from Disneyland to help out during Valentine's day. Luckily for all of you i didn't bother to make a video of me and Mary complaining again. Next year should be quite interesting though because in the next couple of months we're moving our shop a few storefronts down---to a place that's smaller. Where are we going to put all those flowers during Valentine's next year?!? I don't even want to think about it.

After taking a week off, i came back to work to find myself touring people around the parks for a week straight with three different families---it was amazing! I haven't spent that much time playing in Disneyland in quite a while. And luckily for me the people i toured around were all very nice---the kind of people i was very happy to go out of my way to make their stay more enjoyable. I started to remember why Disneyland is such a great place and why it was so fun to work here. And then my tours ended and reality set back in, but lets not dwell on reality...here's why my week was so great:

The first family is a family i've hosted several times in the past---Willow Bay, the wife of Bob Iger, our CEO, their two boys, and her sister and her two children. I wasn't originally scheduled to host them because a fellow coworker was letting her personal agenda get in the way of doing her job, but when Willow found out i wasn't her guide, she sent off an email that put everyone into a panic. She wasn't mad or anything, but she hadn't heard if i had quit or moved on to another part of the company so she was just curious as to my whereabouts. The stupidity of this issue is people have tried to assign other guides to executives and their families whom i've hosted in the past, and every time the same thing happens---i end up being the guide anyways. I honestly wonder how long it will take until someone finally figures out it's just a heck of a lot easier to just assign me in the very beginning. All politicking aside, we had a great time, as usual. And it's nice to know when a family appreciates the hard work you do for them and specifically asks for you when they visit.

The next two days i hosted Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, his wife and daughter, and daughter's two friends. They were here celebrating the daughter's 16th birthday. At first i was a bit uncertain and a little nervous about entertaining three 16-year-olds, but we got along very well and by the end of the second day the girls wanted me to stay and play with them until the parks closed. At no point did i geek-out and talk about semiconductors, but we did talk about Cal (he wore his Cal baseball cap both days). I was very impressed with his commitment to his family. During the entire time i was with him, not once did he check any type of electronic device. And as if that alone wasn't enough to earn a lot of respect, they all hand-wrote and signed a thank you note that they gave me at the end of their stay. They live in San Francisco so i may actually see them again.

Family number three for my next two days in the parks was "super" model (she hates that label) Christy Turlington and husband, actor Edward Burns. They brought their two children, one of Christy's sisters and her husband and their two children, and her other sister's two children---me with four adults and six kids! Both Christy and Eddie are great parents, and they were very generous and kind too. Every time the group stopped for snacks or food, Christy would always ask me more than a couple times if i wanted to have anything. I spent most of the days with her and the kids because Edward would be babysitting their little boy in the hotel room during the evening and the requisite afternoon nap. But after spending only a few hours in the parks, he was very quick to observe something at DCA was not quite right and wasn't very surprised when i told him we would be spending over a billion dollars to fix it. He was also very excited to hear we were building Carsland. They were by far the most normal (they took an airport shuttle to and from John Wayne and flew on a domestic airline) and most generous celebrity family i've ever met; they are now my all-time-favorite celebrity family. I was sad to see them leave because they live in New York and probably won't be back for quite some time.

Here are the two pictures Public Affairs at the Disneyland Resort took and released. Getting these two photos was unbelievably difficult. The story doesn't sound like a big ordeal, but i'm not going to take the time to describe the joy of working with our celebrity relations managers. The original photo shoot was scheduled at the Mad Tea Party the day of their arrival, but because Edward and son were at the hotel and not in the parks, the shoot was moved to the morning of day two. Day two---it rained all morning so the shoot was moved to Peter Pan's Flight, but for whatever reason the quality of the images from that shoot were too poor to be released to the media. Luckily Christy and Edward were both very accommodating and agreed to do a second shoot later in the day at Mickey's House. Most celebrities are very unpleasant when asked to do a photo shoot, let alone a second one because we messed up. They even decided to buy all the kids Mickey ears so they would be properly attired for the meeting.

One final note, she is more beautiful in person. Honestly, i didn't see any makeup at all, but i'm not very good at observing those kinds of things so i've been told she probably just had a very minimal amount on. What i can say is i never saw her look in a mirror or do any kind of touching up. I only saw the reapplication of lip gloss maybe twice during the entire trip? As you would figure, she had the most amazing clothes, but they were also functional and appropriate for playing in the parks on a rainy/cloudy day. Look at what she's wearing at Mickey's House...sunglasses and coat by Chanel (the coat was really nice), silk scarf, fitted button-up shirt, jeans (sorry, to my untrained eyes the coat covered up any distinguishable designer markings), and Nikes. I honestly think she could wear anything and she would make the clothes look better---yes, there's my captain obvious statement of the year.