Yes, it's springtime in Florida, and for the first time ever, the Magic Kingdom is observing Spring Break!
At least it seems that way. Everything learned in prior years has been forgotten, plus management found some *fresh* stupid to add this year.
Okay, so we've advertised that the MK will open at 8am instead of the normal 9am. Fine and dandy, but instead, we open the turnstiles at 7am! Of course, nothing but Main Street is open at that hour, and there are still pickup trucks and power washers in Town Square at that hour -- took them 15 minutes to get backstage.
The trains began operation promptly at 7am. Unfortunately, guests can't get off in Frontierland as it doesn't open until 8am. They also can't get off in Toontown as it doesn't open until 9am. Doesn't matter though, as we didn't get our first guests to board until 6:54. There were six of them.
Meanwhile we've got a coordinator on the platform who spends his day exhorting us that, "We've got to get our hourly rates up!" Excuse me, but there are only two ways a train leaves a station on a busy day -- when the train is full or when the station is empty. What should we do? Go out with a lasso and rope in more guests? Maybe tie a few of them to the roofs of the cars? (Don't tempt me!)
Now add in a landscaping crew who have no idea when the first train is due, a manager who has no idea when the first train is due, a train crew who won't turn on their radio, and you have a formula for additional fun and mayhem.
In addition to the early opening, we're also staying open until midnight. Plus, we've got Extra Magic Hours to keep us open until 3 freakin' A-damn-M! Of course, one small advantage of the long hours is that the closing crew meets the opening crew in the parking lot and tells them how far the Carousel of Policy has rotated since yesterday. Gives us a fighting chance.
Oh, and the extended queue ropes are all gone, as are half of the eyelets that *used* to be in the walls to hang them from. At least the opening manager knew where the rope was kept. I told him I couldn't leave the platform and that *he* had to string it up and cut it to length. He's so new he actually *did*!
I suppose it could have been worse. We didn't have a riot, we didn't have exploding diapers, nobody jumped off a moving train, there were no weather holds, and none of our newbie GSMs demanded to know Just Exactly What I Thought I Was Doing when I was doing my job correctly. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
The T-shirt reads "I am surrounded by idiots! --Scar".
There are days when I am ever so glad that I'm CR and don't have to do this again until next week. Today was one of them....