Back in January, the Disney Parks Blog announced that the Disneyland Hotel was going to start hosting Afternoon Tea on weekends. Naturally, as a Disney fanatics and newly dubbed tea party connoisseurs, Shelby, Jen and I were dying to try it out.
I decided that an afternoon tea at Disneyland was how I wanted to spend my birthday this year. Jen booked a 12:25 reservation and soon the anticipation set in.
Another birthday. Another tea party adventure.
Last year for Shelby’s birthday, we went for tea at Madeline Garden Bistro and Venue in Pasadena. We had such a fun time (seriously, who wouldn’t want to dress up cute and have a tea party??) that we decided to do it again this year.
This time, our destination was the Mission Inn Hotel and Spa in Riverside.
The bi-annual D23 Expo was held at the Anaheim Convention Center this year in August. The D23 Expo is the Disney version of Comic-Con. It has panels and booths and tons of merchandise. It is the ultimate event for anyone who is a Disney fanatic.
I went to the last D23 Expo in 2013, right after I was hired at Disneyland. When tickets went on sale for Cast Members this year, I snatched up some for myself, Jen, Nate and Shelby, and immediately put in requests to have the weekend off.
To my surprise and utter relief, I got all of the days off that I had requested and enjoyed a fun-filled, sleep-deprived whirlwind weekend of everything Disney.
Last week, I invited my friends Jen and Nate over for dinner. Because we share a love of all things Disney-related, we decided to frame our dinner around the song “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast.
I even went so far as to look up the lyrics to see what sort of food we could attempt to cook. One of the main verses in the song is as follows:
Beef ragout
Cheese souffle
Pie and pudding “en flambe”
Boom, dinner planned.
Continue reading
This is Kate.
This photo was shamelessly stolen from Kate’s Facebook.
Kate is my best friend. We met in college, roomed together for two years and tried to spend every waking moment together. Our friends knew that if you invited one of us, you had to invite the other, and I think collectively we were known as KateandMegan.
Kate is my “person”. I talk about her all the time. She is someone who I know I can call when I am having a problem and she will give me blunt honest advice and I will listen to that blunt honest advice. I know that I can also call her when I want to tell her something funny because we have a similar sense of humor. We always pick up or respond no matter what, or leave obnoxious voice-mails.
We know each others’ likes and dislikes and the tiny quirks that make each other special.
She is weird and I am weird and we can be super weird together.
For my friend Shelby’s 25th birthday, we wanted to something fun, special and totally new.
Jen, who dined with me at Napa Rose, came up with the idea to go to tea at a place called Two a Tea she had heard about in Glendora. Unfortunately, when she called, they were all booked for the Saturday afternoon that we had wanted to go. She found another place in Pasadena called Madeline Garden Bistro and Venue and we were able to get a lunch reservation there.
Excited for our first Adult Tea Party, we all bought new cute spring dresses and made outlandish speculations about how we were going to have the perfect afternoon birthday celebration.
I interact with tons of different Guests on a daily basis in the store where I work. Most of them are your usual retail experiences: you give them the spiel, currency is exchanged, small talk small talk, awesome have a nice day!
There are the Guests that stick out and make me my day a little nicer:
And, of course, there are the Guests who make you work for your paycheck. They are the ones that test your patience, your sincerity, your Company and store policies, your sanity and your belief in the good of all humanity.
Which is only made super obvious by the fact that I am posting this in the evening on the 31st of January.
But, I’m still making some resolutions and that’s what matters right?
It’s always fun to tell people that I work at Disneyland.
I get a kick out of their reactions. They get excited. They get interested. They want to know more. I detect the smallest bit of jealousy because the name Disneyland evokes visions of happiness and magic and all things wonderful and awesome.
So I finally buckled down and went to see The Book of Life.
The trailer had me intrigued, mostly for its absolutely gorgeous animation and a plot revolving around your traditional epic hero storyline and the Day of the Dead.
It looked like a good movie, the kind of movie that you can get lost in for a few hours and come away with a satisfied feeling in your body.
It’s a shame then, for me anyways, that this was not the case for The Book of Life.
The Beginner's Guide to Adventuring 