So...yeah.

Not that I'm really complaining as the end result is sure to be made of awesome...

But last night at work was weird. Half of our front desk is blocked off by a wall of plastic sheeting.

It gives one the feeling of claustrophobia, having to emerge from behind a corner flap.

We are going through a MAJOR renovation to the hotel to be finished in April. Again, I am excited as the rooms are looking pretty spiffy.

Our three top floors have been set to 6 themes and I must say they do brighten up the place. We're across from Disneyland and it was only natural that we have Disney themes in those rooms. We have Pirates, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Princesses, Cars, and of course Classic Mickey.

Everything has been replaced...beds, carpets, plumbing, fresh paint, the works. It smells sooooo clean in there!

Our front desk isn't having a total overhaul, but the counters will now be a granite finish and there is supposed to be a fancy wall mural to accentuate it.

I will post pics as soon as everything is done.

I just have to suffer a few more days.

Until next time...

Here it is, my birthday trip!

Yes, unlike most of the time that I'm a slacker, I am posting my pics the day after my birthday!

I placed them into a slideshow for you to enjoy. Now, there's a lot. I do apologize, but they were all so fun I had to include them all.

YAY!!!

Do you know what today is?

It's my birthday! Look, I got myself (a picture of) a cake!



Besides, I am going to the happiest place on Earth today. Disneyland! Yep, and because I have an annual pass, I get a special gift card to spend on merch.

Yay, I'm so excited! Jack and I are taking my daughter Alex too. My friends Nadine and Jesse have annual passes as well and they are joining us to celebrate.

I am going to take a TON of pictures. So look forward to that. If it rains, so much the better.

I feel so happy!!!

The further adventures of the Annual Pass epic saga

So today was insane.

I woke up at 9:30am and called Gabby. Since we have no car, I had asked her if she could take me to the front desk meeting today since she is the full time Auditor but she is off. We are friends too, so that helps. She said no problem. Anyhow, I call today and she doesn't pick up. I don't freak out, but leave her a message.

I start to get ready and then realize it's now 10am. I call her again and she answers very sleepily. Oh boy, turns out I woke her up. She says she's getting up and she'll be to my place soon. Well, it gets to be 10:45am and she's not there. I call her and she says she's at Katella and Beach. I call work and Andrea says don't worry, we'll wait until you two arrive.

Gabby shows up and we haul ourselves to the meeting which turns out to be pretty basic. We are going through some tough months and for Jan-Mar. we will be conserving as much as possible. That means turning off lights we don't need, recycling paper, that kind of thing.

Okay, cool. I had asked Gabby on the way to work if we could go and redeem my pass at Disneyland since the meeting was from 11-12:30, there should still be plenty of time for us to have lunch and hang out until I start work at 3pm. Well...that is so not what happened. Per usual.

Gabby asks the girls at work if they would like to join us for lunch, figuring we would meet them at like Taco Bell or something. They all say sure, turns out it's Andrea's birthday and she wants to go to TGIFriday's. It won't take that long, right?? Yeah. We sit down at about 12:45pm and don't get done until about 2:30pm.

Since it was a non work related lunch, everyone wanted to sit there and get to know each other better. Which was cool, but..I was stressing over this whole "redeem as soon as possible deadline" nonsense. I tell Andrea about going to redeem the pass and she says to go since she doesn't want me to lose out since I am the only reason we won anyway.

Gabby and I zoom over to Disneyland and I get in line at the ticket booths. She parks in the 15 minute parking area to wait for me. I wait for 15 minutes at the ticket booths, so now it's already 3pm. I call Andrea and she says it's fine, just take care of it and get here as soon as you can. All right.

I get to the window and the CM says," Oh this is already activated, you need to go to the Annual Pass center to get your official one." Really now. Grrr.. I say that I already have an annual pass, so what do I do? He says that I have to use the one I was given. Okay.

I call Gabby and tell her. She says it's all right. I go into the park using the pass. I go to the center which I am told has about a 20 minute wait. Wonderful. But I am not moving from this spot. The CM outside says we can go to Plaza Pavilion, but I hear a guest in line say he went down there and there were some issues, so he was sent back. Now normally I would have just gone there, but I am on a serious time crunch.

I wait, lalala, damn it I left my MP3 player in the car. Gah. All right, I'll just enjoy the Disney of it all. The small section I'm in. Finally, I get up to the counter. I hand the CM my ID and the pass. He says to me," Do you already have an annual pass?" I say yes I do. He looks at me over his glasses and shakes his head. "Did you use the new pass?" I said yes, I was instructed to do so. He says that's not right as since I am already I an AP, I could use that new pass to renew my AP. So I should have come in with my active pass. WTH?!?!

Oh, great. I start to get upset thinking that I have wasted all this time for nothing, so now I will be late, get into trouble and lose out on this prize I won. But he says it's okay and that they will put notes into the system, so when I come back in the first week of March for renewal to go to this center and they will approve it.

Yay! So that's awesome, but in all that I came to work an hour late and I still had to change into my uniform. Andrea wasn't mad, thankfully and I won't be getting written up since she told me to go and take care of it. :sigh of relief there:

Oh, and I have two check-ins tonight.

Whoo-hoo. But it gave me a funny story to tell, so there you go.

I won, I won!

Okay, so remember a few weeks ago I wrote about that scavenger hunt at Disneyland? Well, apparently since we were the only group to get all the answers right, we won the Grand Prize. I found out today when I came into work.

Even the one answer I thought was wrong, I got it right. Wow. So guess what my prize is. Yep, an annual pass! But this one is the Premium one. I had toyed with the idea of taking Alex so she could have it, but I won it. So I am really thinking about it. Mine and Jack's do expire in April, so we would only have to get one for Jack then if I keep it.

I was so happy I about cried. Thank you Mom and Jack! Mom for instilling the love of Disney in the first place and Jack for keeping the magic alive. Turns out no one else even came close to our score. So I am pretty proud of myself right now.

Yeah, it's a good day even though we have no car since it's in the shop until tomorrow or Friday.

But once the brakes are fixed, we can work everything else out.

They're here!

So as promised (finally) I have the pics from Disneyland. I put them in a pretty appropriate slideshow. Haha!

Have a great day!

I love Disneyland!

So we took Alex for her birthday yesterday. We had a blast! Alex took a lot more photos than I did, so as soon as she sends them to me, I will post the best of them here. But for now, I have a few for you to enjoy.

Jack and I getting ready to go


Jack and our friend Kile on Autopia

Alex and I sharing a car on Autopia


Just Alex. Isn't she cute?

As I said, she took WAY more pictures than I did. We have an awesome one in front of the Christmas tree on Main Street. I can't wait to get those!

Never a dull moment here at the Holiday Inn Express

Okay, I've decided that I am going to share what happened today at work. I wasn't going to as it's a LONG entry, but I just want to show what I go through during a typical day. Not saying I call the cops all the time, but this brand of guest is what I am forced to deal with quite frequently.

So sit back, grab some popcorn and have a laugh.

From my front desk report Nov, 19, 2008:
(Mr. Lipski is the guest supposedly in this room and Christina is the manager on duty, Tina is my general manager)

Guest was due to check out today. I was informed when I came to work at 3pm that a female not registered called from the room stating that the room had been extended for 1 more night. The room had been cleared out by a cash payment, but no other arrangements had been made. When I called the room to speak to Mr. Lipski, the female acted as though she didn't know the guest. I told her we needed to have a form of payment to be able to extend this reservation as well as an ID to change the name responsible if that was the case. That either Mr. Lipski or herself needs to take care of this or they would have to vacate the room.

The guest acted very strangely and then said that she was waiting for her friend to come in to pay. I said that we would need some form of payment now for her to stay in the room, if not it was past check out time, so she would need to leave until the person arrived and then she would be more than welcome to check back in.

She got very agitated and said that the guy was supposed to pay for the room and she didn't understand what was going on. I said that he had not authorized that, and that his CC had declined. She said that she would leave in 10 minutes. I called the GGPD after giving Christina the heads up and she suggested I should call just as a backup.

Mr.Lipski called during this time and asked what was going on as he had received a phone call that we had charged his CC. I told him that since there was still someone in the room and was the person listed as the responsible party, he would be charged for whatever happened. He said he was not authorizing that. I said okay and let the guest in the room know this. She tried to tell me again that she was waiting for someone.

Then another female named Cindy called saying that the person in the room was her sister. That she was at a lawyer's office in Irvine but that she would take care of the room when she arrived. Christina spoke with her telling her that that was fine, but until then the guest would have to leave the room until she came to make the payment.

The police arrived at 4:00pm and the guest had still not left or come down to pay for the room. The officers asked her to pack up her things and leave the room. Then they left. A half hour later, I had not seen the guest come downstairs. Christina went upstairs and then called saying that the guest had taken some items from the room and that I should call 911. I did so and the police came back. The police said for me to go ahead and charge the CC on file for the missing items.

But they did not remove the female in question. Rather, she had a luggage cart packed full that she took out to the parking lot and is at this time still waiting for someone to pick her up. That was at 5:00pm.

At 5:30pm Christina left and saw the guest still seated in the parking lot with the luggage cart. After calling Tina, she said I should call the police and have her removed seeing as she was now considered trespassing. I called the GGPD and they said they would send someone out.

At 5:45pm a blonde girl that I had not seen before came in and said she was here to pick up her sister that had been in Rm.328. Could I let her go upstairs to check over the room? I said no, I'm sorry but only the guest responsible can do that. She said she had left a laptop case inside the room. I told her that Mr.Lipski would have to come in and show us his ID because he was the guest listed on the room. Paulin had gone upstairs and brought it down to me. It is on the counter. Only Mr.Lipski is allowed to pick this and any other items that may have been left in this room. He is to produce a valid ID.

I was instructed by Christina to also charge the guest's CC for 1 night room and tax since the guest did not depart until almost 2 hours after check out time. I was able to do so, but guest's CC did not authorize for the $50 in stolen items charges. I have left this account in the system under house account 9044 for check out tomorrow. Please settle the amount before checking out of system. Thank you.

So that is what I had the pleasure of sorting out during my shift. I had the cops show up three times and many of my guests were watching wondering what the heck was going on. I apologized to a few of them and tried to play it off like it was nothing. As it was, my GM asked me who checked them in and who let them stay over. I told her and she is not happy.

But I doubt anything will happen to the employees. It's frustrating, really.

At least tomorrow Jack and I are taking Alex to Disneyland for her B-day. Thanks to an awesome CM I know. Yay, I will have to take pictures!

Make sure to call her. She will be 17. Wow, time sure goes fast, doesn't it?

We went to Disneyland!

Jack and I had so much fun. Here are a few pics of us and Haunted Mansion Holiday.

It's up!

Whoohoo! The Darkest Hours Halloween Special is up. Go to www.darkestjack.com to see it. It came out amazing. We are very proud of it. Jack did an incredible job editing and it is already getting a lot of views.

I am sooooo happy right now I might burst.

But actually today we are going to Disneyland. We may be broke, but we have annual passes! So Jack and I are going to check out the Halloween decor. I'm sure I will have pics to post. LOL!