This week I finally graduated from my beloved greeting position (RIP) and started training to become a vacation planner. On my last day of greeting, a male, fellow park greeter extended his warmest wishes to me. “Hope you know you’re gonna get fat once you start your new job. All the vacation planners do is sit on their ass for a few hours, take a break and eat while sitting on their ass, then they go back to work for a few hours, and then take their lunch break, where they sit on their ass and eat.”
And you have a nice day as well sir!
So last Friday, I began my training for my vacation planner position. The first day was mostly focused on learning on to engage our guests. We learned about the four-step process we are supposed to follow when we have a guest at our window.
The first step is to RECEIVE our guest. “Hi, welcome to Walt Disney World. My name is Kelsey, and I’m excited to help you plan your vacation!” We have to use assurance statements, instead of asking a question such as, “How can I help you?” Asking a question creates doubt in the guests mind that we may not be able to help them.
The next step is UNDERSTANDING. During this step we ask questions to understand the guests’ needs. We ask questions such as, where they are from, how long they are staying here, what types of characters they would like to see, etc.
During the HELPING step, we suggest a package to sell them. We are supposed to persuade them through involvement. Sounds nice and fluffy, right?
The final stage is KEEPING. We invite the guests to come back to our parks, and to come back and see us if they would like to upgrade their package.
That’s pretty much vacation planning in a nutshell. The other part of the training was dedicated to learning the computer system that goes along with vacation planning. I’m definitely not a tech savvy person, and having to remember different sequences for each specific problem reminds me way too much of math, also not my forte.
During my last day of training class we played a game where the two trainers randomly walked up to any of us eight trainees, and we had to role-play as if they were actual guests and we were actual vacation planners. I was the first trainee to do the role-play. The trainer walked up to me and said she had lost her tickets and her receipt, and was wondering if I could look up her tickets for her. I froze and said, “If you could step to the window to my left, this gentlemen will be able to help you with that problem.” I start working with real live guests on Thursday, stay tuned….
My sister Genny, her husband Ben, and his little brother Brandon have been down here visiting this week. It has been fun to show them around Orlando. We went to Hollywood Studios today, and it was my first time going there. The Tower of Terror was a blast, and I definitely grabbed the arm of the old man who was sitting next to me and buried my head in his shoulder during the ride. He was very nice about the whole thing, and I was too scared to be embarrassed of my actions!
"The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life. "Why," I answered without a thought, "now." ~David Grayson
You make me smile
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