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I hate doing these type of posts...really I do. But thanks to The Disney Blog, I've learned of yet another accident at the Walt Disney World Resort.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Anislav Varbanov, 30, died Monday evening after he was hurt while performing a tumbling roll during a rehearsal for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, the 30-mimnute show at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

This comes as a shock to all of us castmembers especially because we have many stunt shows not only at the studios, but other stunts performed and carried out across the resort. It shows us that the stunts that our dedicated castmembers perform daily are seriously dangerous and should not be performed at home.

I've seen the show a couple of times the most recent being about a month ago with a few of my friends from work. I'm not sure what role Anislav performed but I'm sure he will be dearly missed by the rest of the Indiana Jones cast and the rest of the cast members who were dear to him.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Orange County Sheriff's Office are investigating the accident.

The Indiana Jones show is typically performed five or six times a day. But a Disney spokeswoman said this morning that resort opted to cancel all performances today "out of respect for the cast."

I'm urging all my friends and family who are castmembers to please take caution down in Florida while performing your role. Accidents do happen as we have seen all this summer. Remember in seriousness... Safe-D beings with Me.

Lets all keep the family of Anislav in our thoughts and prayers today.

UPDATE (8/19/09): I was just informed that The Federal Government is investigating Disney World for the string of 3 deaths that occured this summer - including the Monorail accident and the accident at Magic Kingdom involving a castmember performing in the Jack Sparrow Pirate Tutorial.

From reserach I've found that the government has investigated Disney World a total of 17 times in the past few years, most accident cases have been thrown out, others have cast faut on Disney because of safety errors. Most of these cases can be found by most search engines.

As a castmember I am unable to comment on any of these incidents or the safety regulations of search...but I can say that the Safety regulations brought and taught to us on day 1 are nothing less than exceptional and they even test us on safety regulations throughout our employment with the company. I do not feel that the government will hand down anything hard on WDW, but here's hoping things get better for the resort - soon.

Right about now is the time where high school seniors in schools across the country have the opportunity to partake in Grad Nite at Walt Disney World where they basically get the park to themselves. Cast members beckon to their every whim where they'll get to ride rides, buy merchandise, see entertainers perform and explore the park late into the night in the ultimate Grad Party!

Alright now that the spiel is done lets get to the basics.

My school never participated in Grad Nite...mostly because I live in Michigan and the price to get there plus the price to participate would have been so exponentially high that money would have to have grown on trees for all of us to have enjoyed it. But I did get to work Grad Nite in 2007 in the Magic Kingdom in 3 different areas: Main Street at the Emporium, Adventure Land at Pirates of the Caribbean and a small shop near it, and doing Glow which was my personal favorite, pushing portable carts full of glow merchandise around the Magic Kingdom.

I met kids in all of my areas, had personal conversations with them and got to experience Grad Nite with hem...even though I was either stuck behind a counter, or a portable cart trying to fend off people from stealing the merchandise...I experienced foam dance parties, people on stilts dancing with me, celebrities performing and more.

Not to say that I didn't have my downers during Grad Nite...I had to fend of people stealing from my Glow Cart, tell hopefuls that we were out of the Grad Night T-Shirts or Grad Mickey Dolls and hope they didn't start crying, and to answer stupid questions like "Is all this stuff free?" Yeah...you think about that young graduating senior. Your high school taught you well!

The extremely long hours wasn't a perk either...while it did give a bunch of us CP's a chance to break away from the repetitive Main Street Music and work along to some awesome tunes that blasted over the speakers...but working in the Emporium, we tend to get out late anyway. I can honestly say that the latest shift I've ever worked was Grad Nite getting off at 5:00 am after cleaning up for 2+ hours and getting home at 6:00am while most of my roommates had 2 - 3 hours of sleep left, I was just getting into bed for the night. That, plus every student would come to the Emporium for merchandise (not unlike any regular day at the MK) and we would run out so fast that we would have to restock every hour!

I also heard of crazy stories going on during Grad Night like student's making out in bathrooms and on dark boat rides (i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean, Small World, Peter Pan's Flight etc.), and one that I cannot believe...student Mickey Mouse over into the moat...and because he took his head off to breathe, he got termed. Not sure if I believe this story, but I wouldn't doubt it being Grad Nite...

I experienced Grad Nite on a different level as well with my CP friends. Our managers loved us so much (or just did it to shut us up) that they took us on the roof of Main Street (right next to Casey's) to watch the Frey perform on the main castle stage. It was probably one of the most magical and best experiences on my College Program.

I wouldn't trade that experience for anything however...I loved Grad Nite and I really wish that I was down there this year to experience it.

Here's what I found on the website what's in store for this year's Grad Nite...

• Multiple live stages featuring the hottest musical acts including Katy Perry, Lloyd, Metro Station, Mishon, The White Tie Affair, Lesley Roy, and Wynter!
  Celebrity host Hayden Panettiere
• One talented Senior, each night, will earn the opportunity to sing on the Grad Nite main stage!
• Celebrity appearances including Jaslene Gonzalez — Cycle 8 winner of America's Next Top Model and reality TV stars Paula and Ryan from MTV's The Dual 2!
• Red-carpet treatment
• Complimentary music album download card
• Multiple live DJ's and dance zones throughout the Park including celebrity DJ Roonie G
  Special Class of 2009 fireworks
• Free-play arcade
• Interactive video games
• Unlimited access to thrilling rides & attractions including Rock 'n' Roller Coaster® starring Aerosmith, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, all-new Toy Story Mania!, the all-new American Idol Experience and more!

To get the scoop on this year's Grad Night and more information, click the title of the post to go to Disney' Grad Night 2009 website.

So from the looks of it it looks like this year's Grad Nite is going to be set at the Disney Studios which is a change of venue from when I got to work it back in 2007. Not sure how I like it at the Studios but then again my opinion doesn't really matter...I had a blast in my three areas during my Grad Nite...so much that I bought a $10 T-Shirt that I still wear! (It looks awesome!)

What about you guys...any Grad Night Experiences, from the student's perspective or cast members...cool stories, tragic breakdowns? Anyone working Grad Nite this year that's excited or nervous about it? I wanna hear them all! Leave them in the comments below...and if you ever get stressed during Grad Nite, doing what Julie does below is totally acceptable..no matter what your manger says!

Hey there blog buddies, So I was watching American Idol tonight (of course on DVR because I'm too busy during the week to watch live TV) and I thought to myself "I wonder what it would be like to actually be on American Idol?I


For those who know me, I like to sing. I haven't done any formal performances in almost 4 years, but singing is what I like to do...my friends tell me all the time that I should try out for AI but school has gotten in the way. But tonight, a thought accoured to me...

I could actually "audition" for American Idol and not have it interfere with school! How is this possible you might ask? Through the American Idol Experience at the Disney Studios!

When I first heard of this attraction I got super psyched. I know a couple of people who have exerienced it and they said it was awesome. I personally haven't gone down there to try it yet so I'm not sure how it works. That is what you'll have to tell me. I thought to myself today as Seacrest prolonged the answer as to who was getting voted off...but it really didn't matter because I had it DVR'ed but didn't have the sense to fast forward...ummm where was I?

Oh yea...I thought to myself (again) "What if I 'auditioned' at the parks and see what happens?" On my last program I didn't do the Night of Stars competition for CP's or even Cool Beans Cafe...speaking of which, those are pretty chill. Im goinna go to as much of those as I can to meet new people and get back to performing and having a good time. I think this time I'll get back to doing what I love (at least when I have the free time) and sing the pants off Disney World (is that even possible?). **UPDATE: My friend and one-time Cast Member Serena informed me that cast members are not able to audition which pretty much rules this out...but hey...at least I can still go and watch! And Night of Stars/ Cool Beans Cafe is still an option...**

The only thing is I'm not sure how the process works though. Anyone have any experience going through the attraction? How does it work? How do you get fast-pass to perform? I'm curious...

On another note...I heard through the grapevine, and by the grapevine i mean TheDisneyBlog that Disney, mainly ABC is having talks with Hulu to put their shows on their website.

Here's why I think it's a good idea:

• It gets more viewers to traffic their shows, not just the regular viewers they get from television.
• It's FREE
• They can put old movies up on Hulu as well...movies that people haven't seen in a long time or TV specials that only came on once that people missed.
• It's FREE
• Disney needs to jump on the bandwagon. they've got Facebook down pact, but sites like Hulu, **Twitter and the like are slowly rising to the peak of popularity. Better to get on board now than wish you had later...
• It's FREE
• Hulu is starting to become (in my opinion) as popular as YouTube especially with liscensed shows you cannot find on YouTube, Disney would be stupid not to put their shows up on Hulu.
• P.S. It's F-R-E-E!

These are just rumors I've heard, nothing solid as of right now now but i'll keep you all posted. Otherwise, 47 days until the big move...I'm getting more and more excited every day! I actually got an email from recruiting today welcoming me to the program (again) and telling me to keep an eye out on the website for updates and links to helpful sites within the Login pages. I actually got to take a look at the Eyes and Ears for March, so if anyone wants to check that issue out let me know.

Keep up with these posts and my Video Logs on Youtube so you can follow along with me on this fantasmic journey as a CP!

Make it Magical!

**P.S. My Twitter...follow me!