Free Amber Earns Her Ears: My Secret Walt Disney World Cast Member Diary by Amber Sewell Page A

opportunities that had come from our spontaneous decision to go meet Lou.
    During my next day off, I camped out at the little white table just outside the Christmas store in Liberty Square. I had a new notebook in front of me, a new pen, and a bowl of watermelon. Rotating my wrist, sore from this sudden burst of writing, I looked up and took a minute to appreciate my situation: eighteen years old, sitting with a perfect view of Cinderella’s Castle and Sleepy Hollow Refreshments, writing an article for a magazine about a subject that was more fun than any kind of work. My thoughts were interrupted when a mother hesitantly held her camera out to me, asking if I would take a photo of her family in the red sleigh next to my table. As this was the fourth or fifth such request I’d received in the couple of hours I’d been there, I smiled and assured her it was no trouble whatsoever.
    Eventually, the park had to close — early, as luck would have it, since it was grad night — and I drove back home to type up what I had written. I spent numerous hours researching and writing this one article. I discovered a plethora of facts that made the entire Liberty Square area more interesting, and spent quite a few lunch breaks at work surrounded by my notes and the excerpts I had copied from books in the Cast Member library. After a little more tweaking, I sent the article to Tim on April 29, 2010, fretting that my writing wouldn’t be good enough for him.
    All I could do then was wait. It was remarkably like waiting for my acceptance into the program; I pulled up my email at every chance, as soon as I was on break, or off work, or any time at home. Then, finally, I got a response from Tim:
Well Amber, you’ve really thrown a monkey wrench into my day. Here I am, thinking I’m all done with the next issue, and along comes your article. I absolutely LOVE it!! So much so that I think it may become the cover story of the next issue (meaning I have a lot of scrambling to do!!). We’re doing a lot of USA type of stuff in this issue with the Fourth of July nearing (American Adventure, the never-opened Disney’s America park, Hall of Presidents, Main Street etc.), and I think this would be the perfect theme-setting article for the whole issue. What a way to start out, huh??
I have a copy editor who will go through and clean it up grammatically, but basically I think this is outstanding. Some of the facts are ones we’ve used already or are already in another article so I may trim them, but beyond that this is fantastic, thank you so much!!!
I would like to add you to the Contributors Section up front, do you have a nice pic of yourself (it can be casual, even an “at the park” one if you’ve got it)? It doesn’t need to be overly huge but 600 pixels or wide would be great. And a short bio too!!
Great work my friend, hopefully it will be the first of many!!
Tim
    I sat in silence and stared at this message for a few seconds, and then immediately ran over to Betty, who had just come downstairs to go to the restroom, and gave her an excited hug, shoving the phone in her face. She was almost as excited as I was, assuring me that this was the beginning of great things. She told me: “You will be a famous author, mi amiga del alma, and your mami will be so proud of you, because I knew it!” I called my parents to let them know, and when break was over, everyone upstairs in the kitchen was subjected to my excited chatter until closing.
    Paige, too, had a certain degree of success with her dream job. To be a Keys to the Kingdom tour guide is a coveted position; people can work for the company for years before they are permitted to lead guests through the bowels of Magic Kingdom.
    We had emailed Pete the day after our meeting to thank him again for introducing us to people who had potential power to influence our futures, and received a reply that he was happy to help. And would we be interested in going to Magic Kingdom one day to