Peer reviews, Complete 4 peer Reviews. 100 word each for all reviews. 400 words total

I love trains- always have, and probably always will. This was convenient for me when I was hired to work in Tomorrowland because I knew that before too long, I would work as hard as I could to be promoted to be a “Monorail Pilot.” The day I found out that I was being promoted to drive the sky train, I cried real tears of joy- and a lot of them too! My friends had to put their hands on me to stop me from shaking. I was just so proud that my hard work from the first nine months of working at the Disneyland Resort had finally paid off!

 A week and a half later, I was walking alone through the hauntingly quiet streets of Disneyland at 5am, enthralled for my first day of training. If you’ve ever been down Main Street U.S.A alone in the crisp Southern California air, you know that it’s one of the most magical feelings in the world! I distinctly remember the instrumental “Old Timer’s Waltz” playing faintly through the speakers, and even five years later, I find myself sitting here humming the tune perfectly from memory. Not another soul was in sight, so I found myself twirling, swaying, and dancing down that freshly cleaned pavement. I has a few minutes to spare before my training started, so I sat on a bench in front of the Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor and found myself praying for the thousands of people who were going to be walking that empty street later in that very same day. Thousands of people will be taken into the magic and harmony of the perfectly crafted theme park. They’d be entertained, overstimulated, served, and taken through worlds perfectly crafted to make them feel a way they’d never thought possible.

            Instead of overwhelming myself with the thought of how many people I’d interact with in that single day, I walked, with a visible pep in my step, through the neon lit Tomorrowland, made my way up to the Monorail platform, and watched the sun rise over the Matterhorn.

 

“Sarah?” I shot up before she was even done saying my name! “I’m Meagan! I’ll be training you for the next 4 days!” She stuck out her hand to shake mine. For a girl a solid 7 inches shorter than I was, she had the strongest hand shake I’d ever felt.

 

            After spending 4 hours going through readings, written tests, walk-through tours of the station, and overwhelming introductions to fellow pilots, it was finally time to step inside the cockpit of the train. To this day, I still have never experienced as many emotions in that short of time as I did in that first trip!

            “You think you’re ready to give it a go? I’ll take you through it step-by-step and I’ll be standing right next to you!” I think Meagan could tell how nervous I was, so she led the way.

 

            Let me tell you, reading about how to drive a monorail and actually doing it are wildly different things. I sat in the pilot’s chair, looked at the screen in front of me and saw I was clear to power up the train. After pressing what seemed like 100 buttons, turning a key, and doing loads of emergency testing, it was finally time to throttle. I squeezed the throttle in my right hand, honked the horn twice, and put the train up to 15mph- IT WAS MOVING! I DID IT! I felt a relief that I had actually succeeded in starting the train!

 

I reached for my radio to give my location “Monorail Red is exi…….. uhh…” The train stopped and every alarm in the cockpit was at full blast! “MONORAIL EMERGECY STOP ZONE 2!!” I’d been moving for a solid 15 seconds and I already broke the train!

 

“Sarah, this wasn’t you, we just hit a power dip!” Meagan took the pilot seat and began going through the emergency systems to reboot the power. I sat next to her, tremoring, and put my head in my hands. “Come on back, it’s all rebooted!” She wanted me to finish the trip?!?!

 

“You sure you want me to do this?” She just nodded and assured me it’d be fine. It was.

 

Even though I’d make that trip thousands of times in the next few years, making it to the next station on that first ride, after not giving up, always felt like my greatest accomplishment.