The 5oz Foodie

What an incredible day... Our Training Team joined the challenge to help collect toys for the US Marine's Toys for Tots Campaign that Disney is a part of each year... Two years ago our team collected a mere 24 toys, last year we collected 50, so I figured being the champion for our team, we could strive for a goal of 75... That would average about 2 to 3 toys per person in our office... So I began sending out messages to our team encouraging everyone to donate a new unwrapped toy... To mark our progress I got creative and took something we all enjoy watching and our toy sponsors for this year... I took the cliff hanger from The Price is Right and replaced his face with the face of our one Ops training Manager and then took Elsa from Frozen and replaced her face with our other F&B/Merch training manager.... As we collected toys the cliff hanger would make his way up the hill to reach our 75 toy goal... Not long after we started collecting toys our Ops Manager said that he ...

It's been a long and exhausting day today, but I have never felt more rewarded after a day at work... I got to continue my volunteering with Toys for Tots... All of the toys aren't in yet, but before I finished my volunteering shift we hit our goal for Epcot and surpassed it... One of the areas donated more than 50% of the toys and what is even more remarkable is that the cast from that area isn't even from the United States... Before they began their jobs at Disney, they had no knowledge of Toys for Tots, in fact in their country, toy drives like these aren't the norm... From what I was told, their leader took a group of volunteers to assist the Marine Corps with family sign ups so that the cast could see and understand who the toys would be going to... The cast were so touched by their experience that they started collecting toys like crazy... It's been a hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year...well not so much hard as it's had ups and do...

Today, I had the opportunity to assist our recognition leader at Epcot, with the packing of the Toys that were donated by the Epcot Cast for Toys for Tots... We counted and boxed up the donations, loaded up the van and took them to the drop off location.... It amazed me to hear that Epcot always has the most donations on property, but it also made me sad to know that with over 60,000 cast members here in Florida, we don't really get a ton of toys... I think so many people think, toys are expensive, I don't make a ton of money and why should I spend my money on a toy for someone I don't know... OK, I can appreciate people feeling that way, but after counting hundreds of toys today I remembered back to my childhood.... A childhood where a trip to Ben Franklin's got us penny candy and a "cheap toy". Kids don't look for labels, they look for a fun toy that will allow them to use their imagination and when that happens, the sky is the limit... I was truly i...