Photo by The Joneses Here's a look at the Atrium at Walt Disney World's French Quarter. — — — View Larger Map
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We have earned "our ears." That means we are fully trained and ready to work by ourselves. As I said before, we are working at the Port Orleans in a Food Court at the French Quarters.

Port Orleans is one of many Disney Resorts and, as the name indicates, the theme is New Orleans. We serve a variety of food at the stations from hamburgers and pizza to a full meal of ribs, port roast or roasted chicken. One station is the bakery where we serve cookies, cakes, ice cream and "Hot Fresh Beignets."

Beignets are a New Orleans specialty and are on the order of a funnel cake. Deep fried dough with lots of powered sugar. They look like a rectangular doughnut, but are hollow inside and the dough is very light. We fry them to order – yummy, yummy!

Tuesday night was Mardi Gras and I was working the bakery. Beignets were definitely the dessert of the evening – and making them kept us busy all evening. I had one lady, who was from New Orleans, tell me that our beignets are as good as any she ever had at home.

I am very impressed with the operations of this food court. The food served to guests is always fresh. Most items are cooked to order — either in a hot oven (pizzas, hot sandwiches, etc.), on the grill (hamburgers, steak sandwiches, etc.) or deep fried (french fries, chicken nuggets, beignets etc.). Nothing is nuked.

The soup and sandwich station has a Caesar and taco salads, both of which are prepared/tossed and in front of the guest when ordered. Items such as meatballs, spaghetti sauce, the ribs, roasted chicken, pot roast, and so on are cooked by the chefs in the kitchen in the back of the stations.

To make absolutely sure that only fresh food is served, most items have a shelf life. That means they can only be out for a certain amount of time. For example — french fries — after they have come out of the deep fryer are left under the light for only a limited number of minutes (I think it is six). We have to set a timer and when it goes off the french fries are discarded. All containers with perishable items that are on the counters have a piece of tape to indicate when the item needs to be exchanged for fresh food. Our manager, Sarah, comes by all stations throughout the evening to inspect the tapes and to make sure only quality food is being served. Ralph and I had no idea that a Food Court would serve such quality food.

Our co-cast members are a diversified group. We have students who are here under the Disney College program; other young people are with agencies and placed by them with Disney; there are the retirees like Ralph and I — we have three such couples in this food court — and then there are the local Floridians who work part/full-time.

Besides all the different age groups we have many different nationalities: Brazil, Peru, China, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Mexico, just to name a few. Last night I worked with a girl from Jamaica.This makes for a very interesting workplace and we are enjoying talking to people with different backgrounds and finding out why they are at Disney and what brought them here.

Ralph and I really enjoy our work at Port Orleans. We work every Tuesday and Wednesday and have the afternoon/evening shifts — mostly from 5 p.m to 12:30 a.m. That makes for a late evening (I guess I should say early morning) before we get to bed since we have a 45-minute drive home. I like these shifts. I am more of a night owl and not much for getting up early in the morning. But whatever days or shifts we work it is fun with no stress and great benefits ... what more can we ask for?