We did our volunteer activity today and I wanted to share with you guys how much fun it was. I picked our activity because it was a convenient location, the timing was right and it had spots for all four of us to volunteer. Little did I know that our activity (painting and gardening at James Denman Middle School in San Francisco) was a stop on the Disney "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" tour. Heck, I didn't even know there was a tour! I guess I should have been suspicious when we had to sign a release waiver giving Disney the rights to our images and sound in all media, throughout the universe, in perpetuity but I just assumed this was part of the regular volunteer procedure.
At check-in, we were all given WWYC? sweatshirts and giftbags with mouse ears and chocolate dipped mickey shaped rice krispie treats. Sweet! When the four of us go to the parks in under two weeks, we will be taking a picture with our ears on.
The day started with an assembly in the auditorium for all the volunteers and guess who was there to see us?!? Mickey

and Minnie

and the Jammitors!



There was also a pretty cool set up on stage.
PR types from Disney and Hands on Bay Area greeted us and then we all got on stage to have our picture taken and some video of all of us saying "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day". Then it was off to weed for several hours. Spent alot of time pulling and things looked great when we were done. I hope they put some mulch down to stop them from growing back. Mickey and Minnie came around while we were working and we had our picture taken with Mickey.
(No comments on this photo...I had been working hard for several hours and let's just say it's not my best photo.)
After we finished our projects, we went back to the auditorium and were treated to a very cool performance by the Jammitors. These guys just rock. Best moment--one of the performers was rapping about volunteering and dropped this line: "Everybody knows volunteering is the bomb/ you can find more information at Disneyparks.com" Straight dope.
The day ended with the Disney PR team giving us our park tickets!!

These are the actual plastic cards; not a voucher!
All in all it was a great day. Volunteering with our friends was pretty special and taking them to the parks for the first time will be special too.
Ok, for those of you that made it through my super long post, do we have to upgrade our 1-day, 1-park tickets before going into the park or could we do sometime in the middle of day?