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I thought I was safe. Revolutionary City officially ended for the year on Dec. 24, so naturally I thought it was actually finished for a while. But that would make sense, and Colonial Williamsburg is not known for doing things that make sense. For the remainder of the year, the actor-interpreters are presenting three of the scenes from Rev City each day, two of them in the west yard of the Capitol and one at the Coffeehouse site, which is basically a large seating area down the hill from the excavated foundations of Edward Charlton's old coffeehouse. (The foundations have just been sitting there, with a little descriptive sign, for years; no one seems to know if there are actually any plans to reconstruct the building.)

The good thing about this arrangement is that there's no "managed access" on the street itself; so we don't have to worry about checking tickets and turning people away who just want to go to a tavern or buy something at a store. The bad thing is, the people going to the scenes enter at the same gate of the Capitol as people taking the regular tours; and the scenes start at the same time as the tours. For the OI at the gate, the result is a traffic nightmare... and today, I was that person.

Fortunately, I had a co-worker helping out; if I hadn't, it would've been impossible. We admitted 822 people for the program between 2:30 and 3:00, which is more than visit many of the sites during an entire day. In addition, the tours through the Capitol were full for much of the day; and since we can take up to 75 people in at a time, this meant there were hours where close to 300 people toured the building. With tours every fifteen minutes, and three groups in different parts of the building at times, and the Rev City scenes, there were probably more than 1,000 people on the property during that half-hour. eek

It went as smoothly as could be expected; but it was still confusing for the guests, because we had to sort out whether they wanted the program or the tour, and we had to line people up for the tour in a different place than usual because of the program. (To make it even more confusing, prior to 2:30 we lined people up for the program in the same place we later used to line them up for the tour.) It's almost miraculous that no one got irritated or rude, because we really had no choice but to herd people into the proper locations, and it's hard to do that and still sound polite.

What's surprised me, both yesterday and today, is how busy we've been. There were even two school groups on the 9:00 tour, and that boggled my mind-- why the hell aren't these kids at home on Christmas break? Most of the regular visitors can be accounted for by the end-of-year vacation rush-- everyone wants to get their trips in before Jan. 1, and for some reason they all seem to be coming here. Sure, it's good for business, and I wouldn't have a job if business were bad; but still, it gets tiring after a while, and I'll be glad when it's over.