After an eight hour bus ride, the members of the orchestra spent their weekend hopping on and off one minute roller coasters as they competed in the Heritage Festival musical competition, hosted in Disneyland.

While the Heritage Festival is technically a competition, orchestra conductor Cathy DeVos said that she feels the other groups are supportive rather than competitive.

“The focus is on all of us doing our personal best as a group,” DeVos said. “And I thought they did really well.”

The orchestra took home the silver medal, the same place they received last year, senior Miles Vinson said. He said the orchestra played better in their final rehearsal than they did in the show.

“I think a lot of people got nervous during the actual performance so it sounded a little weird, but it was still pretty fun,” Vinson said

For sophomore Edwyna Zhu, who had not been on an orchestra tour before, the trip gave her a great way to get to know her classmates.

“You’re forced to hang out with those people, and when we are away from school, there’s not a lot of social pressure,” Zhu said. “People are who they actually are.”

Freshman Gavan Dagnese enjoyed getting to know people better, ordering pizza late at night and playing Cards Against Humanity in the hotel rooms.

This year’s orchestra was especially enthusiastic about the tour, DeVos said. They did a scavenger hunt in Disneyland, and two groups got really into it.

“I just thought it was an exceptional group,” DeVos said. “They were just so well-behaved. We didn’t have to worry about them.”

Zhu said she and her orchestra friends had been looking forward to the trip for a while, and it lived up to her expectations.

“A lot of people really bonded during the tour,” Dagnese said. “I’m excited for next year.”

Vinson said he felt more used to the trip because he had been on tour three times before. Even so, being a senior came with its own responsibilities.

Vinson is the concertmaster in the orchestra, which means that he is first chair of the first violin section, a position that makes him responsible for soloing and for leading the other violinists, Vinson said.

“[I was] keeping track of my group and making sure we played the songs right, ” Vinson said.

DeVos said that one thing that stood out to her in their performance was Vinson’s performance as concertmaster.

“He’s really grown a great deal and he really took on the leadership role,” she said.

The whole group had to make it to the Matterhorn for an awards ceremony and they kept getting blocked by the parade, Dagnese said.

“Eventually we met up, but that was a really stressful 45 minutes to an hour, trying to make sure no one was lost in Disneyland,” Dagnese said.

The group was trying hard to be on time so as to be respectful to their leaders, Vinson said.

“We finally get there and Jan and Ms. DeVos weren’t even there yet,” he said.