Where am I?

I haven't blogged since February...it's a good thing this isn't my job, haha. I had to cut my program a bit short due to summer classes I needed to take. I officially left Florida on April 23rd and have been back in Michigan since April 24th.  I can't believe it's already been 2.5 weeks since I've gotten back. I miss it more every day. I've been trying to get a job (without luck) so I can go back to Florida to visit my boyfriend. Hopefully I can find a job soon, I need money. I've been in school for a week as well. I hate one of my classes (math, of course) but I think I will really enjoy the marketing class I'm taking. I can't wait until I'm done with school so I can start a real career with the company I love so much. I'll be back, Disney.

Extension Update

I know, I know...I've gotten awful at this whole blogging (and vlogging) business. I have succumbed to my long hours and need for sleep. There's been a lot of changes since I updated over a month ago. I moved into a different apartment complex; the one I originally wanted: The Commons! I now live in a 2 bedroom, 4 person apartment and it's small and cozy. I like it. The laundry is a huge plus!

Tomorrow is my last shift at Animal Kingdom, say what?! That's right, I will no longer be working in Animal Kingdom merchandise after tomorrow... I will be working in Epcot merchandise as a part of the 2015 Flower and Garden Festival! I am SO excited to be working at my favorite park!

My end date to my program changed recently as well. I will now be leaving in late April due to school. I'm sad to cut my program short by 2 weeks, but I have a feeling I'll be back in the next few years.

In less than 2 days, it will be the month of March. That means I'll have to say, "I'm leaving next month". It's scary. I'll have spent almost a year here. My life has changed drastically in that short amount of time. Part of me is ready to head back to Michigan, the other part is scared to death. But right now, the best thing for me is to finish university. I need my degree. As much as I hate the thought of leaving Disney, I know it's what is best for now. If it's meant to be, I'll be back.

Where Have I Gone?

I apologize I haven't posted in almost 3 months. Things down here have been crazy. So much has happened in those 3 months, so I'll just list some of the bigger things that happened.
*I successfully completed my Fall program and "graduated"
*My mom and brother came down for a week for vacation and it was great
*I took a surprise trip home to Michigan for 3 days
*I found out I'll be in Discovery Island merchandise in Animal Kingdom
*I had my first day of OJT today
*Pretty much all of my friends finished their programs and left :(
*I will be moving apartments this Friday


That's just some of what has happened. I miss my role at Pizzafari so so much and all of the people I worked with. Luckily, I'm not far from them. I hope I love merchandise as much as I loved my previous role. I still love this company and cannot wait to come back after I graduate.

Continuing My Journey

As I have mentioned in previous posts, (or did I? I'm very forgetful), I applied to extend my program into the Spring 2015 semester. I heard back about my extension two days ago...and was ACCEPTED! I received an offer to extend into Merchandise (my top role for Fall but 4th for extending)! Today I have accepted that offer! Looks like Disney is stuck with me until May! (;

Happenings

There's been a lot going on that has been keeping me from updating both my blog and my vlog channel. First off, my iMovie decided to quit on me a couple weeks ago and I've been trying all different things in order to fix it without any luck. Secondly, I've been going through some health problems. Nothing too serious, but enough to where I've had to make doctor appointments and get tests and blood work done. We're still not sure what is going on and that's stressing me out even more.

On a better note, extension applications came out on October 6th and just closed yesterday on the 14th. I DID put in for an extension! My 5 requested roles were: 1. BBB 2. Character Attendant 3. Attractions 4. Merchandise 5. Vacation Planner. This was a weird decision for me because only 2 of those were originally high interested when I applied for the fall program. I'll hear about my extension anywhere from October 21st-29th. Fingers crossed!

Not Much Change

Every day still feels the same, but like I said before, I still enjoy it. Work is hard, work is stressful, but my coworkers make everything fun. They're truly the best. I started my Exploring Marketing class earlier this morning and I have my first Exploring Leadership class in a little over an hour. Marketing went well, I really like my teacher - who also teaches Leadership - but I just wish it wasn't at 08:30! Since the last time I wrote, nothing much has really happened. I injured my shoulder so I'm on light duty until further notice. That's not very fun at all. I apologize the quality of my blog is gradually decreasing. I feel as if I never have much to write about, yet I'm always busy. I'm just busy with the same things every day!

Over a Month

It has been over a month since check-in. That feels absolutely crazy to me. It feels like it has flown by, but it also feels like I've been down here for a lot longer. People are right when they say every day feels the same. Wake up, eat, get dressed, get on bus, work, get on bus home, eat, maybe hit a park for closing, eat, shower, sleep, repeat. It sounds boring and repetitive, but I still enjoy it. There's days where I don't want to go to work and just sleep all day, but at the end of the day, I'm always glad I worked. I still love my location and my coworkers and my hours are fantastic. I haven't done much out of the ordinary lately. I've stayed in the Disney bubble; I quite enjoy it. I went to Blizzard Beach for the first time ever on Thursday with a few of my flatmates and one's coworkers. It was a lot of fun for the whole hour we were there until we got rained (stormed) out. We booked my family's vacation last week! They're coming down in November and I could not be more excited! I LOVE it down here and never want to leave, but I can't wait to show them everything here!

Sorry this post was just full of rambling and sorry I don't post often anymore, I'm always too busy or too tired!

Trying to Keep Up

It feels as if I haven't posted in forever. All of my days here seem to be a blur. I can never remember what I did on which day and who I was with and which stories I tell to who. Every day is the same, yet different - if that makes sense... However, I still love it here! I go to the parks as much as possible and I'm still never bored. Sometimes I go with one friend, sometimes a group, and sometimes alone. I recommend trying the parks alone, you get to do whatever you want to do! My work schedule for the next two weeks is a little unfortunate. Even though my shifts are only six hours, I have to work eight days in a row starting tomorrow. It's also planned so I don't get overtime. I love work, but I need breaks as well. Hopefully I can pull through without stressing! I do have the best hours I could ask for! It's hard trying to keep up with a blog. I thought blogging would be really easy down here since it doesn't take as long. I've focused more on my YouTube channel, yes, I have a YouTube channel. I've been vlogging since I applied for the DCP and fell in love. If you want to see my journey instead of reading about it, you can click here. I focus way more on my YouTube channel than I do my blog.

Phone Interview: Round Two!

I had my phone interview for spring this morning! I think it went super well, especially compared to my interview for fall! I honestly don't know how I'm here right now, I thought I did awful! Haha! The interviews this time around seem to be a lot different. They don't ask for your top roles, they ask what you think you're most qualified for. I said quick-service and retail sales clerk! I believe I put no interest for quick-service though just because I want to experience more! I made it quite obvious retail was my first choice, haha. I didn't put interest in very many roles, I was very picky this time around! I was told I would hear by the end of October, so fingers crossed!

Last Minute Decisions...

I made quite the quick decision a couple of days ago. If you follow my social media, you know what the decision is already. I decided to apply for the DCP in Disneyland for the Spring Advantage 2015 season. I wasn't going to apply until after I graduated, but I saw apps had dropped and it just happened. I was almost immediately offered a WBI but was able to make a call the next morning to surpass it because I'm a current Cast Member. My phone interview is Tuesday the 26th! Wish me luck!

I have Monday and Tuesday off this week and then I officially start my job at Pizzafari! My assessment was moved to Wednesday, so fingers crossed that I pass and I get to remove that little red ribbon from my name tag!

It's been really hard to keep up with things since my schedule is still crazy. Hopefully this week it will start to settle down and I'll get a routine going. I really have to do laundry, I've been putting it off for so long! I also have to apply for an early release from housing because of school and then go to AK Costuming to get the correct hat for my uniform! We also STILL haven't gotten an apartment check list and we've been here almost three weeks...oops!

Where Has Time Gone?

I haven't even been here for two weeks and it feels like it has been two months. I have been BUSY. If I'm not at work, I'm sleeping. I haven't been to the parks in a few days because OJT is very tiring. My shifts are long and I'm on my feet all day. Quick-service is really hard work to be honest, but I love my job. Pizzafari and the cast members who work there are amazing. My managers and coordinators are the nicest people ever. It feels like a family. I finally have the day off tomorrow, which is much needed! Then my last day of training and my assessment is on Sunday! Wish me luck!

More Orientation and My Birthday!

It's hard to remember what I've posted about and what I haven't. All the days seem to run into each other and I can never remember what day I did what. Last time I wrote was Friday, only two days ago. It feels like it's been a week.

Yesterday was my birthday! It was weird not seeing my family or friends from home, but I still had a good day. I started the day off with training from 12:00 to about 3 or 4-ish in the afternoon. I got my free shoes for QSFB yesterday! After that I came home to eat and change out of my business attire before I really got my day started. I've been talking to a girl over text for a while now and she doesn't check-in until Monday. We've become really close in the time we've been texting, which is pretty much 24/7 now! Her parents surprised her with park hopper passes so I finally got to meet her and her family yesterday! I think we hugged for like five minutes, haha. We spent the rest of the night in Magic Kingdom and it was a blast. I'm glad I spent my birthday with them, I felt like I had some family!

Today is my last day off until next Saturday. I have DAKlimation on Monday and then start on-the-job training on Tuesday. I'm really nervous, especially since all of my OJT days are 9.5 hours long! Wish me luck!

Busy, Busy, Busy

I've only been in Florida for a week and it feels like a month. I had the housing meeting on Tuesday - which wasn't as bad as everyone says it is. It got boring at the end, but it's not awful and the ladies who ran it were entertaining and fun. Wednesday was my day off so 3 of my flatmates and I went out for tea to celebrate my birthday early! We went to the Grand Floridian for the Afternoon Tea and it was so cute! They even gave me a rose for my "birthday"! My flatmates and I also went to Universal Studios' City Walk together!

Alyssia, Hannah R, and I just got back from Magic Kingdom. I was going to stay in for the day and take a nap because I haven't been feeling well lately and have had long days, but I'm glad I decided to go out. I tried my first Dole Whip, yum!

I started my first day of training this morning, it was called Welcome to Operations. It was...interesting. It was mostly about safety, really. Our leaders tried to make it fun and interesting, bless them. I have training again tomorrow early but thank goodness I don't have to wake up a five a.m. for a third morning in a row!

But with that, I'll leave you with some pictures of some things I've done so far. Sorry about the lack of order in this post, it's late and I'm super tired!

Weekend With Mom, Check-In, and More!

My last post was only a few days ago and I feel like I've done so much since then, so this may be a long post!

Last time I posted it was about my mom and I's first day in Florida - Friday. On Saturday we spent all day at Downtown Disney and met up with two of my roommates for dinner that night! After dinner, my mom, one of my roommates and her nana, and I tried to catch a bus to the Polynesian to watch Wishes on the beach, but just as we got to the Poly, the fireworks ended. Oh well!

On Sunday my mom and I spent the day going all over the place. We went to the Boardwalk, so that was exciting!

Monday morning was check-in! My arrival time was scheduled to start at nine, but my mom decided we should leave early because we both thought there would be a lot of traffic considering the first check-in time starts at 7. We left at around 8 and got there at 8:20 with no problem, oops. I felt bad going earlier than I was supposed to, but I wasn't going to have my mom make another trip. Check-in was about an hour long, I was done around 9:30 and had Casting at 10, so I waited for a bus. Casting was about an hour/hour and a half long. After Casting I was done for the day so we got to drive to my apartment. My group got our top choice of a Chatham 3 bedroom! It's really nice, however, it was pretty gross when we moved in. The carpets were barely cleaned and my roommate and I's shower and bathroom was pretty dirty.

After checking in, a group of four of us went to take my mom to the airport. It was sad to see her go, but I know I'll be okay. After that, we went to Walmart. It was quite the adventure getting there! We spent almost three hours in Walmart with all of our groceries and a few hiccups, but we got a lot of stuff that was necessary!

Today at 13:00 my roommate and I had our housing meeting. I've heard that it was awful and boring, but ours wasn't too bad! The beginning was easy to listen to, but towards the end I think we all got a little bored sitting there. It was about an hour long.

So now I'm still getting settled. My roommate and I are going to head to Walmart for round two because we need some little stuff. After that, my apartment is going to have a little family dinner and we're all going to help cook and sit down and eat together; I'm so excited! And after eating it sounds like we're going to head to City Walk!

I absolutely love the girls I live with and I love our apartment! I can't wait until we decorate some!

I'm Here!

As of last night, my mom and I arrived in Florida! Yesterday was pretty long and stressful so hopefully from now on it'll go smoothly!

I had emailed our airport and called the TSA on Wednesday asking about a gate pass for my dad so he could sit with us at our gate before I left. Both the TSA and airport said we could get a gate pass upon arrival. Well, upon arrival we were told by the man checking us in that we had to specify we wanted a gate pass when buying the plane tickets. That was the first little bump. After going through security a second time (went back out to say goodbye to my dad), one of my bags was stopped going through the scanner. The TSA agent asked if it was my bag, I said yes, and he pulled me to the screen. He was smiling as he said, "Well, that's either an apple or a peach" and I was confused at first because I thought he meant my Apple phone. Turns out, round fruits look suspicious in baggage! My mom, the agent, and I all started laughing when we said it was an apple and he pulled out the bag with my food in it just in case. I got my apple back (and I have yet to eat it) and had a good laugh.

For some reason there was no non-stop flight options from Detroit Metro to Orlando International so we had to stop in Chicago Midway. I was expecting our first flight to be about an hour and ten minutes but not even twenty five minutes after taking off in Detroit, we were landing in Chicago! I was amazed by how close Lake Michigan was, it was an amazing sight seeing it from the plane!

After an hour and a half in Midway, we took off for Orlando. My mom and I watched Now You See Me and the plane landed before we could finish the movie. There was a little turbulence on this flight, but nothing big. We had to fly over the storms in the South!

After landing we had to face getting all of our luggage (about eight bags combined) to the shuttle to get our rental car. My bags were NOT light! One of them even had a caution tag put on it! After taking the shuttle to the rental car place, we realized our car is TINY. The trunk fits one bag and the other ones are piled to the roof in the back seat! Thank goodness it's only the two of us!

Our next little bump came when we tried to get to the resort. It turns out that when you type the address in the GPS, it takes you to some spot in the middle of LBV that doesn't exist. So I tried again but typed in the resort name and it worked. We took a lot of wrong turns but finally got there. We were intrigued in finding out that you can make U-turns on freeways in Florida!

I think this next part was the worst. It was almost 8 p.m. when we finally got to the resort, we had been up for over 12 hours and most of those hours we were on our feet carrying a lot of luggage that was 20-45 pounds each. Resort check-in. This took what felt like forever. We were probably in line for 35 minutes, and there wasn't even that many people in line! There were probably only 5 parties in front of us in line. And there were only 3 people checking people in. It was frustrating.

After parking the car in a different lot, we had to get all of the luggage to the room. This was hard. I'm not exactly the strongest person and my mom doesn't like lifting things. After getting all of the luggage in the room, we immediately went to get food from the resort. After eating we went and watched the end of The Princess and the Frog (I didn't understand what I was watching at all) and went back to the room and ended the day.

Let's hope we have better days!

My Last Day

Well, this is it. Today is my last full day in Michigan. I get to say goodbye to the chilly weather, the bad roads, and all the farm land. However, I also have to say goodbye to the fall colors, the night bonfires in shorts and sweatshirts, my Detroit Tigers and Michigan Wolverines, my dog, my friends, and my family. It seems as if that list displays more cons than pros, but it'll be the adventure of a lifetime. Tomorrow my mom and I hop on a plane (or two) to Florida and start this wild ride. I can't believe it's almost August 11th already. It still hasn't hit me yet that it's that late in the year.

This is "The Week"!

"The Week" being the week I depart for Florida. I leave in 5 days for the journey of a lifetime. I'm excited, nervous, scared, afraid, giddy, stressed, and many other synonyms for those words. I'm a whole mix of emotions right now! I'm officially in the single digits for both leaving Michigan and my actual check-in date. Crazy how time flies.

Disney College Program: DORMS

I JUST finished filling out everything on the DORMS website! I am so so so excited now! As promised, I will go into detail about DORMS.

DORMS is how the participants of the DCP pick their housing and flatmates. You may choose to go random or you may pick who you live with (although nothing is 100% guaranteed). To link with your roommates, you must get their roommate ID numbers that are enclosed in the two emails provided. ONE person must go into DORMS before the others. After the said leader fills out DORMS, an email will be sent to each flatmate asking to confirm the rooming arrangement. After everyone fills out their DORMS, the process is complete! It was a very simple procedure!

These lovely emails came through this morning:

The second email came in less than two seconds after the first email, however, in the email it states the second email may take several hours to arrive.

 This is what the first email looks like, it just goes over some important points about filling out DORMS. You may see "you are eligible to link with up to 5 other participants" in that third bullet point. Either there are no 4 bedroom options for our arrival date, or if you're put into a 4 bedroom, Disney may put you with randoms. I'm not sure. Usually you can link with up to 7 other people.

 

 Yay, finally linked!

This time around, DORMS is a little different. The rooming preferences now look like this:

 

These were the preferences we picked!

You rank your preferences from the top (being first choice) to the bottom (being last choice).

Each arrival date may have different housing options. These were the options available for my arrival date and they cannot be expected to be the exact same for the other arrival dates.

After finishing up everything in DORMS, you'll receive your boarding pass! PRINT THIS OUT YOU NEED IT FOR CHECK-IN!

 

So, overall, DORMS was very easy to fill out. All but one of our flatmates received our emails, but after a quick call to recruiting, she was able to get her roommate ID to link with the rest of us! 

If I hadn't made this obvious already: I'M SO EXCITED! I can say I leave for Florida NEXT WEEK. That's awesome and crazy! Check-in is in 13 days and I leave in 10 days! I'm almost in the single digits!

"See Ya' Real Soon!"

I don't have much to update on, but I received this lovely email earlier today!!!

A few short days...more like 13! Wow, that's CRAZY. 13 days until I start this wild ride. I saw an old picture I had that said 123 days, I swear, it seems like yesterday when it was that far away! I'm still really nervous, but I think my excitement has finally taken over the nerves. I began packing about a week ago, but only filled one Ziploc Space Bag (these will save your life, especially if you're flying like I am). Yesterday I did a lot more packing and a lot of planning. I made a little calendar for the next 13 days of what outfit I'm going to wear what day so I know what I can pack and what I have to leave out until last minute. I already have my outfit planned for check-in day, is that weird? Considering we can't wear tank tops for our ID photos and I don't want to change, I picked a shirt I absolutely love and always seems to photograph well. It's a little silly to care about something like that, but it just gives me more to plan out until I leave.

I'm expecting to get the DORMS emails tomorrow since the August 4th arrivals received theirs last Tuesday. Fingers crossed! I've been waiting for those emails with bated breath. It turns out DORMS is a little different this time around. There's a list of all the available rooming options and you have to pick the ones you're interested in. You're not guaranteed those, but they try their best. I'm terrified our group's options won't be available. I'll be sure to update when I finish the process!

Until then, au revoir!

Meetup and More Waiting

This past Monday I met another girl who is doing the DCP! We've been talking for months now and a few weeks ago we realized we only live three hours away from each other. So we picked a town halfway between the two of us and we got to hangout for a few hours! We had a really random day but it was so fun and I'm so glad I got to meet her! She was super nice and funny and I'll definitely be hanging out with her in Florida!

More waiting. It seems like most of this program consists of waiting! The August 4th arrivals received their DORMS emails a couple of days ago and I am now anxiously awaiting mine! DORMS is the system Disney uses to pick roommates and apartment complex preferences. You're not guaranteed anything, but they certainly try their best. I'll try to remember to screenshot some things and give more info. on DORMS once I get the email. I'm the designated team leader for our group of six, so I'll be going into the system first and sending the other five girls their request. Hopefully nothing goes funky and there won't be any problems!