Housing Inspections

One of the "living" parts of the Disney College Program is housing inspections. Essentially, inspections are when they come to your apartment and check to make sure that your trash is taken out, all your furniture is in good shape, and that you have a clean kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and bathroom. Disney wants your apartment to be "show ready" meaning that if someone walked into it, they would have a good impression of you as a Cast Member and a person.

Honestly, I was stressing out about inspections a little bit. I'm one of those people who doesn't like to do things halfway, so when I heard that inspections were coming, I knew we really needed to buckle down and clean the apartment and get it "show ready." They don't tell you what particular day they will be inspecting your apartment, but they give you a 2 week window and they could come at any point during those two weeks. Luckily, my roommates and I were lucky enough to get inspected on day 1 of inspections.

The night before I went into super-cleaning mode. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floors, I vacuumed the entire apartment, cleaned the counters, microwave, oven, and sinks, cleaned the entire bathroom (shower, sink, toilet, and floors), straightened up my bedroom, and put away all of the miscellaneous things sitting around the apartment. It took me all night to do everything, but all the hardwork payed off because the next morning at inspections we were given the WHITE GLOVE AWARD! Basically, this means that not only did our apartment pass inspections, but they were extra impressed with us, so they gave us an award to acknowledge all our hard work! Only one of my roommates was home, so they took her picture and will put it up in the clubhouse and apparently we can go pick up goodies at the front desk tomorrow for winning! I was excited to hear that we had won the White Glove Award and glad that we got inspections done on day 1, but I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed that we won't have an excuse to keep the apartment extra neat and clean anymore!

Environmentality & Sustainability - Week 2

In  Week 2 of my Environmentality & Sustainability class, we talked all about the Reedy Creek Improvement District with a special focus on recycling in the parks. For those of you who don't know what Reedy Creek is, it's a special district set up to provide services to the Walt Disney World Resort and surrounding areas, because at the time that WDW was built, neither Orange nor Osceola county had the services needed to provide the land with power and water. Disney pays Reedy Creek directly for its services (as well as taxes to Orange and Osceola counties), and Reedy Creek has a special relationship with the Disney company which makes them able to work well together. Reedy Creek provides power, water, roadways, fire emergency, and emergency medical services, as well as many other things to Disney. We watched a video about RCID and learned about the different jobs that people have there (they are not Disney Cast Members).

After learning about RCID, we had a guest speaker come talk to us about recycling in the Magic Kingdom. He has a unique job in that he is the only Cast Member with his title. I don't remember his exact job title, but it was something like Recycling Coordinator at the Magic Kingdom. I found it really interesting that the Magic Kingdom is the only park that has a coordinator of recycling. It seems like something that could easily be added to the other parks and make an even bigger impact on Disney's conservation and sustainability efforts, but he did let us know that it is something they are looking into. He let us know that there is so much contamination that goes into the recycling bins at the parks, and its his team's job to go through and separate the trash from the recycling and make sure that it all gets to Reedy Creek. So, that's something to think about the next time you visit a Disney park; bottles and cans get recycled, everything else gets thrown away unless otherwise specified!

I'm really looking forward to class next week, as we have class at Animal Kingdom in Rafiki's Conservation Station. This is something that is completely up my alley, and I think it's going to be a unique and extremely interesting class!

The First Long Shift...

Today was the first 10 hour shift that I worked during my whole College Program thus far. Honestly, I was so nervous because I'm usually tired after my 6 and 8 hour shifts, so I didn't know how I would manage 10 hours, but after surviving it, I can truly say that it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting! Sure, it was a long day, but because we had so many shows (7) and the park was a lot busier than it has been (President's Day Weekend), the day went by pretty quickly and I was busy most of the time.

My shift was also split up by a training session. I worked four hours at Nemo, then had a Safety in Motion course, and then worked four more hours at Nemo. Safety in Motion was a class that just informs new Cast Members about how to safely move, lift, and carry things so that you don't injure or harm yourself while working. It was a little boring, but it was a nice break in the middle of my day, and some of the information I can use while working!

All in all, I survived my first long shift! I was able to have a lot of guest interaction, work at a lot of different positions, and make a lot of money (always a plus!).

Valentine's Day in the Magic Kingdom

Can you imagine a more magical place to spend Valentine's Day than the Magic Kingdom? I sure can't. I mean sure, I was with my brother instead of my prince, the crowd levels were beyond crazy, and I didn't witness a single proposal, but still, it was an awesome experience nonetheless!

Valentine's Day at the park was just like any usual day. I was expecting some big celebration, but in reality, it was just another day of normal operations for the Magic Kingdom cast members. There were opportunities to take pictures in front of the castle with signs that said "Be Mine" or "Hug Me", but other than that, the park wasn't decorated or special in any way. Although, Cinderella did wish me a Happy Valentine's Day when I met her, so I guess that's more than most people can say :)

Because Valentine's Day this year happened to fall on the same weekend as President's Day Weekend, the parks were a little more crowded than usual. My brother and I arrived mid-morning and met some characters, did a few rides, grabbed lunch, had ice cream, visited my roommate, Allie, while she was working, and then headed home. It ended up being a really nice day, we just had to wait longer for some things than we normally would have. The longest line I saw today was 165 minutes to meet Rapunzel and Snow White and 105 minutes to meet Cinderella and Aurora! That much time is completely insane, and luckily, we got fastpasses to meet Cinderella and Aurora, which took us literally less than 5 minutes, so we were super lucky in that sense. The longest we waited in line was probably about 40 minutes, which isn't bad considering how crowded the park was. 

All in all, today was simply another magical day at the Disney parks. I guess you could just call today another perk of working in The Most Magical Place on Earth (:

Environmentality & Sustainability - Week 1

I had my first Disney Seminar Class this afternoon, Environmentality & Sustainability. For those of you who know me, this class is perfect for me because it combines environmental science, animal care, recycling, marine biology, and many other environmental/biological topics into one 8 week course taught and led by Disney facilitators. My class meets every Thursday afternoon for the next 8 weeks. The majority of the time, we meet in a classroom and have guest speakers join us for the class period, however, we do have 3 field trips scheduled, one to Animal Kingdom and two to Epcot.

Lesson Plans for Environmentality & Sustainability

This course should provide me with plenty of opportunities to network and gain insight into the way Disney handles their animals and the surrounding environment. 

In the first class, we learned about our instructor, Jeff. Like me, he started out on the College Program and has since bounced around the company working in many different areas until he landed his current position on the Education team. From there, we talked about the expectations for the course, went over the week by week plan, and then began to discuss how the Walt Disney Company first took its interest in sustainability and conservation. I learned that Walt had always been interested in the environment, as evidenced by one of his first animated features, Bambi. 

After Bambi, Walt and Roy ventured on to try out their live action documentaries, True Life Adventures. They used live footage of animals and different ecosystems and won several Academy Awards for their work. 

We also discussed how out of the 47 square miles of the Walt Disney World Resort, 1/3 of that land has been set aside for Disney Wildlife Preservation, and this was Walt's intention all along. This course is truly fascinating, especially for someone like me, who is so interested in the environmental science field. 

I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks in my course and all of the new information I will learn, people I will meet, and connections I will make. I'll definitely keep everyone updated on my progress in the course, and please, if you have any specific questions, let me know!

Resume Writing

On Friday morning, I attended a course on resume writing led by the Disney College Program Education team. The course itself wasn't too exciting or thrilling, but the information I learned from it was extremely helpful! I figured out that I will actually have to rewrite the majority of my resume to make it seem more professional and more job-oriented. 

The course was an overview to writing an effective resume. We talked about dos and don'ts, best practices, how to cite the DCP on your resume, and many more things! The instructor was super energetic and he really knew what he was talking about. He gave us a lot of examples and answered every question. My favorite part of the course was when he showed us data from an experiment. The data showed where recruiters eyes spent the most time on a resume, which was so interesting. The moral of the story was to keep your resume clean, leave white space, and have a format that draws the readers' eyes all the way to the bottom of the page. 

As a bonus, the teacher of the course is also my instructor for my Environmentality and Sustainability Course, which I start on Thursday, so I know that I'm really going to enjoy that already!

As always, if you have any specific questions about the course or anything I learned during it, don't hesitate to let me know!

Professional Internship Insight Series - Meet the Recruiters

An awesome part of the Disney College Program is the fact that they host so many classes, seminars, and series. These programs are designed to help current CP's learn more about the company, learn about the company's values, learn about a career with Disney, and learn about future opportunities. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend the first session of the Professional Internship Insight Series. In this session, about 80 college program members met with Professional Internship recruiters to learn the ins and outs of applying, obtaining, and keeping a Disney Professional Internship.

To start, I will explain what a Professional Internship is. A PI is an internship with Disney that is designed to give college students and recent graduates the opportunity to gain real world experience within their field of study in the Walt Disney Company. Disney offers hundreds of PIs in fields such as marketing, communications, entertainment, human resources, animal programs, and many, many more. Since I am a Conservation Biology major, I am extremely interested in their Animal Programs internships.

To start off the night, the panel of recruiters hosted a FAQ session. They went through a series of frequently asked questions about the application, interview, and hiring process. This was really helpful because I learned that it can literally take a manner of seconds for them to eliminate you as a candidate for a position. I also learned what kinds of things need to be on my resume to make it stand out, and I learned about the interview process for internships.

After the FAQ session, we broke down into smaller groups so that we could do individual networking with the recruiters who recruited for our positions. I talked to Ernesto, who recruited for a variety of positions including HR, Entertainment, and Animal Programs. The networking session was cool because it was the first opportunity I had to talk with someone in that field, however the session was also a little stressful. The one thing I will say about Disney is that once you are in, they want you to stay in the company. The entire night made me feel as though they didn't care how long it took me to complete my degree, which is something that is extremely important to me. Regardless, the whole session was interesting and helpful and I'm glad that I attended.

As a side note, these sessions are something I intend to take complete advantage of. Tomorrow morning I am attending a session on Resume Writing and I am planning on going to several more as the weeks go on. The information made available in these sessions is invaluable to my career and my future!

If you have any specific questions about what was covered in the seminar, please feel free to leave your question in the comments below, or get in contact with me! I would love to give you any more details about the session and the information I received.

My Costume

Since I haven't posted a picture of my costume yet, I thought I would make a post dedicated to my costume!

It's a brown checkered button down shirt, green pants/shorts, a brown belt, brown boots, and of course my name tag! Oh, and if you're wondering, this is actually tame compared to some of the costumes at Animal Kingdom!