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!