Program Update #1

A lot has happened since my last post, so I wanted to make a general program update to let you know about all of the cool things that have been going on during my DCP.

First, I finally got to see the new Festival of Fantasy parade at the Magic Kingdom! It was amazing! It's great to see some of the new characters making their first parade debuts, and the floats are truly spectacular. The amount of detail on each one is enough to make your head spin! Here are some pictures from the parade.

The parks are definitely getting more crowded since it's spring break season, and with the crowds of course come a lot of changes at work. Almost every day we make a slight modification to the loading process at Nemo, which keeps things interesting! After all, Walt did say "We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

My friends and I have been planning a lot of fun days and activities, with the most recent being the Miley Cyrus Bangerz tour in Orlando! Five of us bought tickets to the concert in the Amway Center in Downtown Orlando. It was seriously so crazy (as expected with Miley) but a ton of fun and a great way to spend time together. 

In the middle of all of this fun, we've also had other issues to worry about, like passing the second round of inspections! We all cleaned for a couple of days leading up to inspections, and this time around we got inspected on the second day of inspections! I was in the apartment when they inspected us, so I got more of an idea as to what they did. Honestly, it was so quick. There were three people that came in, looked all over our apartment, and then told us if we needed to improve in any areas or if we were doing a good job. We passed with flying colors and got our 2nd White Glove Award! I'd say we are doing pretty well with inspections, well that, or the other apartments in the complex are just really dirty and gross...

Anyway, I have a lot planned in the next few days. I have a Meet & Greet tomorrow with my teacher to talk about how I should approach the rest of my program, an advising meeting with my Clemson advisor for next year on Thursday, my last two classes of environmentality and sustainability, and even some fun play time at the parks and resorts. Be sure to stay tuned for my posts in the next few weeks!

I hope everyone is having a magical day, and remember to keep on dreaming!

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!