Stay one night at every resort at Walt Disney World. When I was on the program I tried this but failed It is such a fun challenge though. Here are the official rules:

Rules

1. You are required to stay at least one night at each resort ( see list at the end for full details)
2. This includes one night at each of the All Star Themes (Music, Movies, Sports)
3. One night at each of the Port Orleans Themes (French Quarter, Riverside)
4. You do not need to stay at the DCL Lodges at a resort that has normal hotel rooms (Bay Lake Tower, Boulder Ridge Villas, Copper Creek Villas, Jambo House, Kidani Village, Beach Club Villas, Boardwalk Villas, Polynesian Villas, Grand Floridian Villas)
5. For Fort Wilderness either the Campsites or the Cabins are acceptable
6. At each resort you must try at least one dining option (bars do not count but QSR does)
7. You must get a photo with each resort icon or logo
8. You must visit the feature pool at each resort (additional pools are bonuses)
9. Special rooms e.g. Pirates or Princess rooms count as a normal visit – nice to have but not required
10. For resorts with non-bus transportation you must try at least one option e.g. French Quarter boat to Springs, Polynesian Monorail to MK

Tips

Basically the only way you can complete this challenge is on a Disney Program. For one, you need Cast Member discount to make this affordable. It is best to aim for the Deluxe resorts in off season when you can get up to 60% off.

Last minute booking also sometimes work. When you’ve had a crappy day at work just log in and see what’s available! Just head straight in to work from the resort.

I only managed about 15 of the resorts on my program as I ran out of time .Start early and you will have no bother.

List Of Resorts

Value:

• Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
• Disney’s All-Star Music Resort
• Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort
• Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• Disney’s Pop Century Resort
• The Campsites at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort (One Required)

Moderate:

• Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort
• Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
• Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter
• Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside
• The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort (One Required)

Deluxe:

• Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
• Disney’s Beach Club Resort
• Disney’s BoardWalk Inn
• Disney’s Contemporary Resort
• Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
• Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
• Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
• Disney’s Yacht Club Resort

Deluxe Villas:

• Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort (NOT required)
• Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (NOT required)
• Copper Creek Villas & Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge (NOT required)
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Jambo House (NOT required)
• Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas – Kidani Village (NOT required)
• Disney’s Beach Club Villas (NOT required)
• Disney’s BoardWalk Villas (NOT required)
• Disney’s Old Key West Resort (Required)
• Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows (NOT required)
• Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa (Required)
• The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa (NOT required)

Have you tried the challenge? How did you get on? Are there any other rules you followed? Leave a comment below!

I’ve now been home almost 3 years. I now have a ‘normal’ job, in an office, working (vaguely) regular hours. I am not going to lie to you and say coming home is easy or that you will find what you want to do straight away but there are an awful lot of skills you pick up while on the program that are actually incredibly useful and you will find many other people do not have.

Smile through the pain

You will find many people like to complain about work but you have done 60 hour, 6 day weeks and had no choice but to smile through it. You’ve worked when you’ve been out far too late the night before and started far too early this morning. Being the perky one in the office is not a bad thing and you’ll be surprised how few people can pull this off.

Know how to talk to all kinds of people

You probably haven’t realised it, I didn’t, but on your program you spoke to literally thousands of different people. People from all walks of life, from all over the world. By doing this you learnt subtle nuances of language, conversation and body language when speaking to different cultures. In my ‘normal’ job I work with people from all over the world and you would be surprised how many people are clueless and get annoyed having challenging conversations with people who speak another language. You did it every day, you are basically an expert!

Manage your time

This may be more of an F&B thing but you did a job where you had at least 4 different competing priorities at the same time. You also had to ensure you got out on time to take part in your ‘evening activities’. You are basically the boss of time management, your to-do list will never be too long because you know exactly what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

Meeting new people

On your program new people showed up every few weeks and your style of work had to adapt to new managers as well. You are an expert at jumping straight in with new colleagues and making them feel right at home. You are also great at showing them the ropes as you probably trained tonnes of people and you knew how important getting training right was as it made sure they did it right and in the end made your life easier.

Confidence

I think of all the things most people pick up in Orlando it is this. I don’t think I can name one person who has done a program and not come back more confident in themselves. This might take a bit of a knock when you first get home but having taken yourself out of your comfort zone, travelled thousands of miles around the world and been forced to deal with many challenging guest and personal situations you are absolutely a more confident and more capable person and I reckon this is what make (ex-) Disney CRPs stand out from the crowd and go far in the long-term.

I fairly regularly have conversations with people who have done one of the Disney International College Programs thinking about doing a Cultural Representative program and asking if it is really different. I have a lot of thoughts about it and decided it was time to get a post together. I also asked my friend Alex who also did an ICP to help me.

Alex, back in 2009 at her work location in Toontown

First though, some introductions. Hi, I’m Dan, if you are reading this you should hopefully know who I am by now since this is my blog, get with the program people! Alex who helped put this together was a Merchie while I was doing my CRP but more importantly was also an ICP on the Academic program back in 2008-2009, we technically worked in the same park at the same time but never knew each other such is the strange life of Walt Disney World. But anyway, to the point.

The first and single most important thing in this whole post is this… Your CRP will not be the same as your ICP, it probably won’t even be close. That’s not to say you won’t have a great time, I am 95% sure you probably will, but whatever pre-conceived view you have will probably be wrong. It will be very different in many ways, some good and some maybe not so good.

On your ICP you could work anywhere, any park, any line of business and you didn’t really know where that was or who you would be working with until you got there. On the CRP you know exactly where you are going to work well ahead of time and if you even vaguely use Facebook you will know who you will be working with, for bette. Also ask yourself can you work in one line of business, in one park for a year? You can’t pick up shifts, you can’t cross train. It’s one location. Not necessarily a bad thing but definitely different.

If you were on an Academic ICP like Alex you will have had classes to take each week and at least one of your days off will have been spent working and not getting paid so you could get your degree. On the CRP you won’t have that so unless you chose your days off are your own. The flip side of that is that on the ICP you worked with lots of part-timers and other CPs who you could give away shifts to and you had no minimum hours to maintain. On the CRP everyone is full time and must average 30 hours a week which means giving away is difficult so working less than 5 days a week is a struggle. That means your days off are more precious, I’ve said it many times before but it is probably worth repeating, use your days off wisely! You might get 100 in total, do something fun, a mini-adventure on every one.

On your ICP you were most likely the token international in your work location. Both Alex and I agree that while from your ICP you may have a handful of lifelong friends most of them you probably lost touch with within a few months of coming home. From your CRP whether you like it or not, you will find friends for life, you might even find a relationship. You will live with them, work with them, socialise with them and live in each others pockets for a year. On the ICP you may have worked with them or lived with them but probably not both! I’ve been home two years and I am still in touch with many people from my program. From my ICPs I am in touch with less than five. You will also probably have much fewer American friends, it can be much more insular in the Pavilion, if you don’t work with them it is much harder to meet them.

On the ICP being an international was probably the butt of a few jokes in the break room but was probably not a major part of your experience. As a CRP you are a *cultural* representative, your culture is what you are there for. This means guests will mention it ALL THE TIME! At this point I feel a direct quote from Alex will explain it best:

It’s the end of your program, you’ve had an amazing time and hopefully you have managed to save at least a little money. You most likely have your savings in a US bank account. This gives you a few choices to get the money home.

Take Out Cash

Depending how much you have this might be an option. The law says you can’t bring more than €10,000 back in to the UK in cash. You would also then need to convert this cash to pounds where you probably won’t get a great rate. If you don’t have much to bring back this might be an option but if you’ve saved anything reasonable, from the bar for example this is unlikely to be the most efficient way.

Cheque from your US Bank

You could take the whole lot out as a US dollar cheque and bring it back to pay in a UK account. There is no limit on how much this can be but between the fees from the US bank and the UK bank plus probably not a great exchange rate you will lose quite a bit of your hard earned cash.

Wire Transfer from your US Bank

This is a direct transfer from your US Bank to your UK Bank account. To do this you will need to know your IBAN number, which is basically your international bank account number. This saves on UK bank fees but your US bank may charge a fair amount to set this up for you plus you tend to not get the best rate since they make money on that too.

Use a money transfer service

There are plenty of different independent services that will do the transfer for you, it is worth shopping around and doing your homework to make sure they are legitimate and are giving you a good rate. My personal favourite is TransferWise, they take pretty small fees as little as £1 per transfer and give the market rate. They also seem to get the money there faster than other services, I have had transfers come through in as little as 3 days. You should certainly take a look at other services when you come to do the transfer though as rates and charges vary all the time and it is very dependent on how much you are transferring.

However you bring your money back make sure you are getting a good deal. You probably worked (very) hard to earn it and it might take a while to find something that pays as well for a while when you get back so it makes sense to bring as much back as possible.

Everyone went out on my program with some idea of what the experience was going to be like. I think without fail everyone had a very different experience than they expected. I once again went out and asked ex-CRPs for what they were most surprised about. This time instead of writing it up I am going to give you what they had to say in their own words – I have kept them all anonymous to protect the innocent!

It’s not the job or the place, it’s the people…

“I thought all my memories before I went would all be Disney ones whether it be work or the parks and that’s what would make the programme so good. But I know it sounds corny but it was the people and the friends you make that make the programme so good”

It’s not all pixie dust…

“I thought I was going to get over there and everyone was going to be these saints – bed early every night. But little did I know there was pretty much a night out for every night of the week. There was definitely this whole “work hard, play hard” thing going on. And I feel like I should deffo mention I was surprised how much I enjoyed Happy Mondays, because when I first got there it didn’t sound appealing but once you go it’s amazing. And to save the best for last I was surprised at the fact that not many people went to the legendary Parliament House Resort on a Sunday because it was always an amazing night!!”

 

“I didn’t realize that there would be so many people working there that weren’t really all that into Disney but more into the social/partying aspect of it all.”

It all goes by so fast, try new things, you might like them!

” I didn’t even know what Lasses was before I went and I was terrified all the way through my first one, but once I gave it a chance it became one of the absolute best parts of my program. Being made Head Lass was one of my proudest moments (ever!).

 

I also didn’t expect how quickly your friends turned into your family (super cheesy). I made some of my best friends in that year but I felt like we were already really close just a few weeks in.

 

I definitely didn’t expect certain guests to be so stupid. Asking them what countries made up the UK and getting Belgium and Australia as answers was interesting!

 

But I think the biggest thing I didn’t expect was how bloody quickly the year goes. You think when you are going away for a year that it’s going to feel like ages, but time flies by and before you know it it’s time to go home and the whole thing feels like a dream. So I would definitely have told June 2012 me to make the most of every opportunity that I came across. I’m still annoyed I never went on a cruise”

People become really good friends not just workmates…

“I didn’t go to Lasses for ages when I first got there because I was terrified of standing up in front of everyone and answering personal questions because I was only just coming out. I didn’t realise how accepting everyone actually would turn out to be.”

Sometimes you just have to forget everything you thought it would be…

“I was not expecting to make so many friends, I didn’t know that F&B got tipped hence not knowing I would be making good money.

 

I thought I would miss my family more!

 

I didn’t expect to go out getting smashed most nights like it was Magaluf!

 

I didn’t realise I would be suicidal when I got home!”

Whatever your expectations about your program they will probably be wrong. My advice and I think that of everyone I have spoken to is to go with the flow, you will get the most from your program if you roll with the punches. I know I did lots of things that I never thought I would and I thoroughly enjoyed (most of) them.

Have you done a program? What were your expectations and were they correct? Did you enjoy the fact that it wasn’t what you expected?

Packing to leave home for a year, to go somewhere you have never been, to do something you have never done, with people you have never met is understandably an incredibly daunting task! Every person I have spoken to has said that if they did it again they would do something differently – take something, not take something, take less, take more. I definitely got it very wrong on my first program so I thought it would be a good idea to get advice from ex-CRPs and put it all together in a Disney CRP packing guide. Here is the collected wisdom of CRP 2011/2012/2013!

Take one suitcase
You do not need to take your entire life with you and after a year you will have a lot more to bring home than you took out. If you start with one it will become two but if you start with two it will become three. Remember you have to get it through the airport, through housing and up potentially two flights of stairs to your apartment – that is a lot of work with two bags. You then also have to store it for a year, probably under your bed – there is plenty of space for one bag but two is pushing it.

Pack sheets, a travel pillow and a towel
You might not make it to Walmart on your first night – especially if you are delayed. Sleeping under a towel or in your clothes is horrendous after 12+ hours of travelling. Sheets mean you can at least make the bed and get some sleep, you can worry about a comforter in the morning. Not being able to take a shower after arriving in a hot, sticky country after sitting in a seat for 9 hours would be horrific – pack a lightweight towel and buy a full size one on the first trip to WalMart. The towel could even double as a pillow if you needed it to.

Pack Jeans, a hoody and a warm pair of shoes
Sure it’s hot in Florida a lot of the time but it does get cold – very cold on occasion. The first time it happens it will take you by surprise. Everyone gets this wrong… Pack some layers and be ready for UK autumn temperatures especially in the evenings. Bare arms or legs will be freezing!

Take travel sized toiletries
No matter which housing complex you are in you are no more than a 10 minute walk from a pharmacy. Take enough toiletries to last you a few weeks while you get settled and then go out and buy full size stuff – this will save you a lot of weight. The only exception to this is spray deodorant – the Americans have never heard of it. If that is your preference you will want to take some with you but bear in mind that is a lot of weight to give up for a year’s supply.

Take some paracetamol
CRP life is stressful – American’s do some greet painkillers but I am yet to find anything as good as UK Paracetamol. Take a box for when that headache kicks in and you just need to power through.

Take a mac
Not the computer kind but a lightweight jacket! Between March and October it rains, a lot. Umbrellas are all well and good but in torrential rain they only keep you so dry. Florida storms will make you look like you’ve just stepped out of the bath in about 20 seconds and you will be freezing all day. A waterproof coat is a godsend.

Vacuum Bags are a TRAP
Vacuum bags might seem like a great idea to get more in but they will probably just out you overweight – proceed with caution!

Take some pictures from home
The first few days will be a roller-coaster of emotions and a likely lack of internet access means contacting home might be a challenge. Take some photos (actual not digital) to put up in your room, they are very bare otherwise and they are a great way to stave of the homesickness until you can get back in touch. Avoid big, bulky sentimental stuff though, you’ll only regret it when it is using up your weight allowance coming home.

Take sunscreen
Sure after a little while you will get used to the sun and you won’t need it but unless you want to turn up to training looking like a tomato, pack some sunscreen. You WILL get a tan, you have a year, it doesn’t have to be on day two!

Don’t pack anything you really value
CRP life takes it’s toll on things. You will lose stuff, break stuff, shrink stuff and spill unidentifiable fluids on stuff. If you couldn’t bear to lose it don’t pack it. I went through 6 pairs of sunglasses, don’t buy expensive ones, it’s not worth it. You will most likely throw away 90% of what you take with when you start packing to come home so plan ahead.

Electronics are complicated
Different voltage in the USA means hair dryers, straighteners etc may not work or may be very low powered. The best bet is don’t bother taking the weight and just replace them from WalMart when you get there.

Take a UK extension lead
You are going to have a lot of things to charge – you only have a couple of power sockets, instead of buying a US extension lead and then loads of adapters it is much easier if you buy one adapter and plug in a UK multi-plug extension lead – sorted!

Don’t worry about ‘going out’ clothes
You will probably have 20 minutes on average to get ready to go out. Nobody really bothers to get dressed up and girls don’t bother with high heels – it’s 100 degrees outside or it’s pouring with rain – you won’t wear them! By all means take a few nice bits for a night out but make sure it’s stuff you can wear out and about as well otherwise you are just wasting space.

Remember you are not going to outer space…
You can actually buy stuff there, America has shops. Basic rule here, if you can buy it easily don’t bother taking it, it is only going to use up your weight allowance. Also don’t stress about forgetting something important, you can probably very easily buy it there and it might even be cheaper!

Good luck! And remember to smile at the nice lady at check in – she might not charge you for your grossly overweight bag :-p

Thank you to all the Ex-CRPs who helped contribute to this article, especially Alex Fanning who pretty much wrote half of it! But also thank you to Emily Moulder, Clare Trayner, Emma Spears, Holly Bailey, Claire Burgess, Nicole McCarney, Amelia Donnelly and anyone else I have forgotten. If you have any other suggestions leave them in a comment below…

…To get up early

For work in the UK I frequently get up at 6.30am, on my program I rarely ever got up before 9. It might seem like a really small difference and when you are tired and maybe a little hungover (!) it can be hard to make an early start but don’t waste a whole day off sleeping. You might only have 100 days off all year, do you really want to waste half of one in bed? People hated me on occasion for getting them up at 6am to go for a Character breakfast before work but I hope they would think it was worth it in the end.

…To go out more

Before my program I never really thought of myself as a ‘going out’ kind of person. I was not a massive drinker and I thought it wasn’t really my scene. The truth is I came to really enjoy it. Going out in Orlando is not like going out in the UK, you don’t really have to get very dressed up, you go straight after work most times and it has to end at 2am as the bars close. This makes for nights which are pretty quick to recover from and a lot of fun. Orlando also has some great places to go out; when have to you been Line Dancing with unlimited beer or gone to an outdoor street with 10 different bars you can just wander between? Even if you are not a ‘going out’ person I suggest you try it at least once… you might surprise yourself, I know I did!

…To make the most of the perks

You get some amazing benefits – use them! I didn’t use my dining discount for months and regretted not eating at more Disney restaurants. You also get some great discounts outside of the parks. You are only a Disney Cast Member for a very limited time – make the most, once they are gone, they are gone!

…To stay in more resorts

I stayed in Disney resorts 14 times during my program from a night at the Contemporary to my last few days in Pop Century. I wish I had stayed in more, in off peak season you can get 60% off already low rack rates making a room as low as about $30 a night. Stay with some friends and that could be less than $10 each! What’s not to love? Sometimes a comfy bed (the one’s in housing are fine but not exactly luxury), a flat screen TV and some time away from housing can be just what you need to get back in the zone.

…To do stuff that makes you smile

The nature of the program is that there is always someone doing something you could tag along with, but sometimes there is something you want to do that nobody else does. Do it anyway! It’s your program, make the most of it. I got up at a stupid time of the morning to go to the New Fantasyland Grand Opening, no one would come with me and they thought I was mad. Do I regret it? No. I had a fun time and met up with friends later after they had a lie in (See above!). Big group stuff is great fun and organising stuff for groups is even more fun but if you want to do it and nobody else does, don’t stop, you might not get another chance!

…Not to sweat the small stuff

During my program I worked with more than 150 different people – to put that into perspective it was more than the total number of the people in my year in secondary school and more people than work in my entire division in my current job. That is a lot of people. Inevitably with that many people working long hours together, living together and hanging out together you are going to have your differences. People gossip, people bicker, it’s life. Don’t sweat it! It is a totally crazy environment where the high pressure of the job and the lifestyle means tiny issues can grow to major problems, just remember to put it in perspective and it probably isn’t that bad really! What seems like a major issue today will be forgotten next week, life in Orlando moves fast and this weeks gossip is old news very quickly.

Now that I have done the program once there are so many things that I learned when I was out there that would have been so much easier had someone told me them before I went. I figured other people had the same issue so I put a plea out on Facebook to other alumni for the one thing they wish someone had told them before they did their program and they answered. In this post I have put the best ones…

…To take photos, lots of photos!

Anyone who has read this blog will know that I take a LOT of photos. But on my program I didn’t really start taking them until more than halfway through. When you come home at the end of the program the photos are all you have to trigger the memories, the more photos, the more happy memories you will retain. Take LOTS of photos of everything, nights out, nights in, sitting on the bus, wandering around the parks, that stupid sign you saw that one time… Take it from me if you don’t the memories will fade and you will have a hard time remembering if you saw that silly sign when you were at Universal or at SeaWorld and whether it was with Joe or Jack.

…That having a bit of a breakdown is normal

Let’s be honest here, going to Disney is running away to the other side of the world. At some point in the year you are going to stop and think ‘Wait, am I doing the right thing?’. THIS IS NORMAL. For most people this tends to happen at two major times in their program, 2 months in and 6 months in. At this time I highly recommend taking Emma’s advice from the last post and taking time to head to the parks, chill out and remember why you did this in the first place. Working at Walt Disney World is not always easy and living and working with the same people day in, day out even more so. It is therefore important to take time for yourself every now and again and before you take any rash decisions visit the Magic Kingdom, watch Wishes and see how you feel in the morning.

…To get a Car

This is a controversial one. Disney provide Bus transportation which is not bad 95% of the time but clearly it does not go the most direct or fastest route to places. Buying a car is a big commitment both financially and in terms of the time needed to find a car, do a driving test and sort out all of the paperwork but hiring a car for occasional trips is very easy and can be as little as about $30 a day and you can walk to Hertz from housing. The car debate is a big one and there is no right or wrong answer but a car for a few days here and there is an amazing freedom. If you don’t have a car, make friends with someone who does… but maybe buy them a drink every now and again to say thank you.

…That taxis are pretty cheap if you know where to go

When you don’t have a car, get a taxi! There are various taxi drivers that basically only work with the various countries of the World Showcase. When you arrive in Orlando you will pretty quickly get their numbers from people who are already there, they are really pretty cheap. A taxi to work with a group of people is $2 each. When you just can’t face the bus journey or want to stop for a cheeky food stop on the way give them a call. They are a lot cheaper than the other taxi companies as well for longer journeys, if you want a trip to Universal you could save yourself quite a bit sometimes.

…To escape the Disney Bubble

There is plenty to do in the Lake Buena Vista and Orlando area but the USA is a big place and there is plenty going on. Doing all the Disney stuff is important, you will only get to do it once, but in between take time to escape. Go to Miami, go to Tampa, go to New York, go to Las Vegas… An internal US flight is a lot cheaper than a trans-Atlantic one and when are you going to be this close again? There are some crazy music festivals all across America, some of my friends went to Bonaroo in Tennessee, when are you going to have a chance to go to a Music Festival where there is a good chance the sun might shine most of the time?

Travelling is expensive so you have to manage your money. By all means don’t spend every penny you earn, you will need some of it when you come back, but don’t save every penny and miss out on the experience. It is a delicate balancing act but one that it is worth doing for the experiences you will get.

…To wait for Holiday Discount

Between October and February Cast Members usually get extra merchandise discount of 40%. If you have a Disney souvenir you just have to have try and wait until then to buy it. You could save yourself a bundle.

…Not to bother buying food

I can honestly say I think I cooked in my apartment kitchen on less than 10 occasions. Unless you are a gourmet chef or you know for certain you are going to be cooking a meal I wouldn’t bother doing a lot of food shopping. You will eat out a lot, even if it just McDonald’s because you are just too tired to do anything after work. Eating out is not expensive and quite often happens spontaneously after work, planning food ahead of time is a fool’s move!

…To get a taxi to WalMart on the first night

The night you arrive you are going to need to buy stuff, bedding, towels and something for breakfast. There will be a bus to WalMart but you will just have been on a 9+ hour flight and potentially been travelling for the best part of 24 hours – GET A TAXI. You will be there and back in under an hour and a half as opposed to almost 3 hours on the bus. It will probably cost you a maximum of $20, less if you are in a big group.

…That no matter how much you want to come home, a day later you will want to go back

By the end of your program you will probably be looking forward to coming home as well as sad to be leaving. Take it from me, the minute you are home you will be wanting to be back! A year is really not very long, make the most of every minute and every opportunity and for god’s sake if you are thinking of leaving early take time to think it through and remember all the good things you have.

To Be Continued…. Continue to Part 2

This is a guest post from Emma Spears. She took part in the Disney Cultural Representative Program between October 2012 and January 2014 working at the Rose & Crown Pub and Dining Room with yours truly. I invited Emma to post as I feel it is important that people looking to take part in the programs know what they are letting themselves in for. I can provide one perspective but everyone’s program is different and the more people you hear from the more you can decide on what you want your program to be

Am I the first person to ever be allowed to guest post on Dan@Disney? I think I might be. I feel honoured!

When I went to Walt Disney World for the first time at the age of seven, I knew, without question, that that was where I wanted to work. I didn’t have a specific moment of revelation; I simply grew up knowing that, someday, that was where I was going to work.

I was 23 when I found out that I would be able to make that dream come true, and I had to wait another seven months until my start date. You would think that after all of that time, I would be desperate to get out to Florida. But the nearer I got to the time, the more I didn’t want to go. Crazy, right? I had an absolutely amazing time once I was out there, and even ended up extending for three months!

So, here are all of the worries/concerns that I had, and how it all turned out happily ever after (well, sort of).

What if I don’t make any friends?

This was a big one for me. I was going out to the States to live and work with lots of people, most of whom I had never met before. I was terrified that nobody would want to be my friend.

But here’s the thing: everybody feels the exact same way. So few people go out there actually knowing anybody that everyone is looking to make friends.

I’ll admit, I didn’t fall in my end of program friendships straight away – it took time. There will be people you get on with but they’re not destined to be a close friend. That’s just how it is. But I got there, and now some of my ‘Disney friends’ are people I hope will be in my life for a very long time.

What if I hate the job?

(I was in food and beverage so I can’t really speak about the merchandise side of the street, but the people I knew in merchandise had a great time – it’s a lot more of a relaxed role)

For the most part, even if you have food and beverage or retail experience, you don’t quite know what you’re getting yourself into so it’s natural to be concerned. While you’re still on podium, there’s a variety of roles, so if you don’t like one particular role you won’t have to do it for long. And the great thing is, there’s almost always somebody who is either willing to help you out or even swap with you (some people love greeting. Other people hate it. It takes all sorts). Once you become a server it is a different matter, but you can always pick up more food running shifts, or take your bar test to try and get onto the bar if you can’t get to grips with serving. I’ll admit, I was not a fan of serving at first, but by the end it was second nature and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What if all of my friends at home forget me?

They won’t. That’s really all there is to it. For a year, you will be absolutely terrible at keeping in contact with them, and that’s okay. They will ask when you can Skype and you won’t even remember to reply to that message let alone actually get around to Skyping. Messages will go unanswered for days, weeks at a time. Missed phone calls will go unreturned. But really, that’s okay. You will be busy. And the people who truly are your friends will understand that. They’ll still be there when you come back. If they’re not then, sorry, that’s their loss.

What if I don’t want to go out and get drunk/visit the theme parks/eat at Panera every day?

There’s a lot of things on the program that are very much group activities. It’s fun to do things in large groups, because you get to socialize with more people, and create new memories. But if you don’t like doing a particular thing that everybody else seems to, the solution is simple: don’t do it. Try it once or twice, because you might be surprised and realise that you do like it. But if you don’t, that’s fine. Not everybody wants to do everything. It’s your program. You do it your way.

What if it ruins the Disney magic for me?

This depends on how you view Walt Disney World and the company in general. I, personally, am fascinated by the inner workings of the theme parks so for me being able to go backstage and see things that guests can’t was one of my favourite aspects of the program (I still never got over the fact that you can see cast services from Test Track). You will see things that you can never unsee (let’s just say that grey t-shirts with barcode labels on the front can be rather upsetting), and you’ll probably be surprised by how much chaos and drama goes on backstage, but remember – you will only be seeing one aspect of the backstage areas. There’s still a lot of magic that will go untouched.

The year is an absolute roller coaster, and almost everyone has those moments of thinking ‘I just want to go home!’ But talk to your friends, ride Soarin’, and go out and dance stupidly in Cowboys; take your mind off it. You’ll be glad you stayed.

As a Walt Disney World Cast Member you get loads of great discounts, many straight from Disney themselves, but there are also ‘secret’ discounts – stores that offer extra discount for showing your Disney ID and not all of them advertise it. Unless you are in the know you might miss out.

I put a call out to ex-Disney Programs participants for any ‘secret’ discounts they had found. Below is the list I managed to compile, I am sure there are plenty more as well!

Free Lockers in the Parks

Disney don’t really advertise it but as a Cast Member you can get free locker rental in the parks (subject to a few blackout dates) – you pay the $5 key deposit only and as long as you return the key before the end of the day you get this refunded in full. Lockers are first come, first served and can all be taken at busy times of year. This is great if you go to a park before or after work and don’t want to drag a bag around with you, the only pain is having to wait in line to get the deposit refunded at the end of the day.

Thursdays at Chik-Fil-A

The Chik-Fil-A around the corner from Vista offers free stuff to Cast Members on a Thursday. Simply go to the store, buy something and show your ID and you will get extra stuff for free.

Nike Store @ Premium Outlets

10% off your purchase on top of the outlet price at the Nike Store in the Premium Outlets across from the Commons. Just show your ID at the register, they scan an extra barcode and you get your extra discount.

iRide Trolley

25c singles. Just show your ID, drop in a quarter and away you go. Big saving on the normal price of the iRide shuttle, great for a cheap visit to SeaWorld or Universal when you don’t feel like paying for a taxi.

Strollers & Wheelchairs

Free Stroller and Wheelchairs in the Disney Parks (subject to blackout dates), ECVs are excluded. Just show your ID and away you go.

Timberland Store @ Premium Outlets

20% off. Great for those who work in Frontierland, Animal Kingdom or the other areas of the parks where hiking boots are costume.

CiCi’s Pizza

All-you-care-to-eat Pizza Buffet across the road from Vista. Noone has reminded me of the exact discount for Cast Members but it is CHEAP. Great for those Wednesday nights just before payday when Ramen Noodles just don’t look quite appetising enough.

AMC Cinema @ Downtown Disney

$8 movies. You can only buy at the box office in person (not Online or at the machine), show your ID and away you go. Cost’s a bit extra for 3D and special screenings but again a big saving.

IHOP

For all your midnight pancake needs a short taxi ride from housing. I feel like this is a 20% discount with gratuity added automatically but I stand ready to be corrected. Do what I did on Pancake day and order 3 different pancake dishes… I won’t judge.

Blue Man Group @ Universal Studios

Big discounts on tickets at quiet times of year. Ask the question and see what you can get, often a lot better than the discount for Annual Passholders. Sometimes Disney housing have tickets to sell as well at discount rates.

Howl at the Moon

Duelling Piano Bar a taxi ride from housing up International Drive. Free entry for Cast Members.

Jellyrolls

Another Duelling Piano Bar (my favourite). Free entry (over 21s only, remember your passport, no driving licences). Come for the free entry, stay for the 32oz Red Solo Cup cocktails.

Senor Frogs

World famous cocktail bar from the Bahamas comes to Orlando on International Drive. Discount entry and drinks for Cast Members.

House of Blues @ Downtown Disney

Club at Downtown Disney. Hospitality Industry Night on Sunday – Free entry for over 21s with you Cast Member ID.

Car Rental – Hertz / Enterprise

Depending on the season many of the Car Rental companies give discounts for Cast Members. Sometimes Disney will distribute discount codes, otherwise give them a call or show your ID when you go to pick up to see what you can get.

Hotels

Bit like Car Rental, many local hotels give discount depending on the season. Always worth checking when you book. Holiday Inn gives discount across the USA, sometimes there is a code, sometimes you just have to mention it at booking.

Universal Studios

If you can prove you are a Florida resident you will get a discount on an Annual Pass. You need something to prove this, Housing will do you a letter normally if you ask nicely.

Crossroads (TGIs, Sweet Tomatoes)

Crossroads is a strip mall near housing with tonnes of chain restaurants. Being so close to WDW most do a Cast Member discount, ask the question… they can only say no!

Earl of Sandwich @ Downtown Disney

The best Hot Sandwich Shop in the world, no question… lightly toasted Caprese, no vinagrette, thank you very much! Show your ID for 20% off your bill.

Ghirrardelis

For all your ice cream needs. Late evenings sitting by the water, eating a brownie sundae with extra whipped cream are the best. Show your ID for 20% off for either dine-in or take-away.

Shell Garage

For all your Four Loko and tobacco needs. The Shell Garage next to Commons give Cast Member discount, show your ID and save on all your vices.

The moral of the story is… Ask for discount everywhere! You never know.

If you know of any other discounts leave a comment below or drop me a message, I will add it to the list.

A big thank you to everyone who helped submit these: Michelle Park, Ashleigh Sweeney, Joanna Maisey, Clare Trayner, Kelsey Stack, Jessie Lowe, Benjamin Stokes, Kathryn Todhunter, Lee Redman, Chloe Bradley, Catherine Bass, Charli Bevan

A year is a very long time at Walt Disney World – something is happening every week and the crowds change with the season from crazy busy to totally dead as I discussed in an old post.

So what is happening in 2014 at Walt Disney World at how does it affect the UK pavilion?

January

Every January there is the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend which includes the half-marathon as well as the 5k and some other races. This is a busy weekend as the Marathon goes right through the pavilion and ends at the Epcot parking lot bringing a busy weekend of tired people in need of food, drink and a sit down. Other than that January is a pretty quiet month.

February

February is a very quiet month with not much Walt Disney World activity although this year might bring the soft opening of the Seven Dwarfs mine train in New Fantasyland if things go totally to plan or even well ahead of schedule.

The end of February is the Princess half-marathon weekend which again brings the crowds to Epcot but only for a few days.

March

Things begin to pick up again in March with the arrival of the Flower and Garden festival. 2013 saw the introduction of Food to the festival making it a bit of a mini Food and Wine which if repeated again and enlarged may bring even bigger crowds in 2014. Flower and Garden also brings the Flower Power concert series at the weekends which this year includes:

March 7 – 9: The Guess Who
March 14 – 16: Gary Lewis & The Playboys
March 21 – 23: The Orchestra starring former members of ELO
March 28 – 30: The Lovin’ Spoonful
April 18 – 20: The Grass Roots
April 25 – 27: Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone
May 2 – 4: Starship starring Mickey Thomas
May 9 – 11: Chubby Check and the Wildcats

April

In April Flower & Garden continues and we reach the period around Easter known as ‘Peak week’, the clue here is in the name… It is busy, very busy. Park attendance peaks at this time of year and all locations are working flat out. As soon as Easter weekend has passed the park begins to quieten down again in to the summer months.

April also includes the Cheerleading and Dance World championships which take place at Walt Disney World and bring literally thousands of cheerleaders and dancers and their families to the parks making for one VERY busy weekend especially if some of the competition is taking place in World Showplace within Epcot which it has done for several years.

May

May brings one of my favourite events of the year – Star Wars weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It so much fun, it actually probably reduces the crowd at weekends in Epcot since people head to DHS instead. The ‘Hyperspace Hoopla’ is a must-see for everyone!

Backstage, May also brings Goofy’s Mystery Tour which is a cast-member only Scavenger Hunt which you can sign up to which combines skill, Disney knowledge and lunacy to create a night of ridiculous fun running around one of the parks trying to win prizes.

June

June includes the unofficial ‘Disney Gay Days‘ – sporting their Red T-shirts this weekend brings thousands of extra guests to the parks and the Orlando area.

July/August

Most people from the UK assume these will be busy months, they are not in the Rose & Crown. As an outdoor restaurant it is just too hot during the day for guests to sit and enjoy a meal and the frequent storms and high humidity keep anyone with sense away from the parks. Very few Americans visit at this time of year as they know how hot and sticky it is.

4th July week is probably the only exception with many Americans making the trip to WDW to spend time with their families and see the spectacular fireworks. It is really just a busy weekend in an otherwise quiet time.

September

September is where the fun really begins. The first few weeks are quiet and it is still very hot but by week 2 and 3 things are really starting to get busy.

At the Magic Kingdom September sees the start of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party on select nights. Cast Members usually get discount of September nights and it is great fun to dress up and see unique characters, fireworks and a special parade.

In Epcot busy season really starts with the arrival of the Food and Wine festival. At the Rose & Crown this is an exceptionally busy period in the Pub with many guests taking special liking to the ‘Wine’ part of the festival. The entire pavilion is much busier though with park attendance rising sharply, especially at weekends. The cooler temperatures mean that Chippy tends to get busier since fried food is more of a cold weather delicacy. Merch have a busy time too with Tea flying out of the door to the visiting foodies.

October

In October Food and Wine continues and if anything gets busier as the temperatures continue to cool.

November

Food and Wine reaches its peak in November with Wine and Dine Half Marathon weekend where Epcot stays open into the early hours of the morning hosting the marathon after party. This is usually closely followed by a busy week of Thanksgiving where many Americans choose to vacation in Florida as it is much warmer than the northern states and spend time in large family groups.

During November, ABC usually also film the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade using Cast Members as the crowd. You usually apply for tickets and go to the park early in the morning to watch TV presenters and musicians perform in front of the cameras.

December

This is peak season in the UK pavilion with the arrival of the Candlelight processional packages in the restaurant to coincide with Holidays around the World in Epcot. There are lots of rumours about changes this year but basically this is peak holiday season with extremely high attendance from Early December reaching a peak in the period between Christmas and New Year.

During the Christmas season Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party runs at Magic Kingdom and again Cast Members tend to get discount on early December dates.

The year of course ends with New Years Eve, the single busiest day of the year with upwards of 250k guests across all the parks and usually at least 80k in Epcot alone.

Back in the ancient history of 2011 I wrote a blog post about sorting out phones and SIM Cards for your Disney program. Back then Blackberry was still a thing and 3G was brand new and shiny. I thought it was about time I did an update!

I am going to assume that most people these days have some kind of shiny smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android etc). To use that in Florida you will need it to be unlocked, you can arrange that through your network as long as your contract is over or you can jailbreak it and unlock it yourself or take it to a shop to get it done. Once you have this you are good to go!

Smartphones

If you already own a smartphone you can buy a SIM card before you even leave the UK and have it ready for when you arrive. I personally like USASIMS – they sell a few different brands and ship to the UK at very reasonable prices. The different networks offer different prices on monthly contracts which you just pay each month to top up. I personally have always used H2O wireless without any problems, they offer a few different packages:

The only thing to remember is that once you choose one, you can’t change to another one without changing your phone number. If you buy the top-ups through CallingMart you can also get a discount by using the discount codes on their Facebook Page. Basically for $50 a month you can have all your calls (including those home) or for $30 or $40 a month you can have almost everything included (It would be 2.5c a minute to call a UK landline out of your $20 or $5 allowance).

Lyca Mobile and Simple Mobile are also good choices for Blackberries or Androids with similar monthly plans but they work on a frequency that most iPhones cannot use. If you do have an iPhone remember to order the right size SIM card as well as cutting them down is a real pain.

The advantage of having the SIM before you arrive is that you can start using it straight away, otherwise it will be several days before you can get to a phone shop (there is a T-mobile shop quite near housing) but it usually works out more expensive and you don’t get time to work out if you are getting the best deal.

Basic Phone

The alternative is to buy a basic phone in the USA, you can pick one up at WalMart for less than $30. They are the old brick phones which call and text and not much else. This used to be my recommendation but these days most people want Facebook, Twitter and everything else on their phone but if you really want to save the pennies this is an option for you as well. Bear in mind you cannot take the SIM out of these phones so if you later decide to change to a smartphone you would have to get a new number.

Non-tipped roles

Podium

Craig and I (in the old costume) rocking the podium. Craig greeting and me seating in my very fetching hat.

Probably the most fundamental role in the restaurant – getting people in the door. This involves roles of greeting and seating. The greeter is at the restaurant podium outside checking people’s reservations and working with the Assigner to take as many extra walk-ins as possible to keep the restaurant full and the servers making money.

The podium uses a computer system to keep track of the reservations and the tables seated and prints seating tickets with the guest’s name, table number, server and pager number when their table is ready.

It is the job of the seater to page the guest, get their menus and take them to their table. They will also help to bus (clear) tables when the restaurant is busy and help out the Assigner as necessary to rearrange tables and chairs for upcoming parties.

As the ‘front-line’ of the restaurant podium also deal with queries about anything and everything around the park and when the park is really busy such as Christmas, New Year and Easter the podium can see upwards of 2000 people a day so there is a lot of talking involved.

Chippy

The other major location in the UK Pavilion is the Yorkshire County Fish & Chip shop, affectionately known as Chippy. This serves one thing and one thing only, Fish & Chips, and trust me it sells a lot of them. There are 2 major roles in Chippy, Registers and Filling, at quiet times these can be combined so that one person is doing both roles. Registers operate the cash register, take the guest order and complete their payment. When it is busy and dry they are located outside, in front of the counter. In poor weather they relocate indoors since water and electricity don’t mix too well. Fillers complete the order, taking Fish & Chips from the culinary cast and filling drinks to give the guests including soft drinks, bottled water and pints of beer. When it is busy Chippy can really fly with Fish & Chips going out faster than they can be cooked.

Beer Cart

Livvie and I on Beer Cart

On Beer Cart you can often be on your own. Beer Cart is an outside cart close to the restaurant which sells (clue is in the name) beer as well as ciders and soft drinks. Except in especially busy times this is a one person location and speed can be of the essence. If you have any ambition to be a bartender this is a great first step. It can be incredibly busy, I remember having a constant line for an entire shift during Food & Wine last year but it is pretty fun and you can have a bit of banter with the guests which makes the time fly. You also learn a few cool pouring tricks which can impress guests and actually prove surprisingly useful when you get home.

Stocker

Me stocking on 4th July 2012

This is the position that people tend to dread, although I cannot see why. The role involves keeping all of the locations in the Pavilion stocked up with what they need. This includes drinks, condiments, kegs, till roll and desserts for the Chippy. You have a radio and a set of keys and basically spend the day walking around making sure everything is OK. This is one of those you get out what you put in type of positions. If you sit around it tends to get stressful later when things start running out and people start shouting whereas if you do your best to stay on top of things the day tends to go pretty smoothly. I did this role for every major holiday of my program and trust me if you ever get one of those the normal days feel like a breeze!

Assigner

This one is optional. You can choose to train as an Assigner. This involves managing the flow of the restaurant, seating reservations on time and taking as many extra walk-ins as possible while not over-working (weeding) the servers or the kitchen and keeping guest wait times to a minimum. The software does its best to help you out but it can certainly be stressful, especially during the Dinner rush when there are frequently more guests than tables but I found it incredibly rewarding and it was my favourite role in the entire pavilion. You do occasionally need a bit of a hard skin when you get everyone from chefs, managers, servers and guests telling you how you should be doing it but I would recommend it to anyone.

Tipped Roles

Food Runner

The first step in to tipped positions. The food runner is basically responsible for getting hot food from the kitchen to the table as fast as possible. Food is put on the line with a printed ticket specifying table and once it is all there the food runner takes it to the table. They are also responsible for keeping various sauces and other items in the kitchen fully stocked up for the servers and other food runners to use. (I couldn’t find a picture for this one)

Server

For most people this is the role they will spend most of their program in. You effectively own a 4 table section for your shift, you serve anyone that sits there. Taking their order, bringing and refilling drinks, appetizers and desserts and of course providing amazing Disney service! A test is required to become a server which includes both menu knowledge and Disney service standards. Additionally you have side-work responsibilities for keeping something in the kitchen or restaurant stocked or clean.

Bartender

Only a few people make it to be bartenders. Again a test is required along with a recommendation from management most of the time as someone who is reliable and trusted. There are usually only around 6 to 8 bartenders at any given time compared with around 30-40 servers.

That is a VERY whistle-stop tour of the roles to give you a bit of a flavour. Let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them. As I said before things change at Disney all the time and some, if not all, of this information is potentially a little our of date so please let me know if I can correct anything!

Just a little over 8 months ago I was sat in Orlando International Airport, slightly teary-eyed at the end of my Disney Cultural Representative Program. Two days ago I received the amazing news that I have the opportunity to go back!

I have been applying in secret since August, not wanting to tell anyone in case, as I thought was somewhat inevitable I would be rejected. Very few people get a second bite of the apple and I was pretty sure one of them would not be me.

Things have changed quite a bit since my last application. Phone Interviews have been replaced with face-to-face pre-screen interviews with Disney’s In-Country Agent Yummy Jobs and all of the application process has moved to online systems of filling in forms and scanning documents.

The process started on August 1st when I applied on the brand new, and admittedly slightly buggy, Yummy Jobs website. This has not changed too much, upload a CV, a covering letter, fill in some basic information and few pre-screen questions and you were good to go. The only difference was at this stage you now needed to upload scans of passports and visas as well.

I didn’t hear anything for quite a while and was fairly content to just let it go but eventually I was  to my surprise invited to a pre-screen interview in early October which was at a restaurant on the South Bank in London. It was a really lovely afternoon where I saw a few familiar faces. This was all entirely new to me so I was not entirely sure what to expect but it consisted of an hour-ish presentation about the program (which actually included photos of me and many of my friends) followed by splitting in to groups for the interviews themselves. These were really group discussions on the program, Disney and things like that. All very casual and pretty good fun. We also had to bring an item that represented our home town or country – I went for Tea, obvious, but I am not very good at that sort of thing!

From that I heard fairly quickly that I had been invited to a face-to-face interview with Disney. Cue a LOT of online form filling – there was an application form for Disney, a form to choose the date and time of your interview, a site to upload scans of all your documents. It took a while but none of it was that difficult apart form uploading scans of previous visas, I don’t think they had thought that people would have more than one, I uploaded one thinking it would give me the option for me, but no, I had to email Disney and ask them to delete my upload so I could upload a single file with all of them, which it turned out had to be in pdf format and less than 4mb in size. Several attempts later I finally got it to work.

My interview was the beginning of November back at Disney EMEA HQ in Hammersmith. It was nice to be back in the building again and thankfully this time I knew where the back entrance was (It’s on Butterwick Road), so not too much wandering around trying to find it.Sue and Jill were over and gave the presentation on the program and dragged me up on stage to talk about the roles in F&B… I think I did an OK job, Sue seemed to like it. I had one of the second time slot interviews so I went and grabbed a coffee in the break with some other interviewees before heading back up to HQ. Sue took me as the first interview of our group. It was a really nice chat, she thanked me for helping with the presentation and we talked about my last program and what I wanted to get out of a second program. I would love to say I remember any of the questions and could write something to help future applicants but I can’t! In 10 minutes or so it was all over and I was heading home just after lunchtime.

Sue had said it would be a long wait for results as she was off recruiting for a while, the Thanksgiving holiday was then in the way combined with the fact they were recruiting for three programs simultaneously. Well finally almost 6 weeks later the email dropped in to my inbox at about 20:30 and the rest is history. 12th August 2014 – Food & Beverage… Here we go again!

The last 2 weeks of my Disney CRP… I decided to fill the last 2 weeks with as much as I possibly could!

On the Thursday of my last full week I booked a cabin at Fort Wilderness with Emma, Bryony, Chantelle, Kelsey and Alex. Bryony, Alex and I were all of that day and got there early to check in. We had to wait a while for a room to become available and then of course after we got in and dropped our stuff it immediately started raining. We hung around the little quick service by the pool chatting for ages before I got a message from Emma saying she got cut early because of the rain and was on her way. Once she got there we decided to rent one of the golf  buggies to get around – best decision ever! The most hilarious moments of that day were driving around – I spent about 10 minutes driving in circles over enormous potholes and alex managed to U-turn directly in front of a bus! As the weather started clearing up we went over to MK where we caught some of MiSiCi with an incredible performer who took a liking to us and was joking around for the whole parade. I took a photo but I can’t seem to find it now!

When Kelsey called to say she was on her way we went back and after some more golf cart shenanigans we got back to the cabin before going out for a buffet dinner at Trail’s End. We were originally going to go to the campfire but it was kind of cold and we had drinks back at the cabin instead. It was a lovely chilled out evening and a lovely way to see people before I left. The next morning however it was up early to train Abbie in assigning.

I can honestly say that Assigning that day was horrific and it was in no way anything to do with my trainee (She was awesome)! We had way too many reservations and they were all massive parties – in the end we ended up seating until 9.15 – needless to say nobody was very happy. The next day, my last assigning shift, I took things nice and easy bit wanting a repeat of the day before.

Monday was my actual Last Lads. I got to do my last fines, which breaking tradition I actually wrote down so I wouldn’t forget. Turns out that was a pretty good decision as I got top lad that week meaning I had quite a bit to drink before I did my fines and I would definitely have messed them up with nothing written down.

On Tuesday I had used my last floating holiday to get an extra day off and after I picked up a rental car in the morning it was mostly spent packing and then a bit of last minute outlet shopping. Packing was not as bad as I had expected and I did managed to get everything in one, very heavy, bag in the end. In the evening Emma and I went to Jiko, the signature restaurant at Animal Kingdom Lodge which was really nice. It is my favourite restaurant in all of WDW and it totally lived up to expectations.

Wednesday was my last day of work. I ended up helping open Chippy and then be Greeter which was nice as it gave me one last chance to do a bit of everything. There were lots of mids so not many people could get away for drinks in the pub but there was a nice group for a few drinks and we even got some food from Chef Mark. Chef Glenn and Joe both came to wish me goodbye and good luck and told me to keep in touch – I definitely plan to.

I had made a reservation at Mama Melrose, the Italian restaurant at DHS and 12 of us ended up going there for dinner. We were the table of doom with 2 allergies, 12 split checks with Cast Member discount but I kind of didn’t care anymore! After Dinner we slightly tipsily made our way back to housing to get ready for my last iBar. iBar had a really good turnout and despite promising I would not cry when I was in the middle of a circle of all my friends with them singing the Friends theme tune at me I have to admit I may have shed a few tears – it was an amazing last night out and a lovely end to my program.

On Thursday I had originally planned to just hang around most of the day but Emma text me and suggested we went to the Florida Mall instead – she might have called in to be able to do it, the little devil! We had a nice morning of just wandering around the stores – we bought a few things but it was just nice to escape the Disney bubble for a few hours. In the evening we went for my last TGIs before an early night since the next morning I had to move out of housing to Pop Century. Thursday late night was spent throwing stuff out of my apartment and packing the last bits – thankfully I had help or it would never have got done.

Friday morning I was up early – I managed to offload the TV and router to Adam at the last minute as I was worried I would have to dump them before loading up the car, dropping off my key and ID and heading out. Pop century had a room ready straight away so we dumped our stuff and were out to Animal Kingdom nice and early. We did Everest, Dinosaur and the shows before heading back for a mid-afternoon nap as we planned Fantasmic in the evening. I managed to get a last-minute reservation for 50s prime time for Dinner and we got in line early for the late Fantasmic show which meant we got almost front row in the Mickey (centre) section which gave an incredible view – another great last experience.

Saturday was always going to be Magic Kingdom from opening. Kelsey and Chantelle were joining us so we swung by the Commons to pick them up and were outside MK for the welcome show. Friends in high places in the Magic Kingdom hooked us up with free Ice Cream bars on the way in and free Fastpasses later in the day and a particularly magical Photopass CM took some amazing photos of us in front of the castle which are now printed nice and large on my wall at home. We did all of the major rides and watched MiSiCi and the parade on a hot, summery day before heading back for a mid-afternoon nap before returning for nighttime fun. We had dinner at the Plaza before watching the Main Street Electrical Parade and getting my favourite spot for Wishes (just between Casey’s and the Ice Cream Shop FYI). I again promised no tears but towards the end of Wishes I lost it. After Wishes I really just wanted to leave, I had made my peace with MK and we headed back to the resort for some more tears and a relatively early night as I had to leave at 7am.

Sunday was it, the end. I left about 7.30 to drive to the airport. It was a strange feeling to actually be leaving and not coming back. I had to pay overweight baggage of $60 which was not bad really and that was it – through security on to a plane and the journey home began.

Now 2 weeks later I am sitting in my living room reliving it all. Still looking for a new job at the moment but hopefully things will start moving on that front in the next few days. To my loyal readers who have been there for almost 2 years now – Thank you.

The number of people who asked me if I was ‘Dan@Disney’ always surprised me and I am glad to have helped in any way. If you are on the program or getting ready to go out – have the time of your life – it is only a year and it goes so fast. Don’t have anything to regret when it is over. You only live the CRP once, live it to the max.

To all the special people I left in Orlando – see you real soon and keep the magic and the banter alive.

Booking time off seems to be very confusing for people so I am going to break down the basics and explain how it all works.

What are the different types of time off?

There are 3 different types of time off – Vacation, Floating Holiday and Sick Pay. You earn each of these as the program goes on.

Vacation is earned based on the hours you have worked – you can get up to 40 hours (5 days) per calendar year. You get 8 hours of vacation for each 360 hours worked.

You get 3 days of Floating Holiday per calendar year – these are given to you on March 1st, June 1st and September 1st.

Sick Pay is earned similar to vacation – you get 8 hours for every 300 hours worked up to a total of 48 hours (6 days) per year.

If your program takes you in to a new calendar year (January) you Vacation and Sick Pay roll over but your Floating Holiday does not. Any Vacation and Sick Pay left at the end of your program will be paid to you – Floating Holiday will not. Because of this it is almost always better to use your Floating Holiday first before vacation or sick pay.

You sick pay will be used up if you call in sick but it can also be used to pick up time off. You can always check how much you have left of all 3 types on the Hub.

What about ADOs?

Authorised Days Off (ADOs) are a day off without pay. They are in addition to your vacation and sick pay. You can only take 1 in a week in addition to your RDOs (Regular Days Off). These are at the discretion of management.

When can you book time off?

Technically you cannot book vacation until you have been on the program 9 months. In reality this means you cannot get paid vacation until you have been there 9 months – you may be able to book unpaid vacation. If you put a request in as a vacation before 9 months it will be assumed to be unpaid vacation time.

Every year in November/December there is a vacation bid. At this time you can put any vacation requests in for the next year and they are considered in order of seniority (starting with the people who have been at the location the longest to the newest). This is the best time to put vacation requests in.

For each day of the year there is a vacation allowance – for example 3 people can have each day off. Once those are taken everyone else who asks will be waitlisted – unless one of those people cancels their request you are unlikely to have the time approved. In the vacation bid nobody can already have asked for the day so assuming you have fairly high seniority you have a good chance of having the time approved – you can always cancel the request later if you change your mind.

Also bear in mind all time off requests must be in the hub 2 weeks in advance, before the schedule comes out. Anything after that time will be ignored.

What about switching shifts?

You can always switch shifts to get time off but there are a few rules to stick by. You must still be being paid 30 hours of work per week (Sunday – Saturday) – this includes Floating Holiday and Vacation Pay (8 hours each).

Also any switch cannot result in a higher cost to Disney. So for example if your shift gave the other person a 6th day instead of your 5th day it would be overtime instead of straight time and cost Disney more, this request would be denied. Also anything that goes from a straight time shift (less than 8 hours) to an overtime shift (over 8 hours) would also be denied. The same if it went from someone being under 40 hours (straight time) to being over 40 hours (Overtime).

Anyone in a tipped position (Server, Bartender, Food Runner) can sign a waiver which means they do not get paid overtime and can therefore pick up shifts that would otherwise result in overtime. In a non-tipped position it is necessary to find someone who would not go in to overtime.

All of these restrictions can be overridden by management but it is not guaranteed. For urgent requests speaking to management may help.

I just want to do something on my regular days off

Your regular days off are not guaranteed. At busy times of year you may lose one and end up working 6 days a week. If you are planning something on an RDO put a request in for that week which just has your RDOs and you working every other day. If it is approved as a request on the Hub it is then guaranteed. A lot of people were caught out by this around Christmas – put the request in and get it guaranteed.

As with all my advice, please bear in mind that things do change and while this was correct for my program policies and procedures change all the time. Always speak to management before acting on any of this information.

It has been 3 months since my last confession… Sorry readers, CRP life has a habit of catching up with you and not letting you go!

Today I leave Orlando at the end of my program – it has been an incredible year and I can honestly say I have made friends and memories that will hopefully last a long time. I can’t possibly hope to include everything that has happened in the last few months in a single post but I am going to include the major highlights. I will be writing another post about the whole year in the next few days when I have time to get settled back home and look back on my whole year.

I will admit that up until February I made a note in my Calendar of what I did each day to make writing this a little easier – I seem to have forgotten to do that so I am piecing this together a little!

I left off at the end of January… That week one of my days off was spent at WonderWorks on International Drive which I must admit would not have been my first choice but was actually a lot of fun – we were there for over 3 hours! It has loads of weird exhibits and a bubble room where you get to try and stand inside a bubble! Needless to say a lot of fun was had by all!

The next week we went to Hard Rock at Universal to see the magician’s Penn and Teller – I have always wanted to see them live and I must say I was not disappointed  Although I had seen a few of the acts before there was quite a bit of new stuff and going with a load of UKs of course made the whole thing more fun.

I worked 6 day weeks for the next couple of weeks as I picked up shifts from people so it was all a bit crazy but my friend Alice from my 2009 program came to visit and we spent most of the day reliving good times and exploring Magic Kingdom and Epcot before she had to leave and I spent the evening with the December arrival group having Dinner at the Rose & Crown – It was really nice to spend time with everyone just chilling out.

The week later my Parents were here so I spent 3 days staying in Coronado Springs which was absolutely lovely – I got to take them all over the parks as well as eating in 2 Signature restaurants. But before the arrived monday night Lads was a Lasses takeover – I don’t want to give too much away but if you ever get to go to a Lads/Lasses takeover do it! They have been some of the best nights of my program and being fed mysterious pink alcohol by Kim will be an enduring memory of my program – in a very good way! While they were here I also rented a car – It is a godsend having a car, the busses are generally OK but they take ages to get anywhere and if you decide to do something last minute you can wait 45 minutes for a bus before you can even start going anywhere. I am going to write an advice post on renting a car with some tips for this as well.

The end of that week was my Birthday. On the Saturday night I of course went to Cowboys which I must admit got a little messy but it was lovely to spend my birthday with all of my friends. It was also the March 6thers last so they did their last song as well which made for a really nice night. The next day, my actual birthday, I went to MK with Emma Spears where we did all the usual stuff and we discovered Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom which is a game that you play all around MK trying to defeat villains using spell cards that you can collect and buy. We did not entirely understand what we were doing a lot of the time but it was fun and kind of addictive – we have definitely been back since to collect more cards and play again. In the evening I had made reservations at 50s Prime Time which was awesome, I had originally planned to go out after but after a day in the parks and feeling a little delicate from the night before I decided to get an early night.

That Wednesday was G’s arrival group’s last day but it was also the day that I found out that there had been a mistake in my program extension and it had not been processed – as far as they were concerned I was leaving in 2 weeks. Cue a lot of arguing and phone calls and emails and 60 hours of waiting before it was all finally straightened out – it was a very stressful few days before it was all resolved. On Wednesday before I knew what was happening I decided to go to Fantasmic with Alex and Tom just in case it was going to be my last one. We ended up sitting in the very front row and I got some absolutely amazing photos – in the end it wasn’t my last but if it had been I would have been very happy.

The next couple of weeks I decided to make the most of the end of my program and go out and do as much as possible. I went out on a lot of nights out with some really good friends. March 7th was our graduation. Our group and the 2 after all graduated together which was nice as we often don’t see that much of each other. Graduation itself was the standard photos with the characters and free food. Afterwards we went to watch Wishes and then went to watch Hoop Dee Doo (again) at Fort Wilderness. The show was good and our server was a lot better than the last time – we definitely had a few drinks each this time! Afterwards I went out to Sun On The Beach (SOB) where there was plenty of drama to keep the whole pavilion entertained!

The following week it felt like everything started to come to an end – Monday was my arrival group’s last Lads and Lasses which was a really nice sendoff – I definitely shed a few tears. It was very weird for them to all be leaving and me to be staying. On Wednesday Emma and I went to Fort Wilderness where we rented one of the Speedracer boats – it was loads of fun and only came to about $20. We got to go all around Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon, something I had never done before… it was awesome. I also showed Emma where you can see River Country, the old Water Park at Fort Wilderness – Disney Keeno moment right there.

That Thursday I organised another big outing for breakfast at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian – it was definitely my most successful of the year, if I say so myself! There were 18 of us and we got photos and filled ourselves up before heading out for a day of fun in the parks where Bryony took me to see a load of shows including the Lion King at AK which is one of my favourites.

The next week I went to Mickey’s Backyard Barbecue with Alex and Bryony which is a barbecue buffet at Fort Wilderness. The food was awesome, the show not so much. But we did get a pretty awesome discount and we managed to make it over to Magic Kingdom for the parade and pixie dust for the girls.

That weekend was my ‘offical’ last – As I extended I was leaving by myself and there was an arrival group the week before. In order to not bore people with last everything two weeks in a row we agreed I would do everything a week early. Last Cowboys was awesome, with plenty of tears and last Lads, held at Mark’s house was really nice with more of a house party feel than a crazy party. It was a really nice sendoff.

And that was the end of March… that just left me with a couple of weeks left before I returned home to the UK :-(. All that in another post to come!

Everything about working at Disney in December was insane, everything in January has been the complete opposite. I am finally back to working 5 days a week, I am rarely working more than 8 hours in a day and I just about work 35 hours a week. All in all life is good right now and I am having plenty of time to get stuff done.

It has been a while since my last proper post so this post covers about 3 weeks or so. After NYE we were busy until the next weekend when people finally started going home and things began to calm down. That weekend the AMs began and Saturday night I went to Ale House for a few drinks with the latest arrival group and Sunday was HOB which turned out to be really quite messy!

That Thursday I had booked a large group reservation for Crystal Palace – it was originally going to be for 30 but once people had gone out to HOB and Blue Martini the night before it dropped down to 17. It was a really fun morning and I got to meet Winnie the Pooh and friends and enjoy a ridiculous amount of food – who doesn’t love a buffet! The day was mostly spent at MK before heading to City Walk in the evening for Hard Rock for Joey’s Birthday.

Unusually for me I was then out every night for the next few with Cowboys on Saturday and 2 consecutive nights at Ale House for food and drinks and of course Lads on Monday. Work for all of those days was boring since there were very few guests and we have so many people on Podium at the moment that there are about 9 seaters at the peak of the day which means a great deal of time is spent standing around. I spent a few days where I mostly just wandered the street handing out stickers and chatting to guests – great fun!

The next Saturday a group of us went to Splitsville, the new Bowling Alley at Downtown Disney. I discovered I am really not very good at bowling… I lost by a considerable margin but the company was awesome and the drinks, while pricey are pretty good when you take in to account the 20% Disney discount. I really want to go back earlier in the day when they do their full menu – after midnight it is Pizza only and at $15 for a pizza I didn’t feel like trying it on a whim.

Sunday was the official return of after work Maccies which was a good preparation for the activities of the next day. I have been here for 10 months now and been going to Lads for 9 months or so, I have had a few opportunities to get my shirt but I have always turned it down but this week Leon came to me and told me I would have a chance this week if I wanted it. Without a shirt I cannot have a proper last and so I decided to go for it. There was much trepidation on Sunday and Monday as those of us who were taking part were discussing the rumours we had heard but Monday night came and we went to our Picnic with our heads held high ready to do whatever we had to. Suffice it to say it is a pretty difficult couple of hours where but we all got through – next monday there will be 8 new shirted UK Lads. The team work was awesome and the feeling when we finished it was incredible. I can’t wait for Monday now.

Tuesday I worked an AM and was not feeling at my best for obvious reasons but when I got home I had a relaxing few hours before heading over to Jessie’s to watch Tangled on DVD and chill out with some tea. Just what I needed after the previous 24 hours of stress.

December 31st is the busiest day of the year at all of the Walt Disney World theme parks. On NYE every single member of podium was scheduled to work at least 12 hours – I was scheduled 15. I was working as a stocker in the bar.

If you ask all of the podium cast members most of them will tell you NYE was one of the best shifts they have worked so far in their program. While it is insanely busy the atmosphere out in the street is incredible and because it is so busy everyone pulls together to make one great team. My experience unfortunately was not quite so fun, I was working on my own stocking which meant I did not really leave the backstage areas of the Rose & Crown and had minimal interaction with any guests. It was a pretty stressful evening, at the busiest time I had to get 12 full kegs from across the street to restock what we had used and the round-trip took almost 35 minutes, putting me very behind on stocking other things in the bar. If I am honest it was a big disappointment for me, I had been looking forward to New Year for my whole program but it did not really live up to the hype.

The fireworks however were amazing and getting to watch them with the whole pavilion was amazing. After 4 hours sleep I was back in the next morning on triple time thanks to Holiday Pay and Double time for not having 8 hours between shifts. I came home that night and fell straight asleep for 10 hours before waking up still tired! I am still recovering from such an epic shift.

I have had a lovely couple of days off and I’m looking forward to putting my NYE experience behind me to enjoy the last 10 weeks or so of my program.

It is almost the end of 2012. Tomorrow I am working a 15 hour stocking shift on the busiest day of the year. I am very excited although I am sure it is going to be a fairly crazy night. They are already predicting that it will take over 2 hours to get out of Epcot and back to housing. I am back in work at 11am the next morning as well which should make for very little sleep.

The last few weeks have been pretty crazy as well. I have been working a lot of hours since the park has been pretty busy with the coming of Christmas and the holiday season. Before Christmas I went on one of the Epcot Segway Tours which was a lot of fun. You spend the first hour or so training and get a free breakfast at Sunshine Seasons before heading out to World Showcase to tour each of the Pavilions. It took some getting the hang of but once you learnt how to travel around it was really fun. It cost just over $50 for us which was really reasonable, I am not sure I would have paid the full price though.

I worked as stocker Christmas Day which was pretty stressful as it got quite busy as they day went on and everyone was in a strange mood with a lot of people feeling very homesick. Guests were also in a pretty bad mood which just made for a fairly unpleasant day for everyone.

This week also saw the end of David Sergison’s program, Dave has been a big part of my program and I am fairly sure there were weeks of my program where I spent more time at his apartment than my own. His last day of work ended with drinks in the Rose & Crown followed by fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. It made me think how little time I have left on my own program – it is really only 10 weeks until I leave now! I have already had to start thinking about what is happening in 2013 AD – After Disney.

This week I finally had 2 days off for the first time in about a month. The second day was spent with Kristen. We started in Hollywood Studios which was incredibly crowded, we left after about 2 hours and tried to get Kel to take us to IHOP for lunch. It took him over an hour to get to us through the horrific holiday traffic but when we finally got to IHOP we had some of the best service I have ever had. Our server, Heather, was lovely and amazingly attentive. In the end we all tipped her almost 50% – she deserved it! In the evening I went to see Dave for one last time to say goodbye – it was sad but I know I will see him again in the not too distant future. That night we also went tt Bahama Breeze for 3 of the girls birthdays, having already eaten 3 meals I was not very hungry but it was nice to drink and spend time with everyone – especially around Christmas.

Since then I have basically just been working – 28 hours out of the last 48 have been spent at work. Today was the busiest I have ever seen Chippy, we did not stop filling orders at full speed for almost my entire shift. I can;t wait for January now when we can finally get a well deserved break – just the craziest day of the year to go first.

See you on the other side – Happy New Year!

The highlight of the past week was visiting the Hoop Dee Doo Revue at Fort Wilderness. Hoop is a dinner show which has been running since Walt Disney World opened and the price includes all-you-can-eat Chicken, pork ribs and sides as well as all-you-can-drink Wine, Beer and Sangria.

I originally made a reservation for 40 people but after any of the servers started being scheduled to work 6 days a week we ended up with just 20 of us. With our 50% discount on the late show it came to $36 per person which was really quite reasonable even with $7 on top for a taxi there and back.

Before the show PhotoPass take a group photo of everyone in your party which they late bring to the table for purchase. Ours is the photo above although we did not actually buy the picture (they took an extra on my camera), even with our 40% holiday discount.

Many of the Cast Members who work at Hoop have worked for Disney for decades. Our server Barbara was no exception, sadly however she did not provide the amazing service we have all come to expect from Disney. I never received the Diet Coke I ordered despite asking quite a few times and there were general complaints from the group as a whole about the very slow drink service meaning all of us got very little of the all-you-can-drink offering.

The food, including my vegetarian Pasta alternative, was really good and certainly filled me up.  The show is a massive cliche but it does have its funny moments, Becky and Luke being announced as recently engaged was certainly a highlight of the show on the evening we visited. Especially since Becky was trying to get them to announce Dave and Craig as the recently engaged couple!

Despite all of that it was a fun night and the finale where Andy ended up on stage dressed as an American Indian will be a memory I will have for a long time to come!

I will definitely be trying Hoop again in the hope of getting better service, perhaps in a smaller group though as I fell the size of our group may have been the overwhelming factor in the service we received. Next on my list though is Spirit of Aloha at the Polynesian and Victoria & Albert’s at the Grand Floridian which I cheekily made a reservation for the day of my Birthday last night despite having no clue at the moment how I would manage the $200 per head check even if it does provide 7 custom designed courses of some of the best food Disney have to offer.

For the first time in a long time, I finally had 2 days off this week. The first was spent mostly in a taxi to and from UPS near the airport to collect the TV that G and I bought on Black Friday and which they tried to deliver 3 times when neither of us were home. The second was more exciting as it was the grand reveal of New Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom. Despite asking around the pavilion nobody else was as much of a keeno as me and prepared to get up at 7am on their day off to go watch it.

I arrived at about 8.15 and the park was already allowing people in. I went straight to the hub and managed to secure a spot fairly close to the front, just behind the area reserved for the media. It was a long wait until 10am when the show finally started. They moved us forward a little once all of the media was in place and I managed to end up behind a fairly tall guy which made my view a little more restricted but I could still see most of what was going on.

The show started with a royal announcer coming on stage to much fanfare and announcing that the master of ceremonies would be Ginnifer Goodwin who plays Snow White on ABC’s Once Upon A Time. Disney were obviously playing to the modern day princess theme. She then introduced Jordin Sparks who sang a medley of Disney Songs from the movies featured in the New Fantasyland area and was joined by characters, including Dumbo who never show up!

Tom Staggs, Head of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts then came on stage with Mickey Mouse to speak to the crowd before Ginnifer read the dedication and New Fantasyland was officially revealed with much confetti, pyrotechnics and banner unfurling. After the show I went up to New Fantasyland to find it incredibly crowded with media and guests trying to try out the new attractions.

The wait times were crazy so I ended up bailing out and meeting Catherine. We did a few MK attractions before heading over to the Studios to try the, also newly unveiled  Jack Sparrow attraction which was awesome. It should really be a lot more popular than it is. The attraction is based on projections that immerse guests in the world of Jack Sparrow and they come face to face with many of his adversaries. The projections used are some of the best I have seen – I only wish some of this technology had found its way in to New Fantasyland. The quality blows a lot of the stuff in the mermaid ride out of the water – no pun intended!

Since then it has been back to work with some very tiring days on podium as the restaurant continues to get busy in the run up to the Holidays. On Wednesday a large group of UKs are heading to Hoop Dee Doo which is what I am really looking forward to at the moment and what is getting me through the craziness of Silly Season at work.

Last time I posted I was getting ready to start Food Running. I did indeed get trained by Rob last Monday – I had a really good day and did not find Running anywhere near as hard as I thought I would. It is hard work but it is very logical and methodical which makes it pretty easy to pick up and once you get the hang of holding plates the rest sort of comes together.

Tuesday was my Bar day which was also really fun – getting to make all of the cocktails and drinks was interesting. Especially as I have spent the best part of the last 2 months hanging around the Bar as a bar back. It was nice to finally get to make some of the drinks.

Wednesday was meant to be my Culinary Day where you get to spend the day with the Culinary team to see how the food is made. For various reasons, which to be honest I can’t be bothered to repeat on here, overnight I decided that I actually did not want to go in to service. I spoke to the Managers in the morning and explained my reasoning and agreed that I would go back to podium after finishing my food running week. While this is technically the ‘Bad News’ I am really happy with my decision and I am especially looking forward to the next few weeks on podium including Christmas and New Years Eve which is the busiest night of the year for Epcot where we basically fill to capacity.

The ‘Good News’ for the week was that Thursday was my Quarterly Award Ceremony. I was honoured to have been given the award and getting to meet Epcot’s top executives was just the icing on the Cake. Mandy DiGiammarino, the General Manager of Epcot Food & Beverage, who gave me my award quoted Anny as calling me a ‘model Cultural Representative’. It was very humbling. It was also a great chance to meet the other award winners including a CRP from Germany and one of the Engineers who worked on Test Track who recently got sent to California to help build Radiator Springs Racers. I really realised how large and varied the cast of just Epcot is. I got a photo with Mandy and Erin Youngs, VP of Epcot which I should be getting a copy of soon, I’ll post it here if and when I get it.

Since getting back to Podium I have really enjoyed work and then removal of the pressure of having to take my test has meant I am a lot more relaxed than I have been for a few weeks. I am really looking forward to the rest of my program which I slightly depressingly worked out is not only a little more than 3 months.

The last Thursday of November is Thanksgiving here in the USA and they take it very seriously, it is probably more important than Christmas.

I was originally scheduled off on Wednesday and Thursday but actually ended up working on both days making this a 7 day work week. Since it was my last one on podium it seemed appropriate that I did a tonne of overtime! Wednesday a bunch of us came in early to do a Whiskey tasting of a lot of the Single Malts that we sell – it was really interesting and I learnt a few bits of information that may help sell a few more flights down the line. When the restaurant opened G and I decided to go for lunch and I ended up having Fish and Mashed Potato as the chip fryer was having some technical issues! Dave texted and asked if I fancied a day at Universal which I jumped at – it was pretty busy but we got quite a lot done. We left as the park closed at 9 and went back to Dave’s to watch movies.

On Thursday I was asked to come in to do AM Greeter. It was crazy busy with a lot of very large parties coming in as whole families to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal. Luckily I got out at 5 before it got really crazy. On Thursday night 16 of us went to the new “Be Our Guest” restaurant in New Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom. After a few reservation issues where they would not let us add an extra person we were seated in the amazing Ballroom. The food was amazing (I had the Ratatouille) although the service was a distinctly average and felt quite rushed. With entrees and desserts we could have been out in less than an hour. My overall impression was that the restaurant is beautiful but I would not rush back again for the service. I feel you get a similar experience for a lower price at the Quick Service lunch.

Friday and Saturday were my last podium shifts. On Friday I greeted all day with just a 15 minute break after I extended until close. Greeting is my favourite position on podium and I was really glad to get one final day of it. I have loved dealing with the happy guests and the angry guests and Friday I had doses of both. 2 guests went to managers and guest relations about me. One to complain I was a terrible Cast Member for not getting them a same-day reservation and one to say I was amazing for managing to get them a lower-deck table just before the fireworks. On Saturday, my last day, I was assigning. I set myself the very ambitious target of 1000 guests for the day. I missed this by a long way due to a very quiet park where I could not get any walkins for about an hour, I think I probably managed about 900 though which I am still fairly pleased with.

I have loved my time on podium but it is finally time to move on. Food Runner training with Katy begins Monday morning!

It might only be the start of November but Christmas comes early to the Walt Disney World Resort. As soon as Food and Wine finished on the 12th the marketplaces were magically removed overnight and replaced with the Christmas decorations and only days later all the music changed to all your favourite Christmas tunes. It feels a bit weird having trees and Christmas music when most days it is 20+ degrees but it all looks very pretty so I can’t really complain.

This week G and I finally got our 1 bedroom apartment and are now residents of Patterson Court. This has its pros and cons. We have a lovely apartment and the walk to the bus stop is shorter than the old walk from 28 but we are a long way from the Commons. So far it hasn’t really been a problem though and it is definitely nicer here than in our old apartment.

With Food & Wine over I finally got 2 days off. The first started with a dash to Disney University to get a replacement debit card from Partners after I somehow managed to lost mine in the move to Patterson. The rest of the day was spent with Kristen, Stacey, Dave and Kieran at Hollywood Studios where we spent the day doing all the rides and the evening seeing the Osborne lights. Unfortunately I forgot my camera but trust me they are beautiful – I will definitely be going back a few more times to enjoy them.

The next day Rich, Stacey and I took Kristen to Universal Studios for the first time. It was really quiet with nothing more than a 20 minute wait. We covered most of the major attractions and I got a lot of photos of Kristen looking super-excited as we took her around the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the rest of the 2 parks. I had to leave fairly early as Dave had bought me a ticket for Mickey’s Verry Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom. I was going to get a cab by myself but the others decided to call it a day early and head back to the Commons which made my cab a little bit cheaper – yay!

Very Merry was amazing, I actually preferred it to Not So Scary. There are less characters but the decoration and the snow on Main Street is unbelievable and the fireworks are pretty spectacular  We also got to see the new ‘Celebrate the Magic’ projection show which replaced ‘The Magic, the Memories and You’ – it has some really cool new effects including a holiday section which is just around until January. We spent a good hour or so in one of the dance parties with Woody and Jessie which was a great laugh, by the end of the night there were only about 10 other people in there!

The last few nights I have really just chilled out. I went to ESPN at the boardwalk for Dinner one night and the cinema to see Wreck It Ralph (it’s awesome) the next. I know I have my Food Running coming up next week so I am trying not to tire myself out too much as I know it is going to be a very intense training period ahead and I want to make the most of it.

So I think we can all agree that I have been terrible at posting since August. My excuse is that I have been working very hard! I am just going to give the highlights and hopefully in the next few weeks I will be able to finally post a bit more.

September was spent mostly training. There were only 2 trainers left on podium so we both trained 6 days a week for the whole month – which was fun to start with but to be honest by the end I just wanted to come in to work and do my own thing without having to think about other people all the time. I love training but you can do it a bit too much. The end of September brought the arrival of Halloween to Orlando – I went to both Not So Scary at Magic Kingdom and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. Both were great fun in very different ways – running through the walking dead house with Emily Porter and Dan Underdown laughing their heads off behind me will be one of the things I will never forget about the whole experience.

October was defined by the Food and Wine festival which made the pavilion much busier than it had been for months. The restaurant has stayed pretty steady but Chippy, Beer Cart and the Pub have been crazy on Fridays and Saturdays. I was given the role of Bar Back on those days, helping them with stocking and discounts. It has been a really great opportunity to do something different and it is nice to be really busy, it make the days go very quickly.

I also made a big decision during Food and Wine after seeing some good friends finish their program and thinking a bit about the future. I decided to finally take my pre-service test, 5 months late. After a few days of revision I took my test and passed. I was originally told I would not be able to go in to the kitchen until January but that was then changed to the end of the November – just in time for Candlelight, the busiest time of the year in the restaurant, to begin. I am looking forward to a new challenge and training in that kind of environment is certainly going to be difficult but I am ready to give it a try. I have got to the point where Podium is not fun anymore and I am working so much that I don’t have time to spend with my friends – hopefully going in to service will help solve that problem a little bit.

This week was also full of big news. The first was new costumes for the pavilion  you can see them in the picture at the top of this post, they are still working out a few kinks but overall I think they are nice. It is weird to think that we are the first Cast Members in the history of the Rose & Crown to not wear the yellow and blue. The other big news was that I received a Quarterly Award, I was really proud to have been nominated and it makes working so hard for the last few months feel worth it. I get to go to a reception on the 29th with some of the senior Disney managers which I am really looking forward to.

That is the basic highlights of the last couple of months. I have been working 50+ hours most weeks but hopefully that should drop off a bit in the next few weeks and I am hoping that the regular posting schedule can resume.

That isn’t a typo… last week was honestly the best week of my program so far. I got the chance to spend time with the two most important groups of people in my life right now, my family visiting from home and a night in Fort Wilderness with my ‘Disney Family’ consiting of my arrival group and friends!

Before my family arrived I decided to buy a Tables in Wonderland card since our cast discounts are blocked out until the end of September. The card costs $90 for Cast Members and gives a 20% discount. I worked out that in the 5 meals we had booked we would easily save more than that amount.

On the first night we had reservations at Mama Melrose in Hollywood Studios. We arrived to find the waiting area full of people and the Greeter used the words “We are a bit behind on reservations” and I knew what that meant! It turned out that they had to take all of the the Prime Time Cafe reservations as they had to close so fitting two restaurants in to one was naturally proving a challenge. I caught a glimpse of their Assigner and she looked pretty stressed, I know I would have been in that situation. We had a really nice meal in the end although I did order what sounded like a really nice cocktail only to discover it was bright pink and came in a champagne flute – girly much? I brought my sister and her friend Debra back to the commons before we went out with the rest of the UKs to cowboys.

On Sunday we ate at Wolfgang Puck at Downtown Disney which was probably my least favourite meal of the week. We had a fairly rubbish server and they forgot one of the Entrees. But I guess you have to have the bad to appreciate the good.

On Monday morning I had to get up super early to get a bus to Disney University to take a class which was my only scheduled shift for the week. It was called ‘Podium Excellence’ and taught all of the ins and outs of the table management system that we use in the restaurant as well as the central Disney reservation system. It also introduced the service standards which Disney is using for Podium cast members which I will soon be teaching to some of the new arrival groups in the next few months. It was actually a really interesting class. When it finished Ally, one of the new CPs who works as a seater at Cinderella’s Royal Table (the restaurant in the castle) offered me a lift home which saved me the extra-long bus journey which was much appreciated. I miss mixing with the CPs like on my other programs, I always think it is kind of shame that we really only mix with the other internationals and mostly just the other UKs.

Monday night was the reservation I had been most looking forward to. Jiko at Animal Kingdom Lodge. It really lived up to expectations – the food was absolutely delicious and unlike most of the other restaurants we ate at the portions were the right size and we left felling full but not ill. We had one of the best servers I have ever seen, Andrew, who was extremely attentive and did one of the most detailed and mouth-watering spiels I have heard. Jiko is definitely my new favourite WDW restaurant. I am already looking for reservations for my birthday in February.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I got to spend time with the Disney family. The day was spent at Universal with Geraint, my sister and Debra where we spent all of the time in Harry Potter and the night was spent at Wilderness Lodge with the rest of the gang. We arrived in the late afternoon along with the rain, the evening was basically spent inside the cabin chatting, drinking and listening to Craig on his guitar. It was a fantastic night with some great friends and it really reminded me just how good we have it out here.

Wednesday was Craig’s birthday, everyone who was working left pretty early so Bailey, Craig and I went to Trail’s End for their buffet breakfast where Craig, the Irishman, discovered there is actually such thing as Irish Breakfast Tea. We then took the boat over to the Magic Kingdom to pay there for a few hours. In the evening Craig had booked Narcoosee’s at the Grand Floridian which was another delicious meal where I got to use my Tables in Wonderland discount. It was nice to get all dressed up and go out, we don’t really do that very much out here so it felt pretty special.

Thursday’s reservation was for the Rose and Crown where I used my connections to get a nice table with a view for the fireworks! We got table 711 which is a table on lower deck with a great view and it is tucked into a corner so it is not too noisy or crowded. David served us and I really appreciated just how much fun he has with his guests, he spent the whole evening joking around while providing really great service. If I ever decide to go in to service I really hope that I can treat my guests as well as he does.

On Friday the cold that has been chasing me for a week finally caught up with me and I spent most of the day sleeping in my parents apartment trying to get over the fever I was having. At least it was a week when I didn’t have to work so I guess it happened at the best time. Sam had booked tickets for the Tampa Bay Rays vs Oakland Athletics Baseball on the Saturday. Sam, Lindsay, Amanda and I set out fairly early in the morning to drive to Tropicana Stadium. This was my first baseball game and I really enjoyed it. Lindsay had to explain quite a few of the rules as we went along but this is definitely a sport I could get in to – you get to sit down in an air conditioned stadium and food and drink is easily available plus you don’t have to pay too much attention as they recap everything on the scoreboard- what is not to love?

Everyone got very excited over the weekend about the possibility that Hurricane Isaac might hit Florida. As it turned out it missed and we just got a tonne of rain. Still more than a month of the season left though so there is still a chance – I really do want to see a small hurricane while I am here!

My family left on Monday and since then I have had podium shifts almost every day. It is nice to be back at work and with the build up to Food and Wine about to start it is going to get pretty crazy pretty soon and personally I can’t wait – work is so much more fun when it is busy.

Apologies for another 2 week post gap but as I will explain I have been pretty busy the last few weeks.

Last week I basically did something different to what I was scheduled almost every day of the week. Monday my Beer Cart became Stocker, Tuesday my Chippy became Podium. Wedesday I was called in early for my GT shit, Thursday I actually got to do Beer Cart/Stocker training and Friday I was Assigning. Our full time Assigner is on vacation at the moment and had been scheduled to train someone of the Saturday and asked if I would pick it up. I really enjoyed the opportunity to train Assigning, it is nice to be able to pass on a few tips and tricks and I think Assigners are better when they have had a couple of different people teaching them since everyone has their own style. A 6th day of overtime with Assigner and Training premiums was also not a bad addition to the paycheck!

After I finished training I got back to Commons at 22.01 and managed to run back to block 28, which takes about 5 minutes, get showered, changed and eat and be in a taxi to Cowboys by 22.30. I was pretty impressed with myself. You really have to love the ridiculousness of CRP life sometimes, where else in the world would you be rushing out to a club after an 11 hour shift finishing at 9.30?!

On Sunday I went to MK with Lesley, Craig, Bailey and Sam. It is rare that we are all off together these days and it was really nice to spend some proper time together.

Monday I was assigning again after I picked up a shift. It was a pretty hellish night with lots of tables waiting far too long but I was very pleased when a party of 6 who had waited a long time and who I had arranged with a manager to get free Appetizers to compensate came back to me at the end of their meal and thanked me for looking after them. It is nice to know that the effort we put in to improve guests less than magical experiences is appreciated.

Tuesday turned in to my 4th Assigner shift in a row when the Assigner called in. This was really the start of my less than great week. I had another not great shift where by the end of the night I just wanted the day to end! I did get some great news though, I am going to be the Core Trainer for podium which means I am going to help one of my managers re-design some of our training and help improve the standard of guest service that we are providing to guests at the podium.

On Wednesday I was supposed to be GTing with a shift starting at 4pm but I got a call from my Area Manager about 9am asking me to come in early as one of our Coordinators had called in.  This ended up turning in to a 12 hour GT shift with just a 45 minute break due to the workload. At the end of the night I was also asked to start at 9.30am the next morning. This meant I got back to commons about 1am and had to be back on a bus at 7.45am. Needless to say I was not in the best mood.

Thankfully I only had to work 5 hours the next day and managed to get ERd as soon as the PM coordinator and GT got in. It did mean that I got to play at being Coordinator for the morning though which was a great experience to see what they have to do, it is definitely something I would love the chance to get to try again although perhaps with access to CDS next time so that I can make sure people are actually getting their breaks! In the evening a few of us went to Bahama Breeze for food where we got fairly bad service and I had to take almost my entire Entree home after I filled up on massive appetizer – whoops!

On Friday I had a lovely Chippy training shift with a great Trainee which was a nice relaxing end to a less than perfect week. In the evening we planned to go to TGIs for food but were told it would be a 40 minute wait for a table so we ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings instead. It was nice, cheap food with some great UK and Canadian company, just what I needed to remind me of all the good things about being out here.

Saturday I was off and Lesley and I headed out to Downtown where I got my first Earl of Sandwich of this program before we went over to the Boardwalk and Epcot for more food and shopping. After hiding in the American pavilion from a storm we headed back to the Commons for a chill out evening.

Today I got up fairly early to go to MK to buy Tables in Wonderland for when my parents get here. Our dining discounts are blocked out until September so for $90 I could buy TIW which gives a 20% discount right now. Since there are 6 of us going out for 4 meals the 20% will be more than $90 making it well worth it. Plus I get to keep it to get discounts on Alcohol for the rest of the year. Anyone with family coming out this month should really consider it. After I got back I jumped in a taxi with Lesley, Craig and Katy and we went for lunch at the Olive Garden on iDrive. We once again had pretty rubbish service but the food was delicious, I will definitely be going back although I repeated my error of ordering an Appetizer for about 4 people just for myself. I will know better for next time. When we got back we went around to Katy’s to start watching the build up to the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics and tonight I am heading back to HOB for the first time in ages.

I also got some more great news on the schedule this morning. I have got extra time off when my parents are here than what I was originally told which means I am out of the Pavilion for 9 days from next weekend. The only shift I have is a 4 hour class at Disney U early on the Monday morning. I am so pleased that I get to spend some quality time with the family while they are here.

I have had a fairly chilled out week but the whole week has a lot of money related activities!

On my days off I spent most of the time just chilling out and enjoying the fact that I had 2 days off in a row but on the Monday I went over to Disney University to go to Partners Federal Credit Union (Disney’s own bank/building society) to open an account to help manage all of my money over here. This was the first opportunity I had to go as it was the first weekday that I had off and Partners is only open office hours Monday to Friday. Opening the account was pretty easy – all I needed was my passport, Disney ID, housing ID and social security number, but it took ages. I was in there for more than an hour and a half, it was not a difficult process there are just a lot of steps and it is not very efficient. My advice to anyone looking to open an account is to not be in a hurry to go anywhere! They do print your debit card then and there though so you are good to go as soon as you walk out. All I had to do was change my bank details on the HUB and my next paycheck will go straight in there instead of on to my paycard. They even transferred the balance on my paycard in to my new account.

On Tuesday I was back to work and the week started with a stocker shift followed by Beer Cart which was a nice easy start to the week. On Thursday I was Assigning which was a bit weird as I never assign Thursdays and as I discovered they are really quiet days which was not too bad although we did not do great numbers as we thought a storm was coming late in the evening and we cut walk ins a bit early – of course it never rained!

Friday and Saturday were my first GT shifts on my own. They went OK although it is really nerve-racking at times to know that you are responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in cash. I really enjoyed it though and hopefully I will get a few more scheduled in the coming weeks. They are nice shifts because they don’t start until 4pm which gives you most of the day to get stuff done, the only downside is that you are never back at housing before 12.30 at the earliest which is a pain as you are too late to go out. This week that meant I could not go to Cowboys on Saturday which I was pretty gutted about – next week maybe!

I was off again Sunday and Monday and both days were spent mostly chilling around the Commons as the heat and the late night shifts had taken it out of me a bit. I did get to meet with some Disney managers on the Monday though which was a nice chance to pick their brains about life, the universe and everything. It is nice to know that friends and managers from my previous programs still think about me and try and help me out where they can – Disney friends really are friends for life! I also got to spend some time in Magic Kingdom where I finally got to see the Rainy Day Cavalcade which is the replacement for the 3 O’Clock parade when there is rain (but not lightning) in the area. The characters come out in the Main Street vehicles wearing their rain gear and carrying umbrellas to a rain themed musical score. It is pretty rare to see it given the weather requirements but it was fun to go to the parks and actually see something new – given that I am coming up to a cumulative year of working for WDW that is pretty rare these days.

We got through 4th July week in one piece and everyone expected it to start getting really busy  as summer vacations around the world began but it has actually been a really quiet week possibly because of how the 4th fell and possibly because with Test Track closed Epcot is not as busy as it normally would be but either way it has been pretty slow at work.

Sunday was my day off and after a very nice lie-in Lesley and I went to Hollywood Studios to find pretty long waits for the major rides and thousands of Brazilian Tour Groups. I don’t think I have explained the tour groups before but during July and August large groups of South American teenagers come over on organised trips to Disney and usually wear matching brightly coloured T-shirts. They tend to move in big groups and make a lot of noise which can make them a bit of a nuisance on occasion especially when you are trying to get around the parks nice and quickly. We managed a few of the minor rides including the Great Movie Ride and we watched the Lights, Motors, Action show before we came back to the Commons to help Sam move her stuff in to her new one-bedroom apartment. In the evening I went to HOB with Sam, Lesley, Jaci and Emily which turned in to a bit of a drunken night after Sam gave us shots of 100% proof alcohol before we left – much fun was had by all though and I actually felt surprisingly good the next morning!

On Monday I was back training in Chippy where it was once again really slow and quiet but my trainees were on their third day so they had pretty much got the hang of it by this point. Sian and Lesley asked if I wanted to go to MK after work which seemed like a nice plan. Unfortunately we did not get out of closing Chippy until almost 10 which meant I had to run to get changed and missed the last monorail so had to get the bus meaning I missed Wishes and got to MK just in time to eat some food and ride Pirates and Space Mountain before the park closed.

Tuesday I was meant to be training Chippy again but I instead got moved over to Podium for a fairly standard seating shift where I spent most of the time bussing tables for Janet. After work I got home and was knackered and hungry but I could not summon up the energy to walk over to McDonalds to get food. Luckily Sam text that she was going over there and did anyone want a lift from the Commons – lifesaver! We got takeaway and went to Emily’s to eat it while we discussed plans for trips during August. We agreed a date and I put a request to get the time off which was of course denied so we shall see what happens – the others put requests in too so we will have to wait and see what works out. It is hard to get time off on podium but once the others are in to service it should be much easier for them to switch their shifts around because they have less scheduling restrictions.

On Wednesday night Sam was hosting a little party to celebrate moving in to her new apartment but I was on my final GT training shift which meant I did not get out of work until Midnight so I only caught the last hour or so. Sam insisted that I have two more of the 100% proof shots as soon as I arrived so I fairly quickly caught up with their drunken antics. Having finished my 3 training shifts though means I am now officially a trained GT at the Rose & Crown and hopefully I should get a shift or two in the near future. It is nice to be able to do something different although I don’t want to do it too often as the midnight/1am finishes are not great for a social life.

On Thursday I had a lovely AM Beer Cart shift. Those shifts are great as they are just 7 hours and you spend the first hour setting up the cart and then you get a 45 minute break and you usually bank out around 5 meaning you have a pretty easy day. In the evening Emily had planned a little party for the new arrivals (or the new new new newbies as they seem to be being called) – it was really nice to get to meet them before they get in to the pavilion although looking at the schedule it does not look like I am going to be training many of them thanks to lots of Assigner shifts. I really hope we keep doing meet and greets like those for the new arrivals as I hope it makes arriving in the pavilion a little bit easier if there are a few friendly faces around.

Friday was my standard Assigning shift which all went a bit pear-shaped late in the evening when I ended up a Server down due to injury which pulled the numbers for the evening down a bit. I hate not making the budget when I am assigning even though it is often not my fault. When I got home I was knackered and ended up just crawling in to bed and sleeping.

Yesterday I was back on seating again but I actually spent most of the day greeting (my favourite position on podium) and I had some really lovely guests who chatted for ages. When we are quiet we have plenty of time to talk to guests which is nice. One guest even offered that I could stay with them in upstate New York if I ever visited. Another guest told me I was the nicest Cast Member they had met in Disney which brightened up my day. After work I came home and chilled out for a while before heading to Cowboys with a nice contingent of the UK. I think I am falling in love with Cowboys, it is just so chilled out and fun although I am going to have to give it a miss next week as I am working too late to get there.

I finally have a 5 day week next week so I have 2 days off in a row now, looking forward to some nice chill out time and the chance to finally do some proper shopping and tidying of my room.

Below I describe how to technically achieve watching iPlayer from the USA – whether it is legal or not is a little bit questionable so proceed at your own risk. I include it for educational purposes only.

Step 1 – Install Firefox

Step 2 – Open Firefox

Step 3 – Download and Install FoxyProxy Standard

Step 4 – Download and Install the FoxyProxy Video Utility for Windows or Mac and install it

Step 5 – Buy a subscription to the FoxyProxy service, this costs £8 per month and you can either choose to be billed every month or just pay one time. Make sure you select UK as the country and you can then pay using PayPal or a credit card. You will receive an email with the information you need. This works out as about $5 a week…

Step 6 – Open Firefox and open FoxyProxy which should be a small fox icon next to the address bar. Click Add New Proxy and in Manual Proxy Configuration enter the hostname and port from the email.

Step 7 – In URL patterns choose add new pattern and add *bbc.co.uk* as a whitelist site using wildcards. Press OK.

Step 8 – In the main window make ‘Use proxies based on their pre-defined patterns and priorities’ is selected (if you want to use for sites other than iPlayer choose ‘use proxy for all URLs’)

Step 9 – The first time you go to iPlayer it will ask for your username and password – these are in the email and must be typed in rather than copied and pasted.

Step 10 (Optional) – If you are having problems getting the site to work run the FoxyProxy video utility and enter the details of the hostname and port from the email. This should solve most problems.

It has been a very busy couple of week. On Sunday and Monday last week I had my first days of General Teller training. The GT is responsible for all of the money in the pavilion and banks out all of the registers and servers at the end of the night. It is quite complex and has a lot of paperwork and cross-checking which I really enjoy. You are also responsible for depositing all of the takings at the end of the night which is a little nerve-racking since any discrepancy is your responsibility. I still have one more day of training to do before I am allowed to do it on my own but I really enjoyed training in the role. Both nights we just chilled in the Commons, once at Sam’s and once at Lesley’s; everyone is really tired at the moment thanks to work being pretty busy and hot most days and nights in are just nice to relax and chill out.

Tuesday was a fairly normal (by CRP standards) day with a podium shift followed by a cheeky McDonalds trip in the evening. Wednesday and Thursday I trained two different groups on first day seating. I love training first day as you are the first experience that they have in the pavilion and seater is great to train when you see the moment that the table numbers finally make sense and they are off seating on their own. Thursday night Katy, Leon, some of the newbies and I all went to TGI Fridays for dinner, it was a another really nice chilled out evening.

On Friday I was assigning again and we did OK numbers with OK guest flow. It was just a very average day really. In the evening we played Midnight Soccer on the Commons tennis court. It was fun but horribly sweaty thanks to the 90 degree temperature and 80% humidity. We all got an early night though as we were planning to be up nice and early the next day for a full day of Universal Studios.

Sam, Stacey, Lesley, G and I left pretty early on Saturday to go to Universal Studios in Sam’s car. We went straight to Harry Potter and manaegd to get on Forbidden Journey as single riders in about 20 minutes and we managed all of the major IOA rides before about 1 O’Clock. Considering it was the weekend before the 4th July it was a lot quieter than we were expecting which was a nice surprise. We went for lunch at Hard Rock which I discovered has an amazing Veggie Burger, I will definitely be back again. Our server was desperately trying to get us to say that we hated working for Disney bit he did not quite manage it! In the afternoon we went over to the main Studios and did quite a bit over there including my first ride on Rip Ride Rockit which was as good as I had been told it would be. We left pretty early and came back to the Commons with a plan to maybe meet up later but we were all so knocked out from the long day and the heat that we basically just crashed out.

On Sunday I was off again thanks to a quirk of scheduling that had both of my single days off across two weeks together. I did not do much other than shopping and laundry in the morning and then I went out to Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom to do a bit of shopping and catch the parade. In the evening I was enormously tired again with all my hours at work catching up with me so I ended up getting a fairly early night.

Monday I was training Beer Cart/Stocker which is a fairly unpleasant open until close shift but thanks to a great Trainee the day went fairly quickly and we managed to get out pretty early and I spent another evening round at Lesley’s where we ordered Pizza and put the world to rights about everything that was annoying us with work and life! We also planned what we were going to do for the next few days in terms of fireworks.

On the 3rd I was on Chippy registers and put in for an ER so that I could get to MK with the others to see their fireworks. I got my ER for 6 (first of this program) and met Sam and Jaci in Epcot where we waited for Sian and Craig before getting the Monorail over to a pretty busy Magic Kingdom. When we arrived it was pretty busy and by the time we found our spot, just in front of the Plaza restaurant, it was packed. The PAC (parade audience control) guys were struggling to keep it moving but Jeff (in the video below) was keeping us all amused while he managed to keep the thousands of people at least moving at a snails pace around the nearby walkways. I picked up an extra hours shift doing what he is doing during my program in 2008 and I can honestly say that 70 odd thousand people all moving towards you is a pretty terrifying experience but he was doing a great job and kept smiling!

About an hour before the fireworks the rain arrived and it was a pretty big storm with spectacular lightning centered directly over the Magic Kingdom. We had to run to buy Ponchos and Umbrellas as none of us were prepared. In the end the fireworks were delayed an hour but when they went off they were pretty spectacular. It was great to spend the evening celebrating with most of my arrival group. After the show we went to the Contemporary to try to get the bus but unfortunately several hundred other CPs had a similar idea. We ended up getting the guest bus to Downtown Disney which took ages through the traffic and then we got a taxi from there to Commons. Despite the epic journey the fireworks were definitely worth seeing, they are amazing.

On the 4th I was stocking with Craig. It was really quiet until about 5pm when it all went a little bit crazy for a while. We worked well together as a team though and kept everything pretty well stocked throughout the night. We changed over 30 kegs and countless cases of water but it was a lot of fun and we ended up getting Four Keys Fanatic cards from Janet for our efforts.<

The fireworks were even more amazing than the Magic Kingdom ones and watching them with the whole of the pavilion was even better. We all stood on the ramp behind the kitchen and watched them from just behind the guests. For anyone that has not seen them the sky is filled with Red, White and Blue and the noise is deafening but I can honestly say I have never seen fireworks like them. By the end of the night fatigue was setting in though and Craig and I were a little delirious closing Beer Cart. Work was of course followed by standard McDonalds

On Thursday I was assigning all day and I had another OK day with OK numbers although a few servers were cut just before the fireworks rush which put us a little behind time for a while. At the end of my shift Joe asked if I would extend as the GT which I agreed to meaning I ended up working a 12.5 hour shift and I was pretty tired the next morning when I had to come back in again to Assign. Joe took pity on me though and gave me free food for lunch which was really nice of him. At the end of the day we though a big storm was coming so we cut the walk-ins early only for the storm to miss us meaning it was a pretty slow and rubbish end to the night.

Today I was training Chippy which was a nice relaxing end to my week as Chippy training really only requires watching the trainees to make sure they are OK with the registers and the cash and the park was so quiet that we had very few guests and a pretty easy day for everyone involved. I am very tired at the end of this Holiday week though so I think my day off tomorrow is mostly going to be spent chilling out and relaxing before yet another 6 day week. Can’t really complain though as I look out of my window at the gorgeous blue sky and enjoy the sun shining in while England has the worst Floods in years – thinking of you guys!

Another long gap between posts but this time I have an excuse, I’ve been working 12 days in a row with some very long shifts.

On the evening of the 10th I went to the last Hyperspace Hoopla. The show was a few minutes late starting and I received a notification on my phone of a severe thunderstorm warning for the Lake Buena Vista (Walt Disney World) area. The show was as awesome as ever but they were clearly rushing through to finish before the storm arrived. Just as the show was ending the sky went really, really dark; by far the most ominous sky I have seen since I got back. Then  we saw some distant lightning and then the fun really began. Being experienced florida residents by now we knew we needed to move indoors at the first spots of rain so we hid in one of old stores on Sunset Boulevard just in time for a massive storm to arrive which had spectacular lightning and torrential rain. I managed to get a nice video the tower of terror with real lightning behind it. After the storm had mostly passed we made a run for Sam’s car and got drenched before coming home to dry off.

On the Monday my epic work week began bright and early with my service class at 8am at Disney University. It was quite interesting and explained all about the Disney service standards and why they are important but I must admit it put me off going in to service even more. The thing I have always really enjoyed about working for Disney has been working with large numbers of guests in a fast paced environment and the class made me appreciate even more that service is about working with a small number of guests over an extended period of time and right now that is not something I want to do. As I have said to a lot of people I am not saying I never want to go in to service, just not right now. The afternoon was a wine class which was a basic introduction to types of wines and how to differentiate wines. Again it was interesting but as I had decided by that point in the day that I probably wasn’t going to go in to service it sort of felt a bit like a waste of time for me. We finished at 5 and went back to the Commons to get changed before Sam, Craig, Lesley and I went to Magic Kingdom for an evening of park fun.

Tuesday was another early morning where I had to be at work at 8.30 for a focus group/town hall with the Epcot senior management team. This was basically a 2 hour session where they discussed the new Four Keys Basics and some of their experiences. It was also a chance for us to meet all of the senior executives who are at the end of the day our bosses. It was quite an interesting session and it was certainly nice to put some names to faces so when you see people walking around the park looking important you actually know who they are! After the class I was in work at 10.30 to open Chippy so I had plenty of time to get it all ready. I finished work at 7.30 and met up with Sam and Emily who were spending the evening in World Showcase – we grabbed some food and watched a bit of illuminations before leaving in time to be ahead of the mob of people leaving work, it was nice to actually get a seat on the C bus for once.

The following day was my first training shift. I was training Amy & Aimee (who though putting them together was a good idea?!) on Seating. We met all of the newbies outside Cast Services as we got off the bus and Katie walked with them to the Pavilion while I went to get changed. The girls got the hang of seating pretty quickly which made my day nice and easy. I really enjoy training because I feel like I can help ensure that the pavilion works well for the next few months. After work we had our first Pizza night in weeks over at Lesley’s apartment – mmmm Dominos!

Thursday I was back in Chippy yet again but with my earliest finish ever at 5.45. It was Dave Sergison’s six month anniversary so he had arranged for a few people to go over to Hollywood Studios to the 50s Prime Time for Dinner. I walked out of Cast Services into a torrential downpour with no waterproofs and had to run in to MouseGear and pay $10 for an umbrella just to stay dry on the way. We had a really nice dinner although our server was not as good as I have had before and I think our 10-way cast discount split checks did not help matters! It was nice to finally eat in a WDW restaurant on this program, I only realised afterwards that this was the first time in 3 months that I have actually done that.

Friday was my standard Assigning shift which was going OK but then in the evening my Manager told me to not stop taking walk-ins and keep a 15-20 minute wait all night. I managed it but boy was it stressful – I beat the budget for the evening though so I was quite pleased with that. After work we went straight to McDonalds for another delicious yet enormously unhealthy dinner.

Saturday I was back in Chippy yet again (sensing a theme here) but I cam in and looked at the number of people on podium and it was obvious we were going to be in trouble later as we were massively short staffed. I offered to extend and ended up working open until close being moved around from podium to Chippy to help out wherever I could. It was totally crazy – we definitely need the newbies trained up as soon as possible! After work I was really tired but wanted to go to Cowboys as I had not been yet and it sounded fun. I had a fantastic night and will definitely be going back again although my line dancing skills definitely need some work. Sunday was another podium shift and another McDonalds dinner… I am going to get so fat!

Monday I got up early to go over to Chatham Square to do a college program class called “Networking 101” which is all about how to make contacts while on the program. It is run by David Horvath who used to work for International Recruiting and has some wonderful insights into how Disney works and is a really engaging speaker. He runs a whole series of classes and I am hoping to attend as many as possible, next week’s is about interview technique. It will hopefully be really useful to hear about what recruiters are looking for from a previous Fortune 500 company recruiter. I never did any of the classes on my previous programs which is something I really regretted and hope to rectify this time around. After the class I went to Epcot for another Chippy shift before coming home and crashing out from tiredness.

On Tuesday I was meant to be in Chippy but got moved over to Podium and spent most of the day bussing for Janet. As the restaurant is starting to get a little bit busier it makes the assigner’s life a lot easier if one of their seater’s busses for them and as an Assigner I feel obliged to help others out. After work I met up with some of the newbies, Emily, Andrew, Lesley and Bailey at MK. We did Stitch (I really hate that attraction), Mansion and watched the Magic, the Memories and you before grabbing some food and heading home. It was nice to get back to the parks in the middle of a long stretch of work, a little bit of a reminder of why I am here.

Wednesday was out arrival group’s 3 month anniversary. Just by chance Housing had arranged “Breakfast with the Characters” at Vista Way with free food and the chance to meet Mickey and Minnie. We could not get on any of the first few busses as they were too full so we got there about 30 minutes after it started and the line for food was already around the block. At one point they actually ran out of food! In the end we waited about 45 minutes to get food and did not have time to wait to see the characters. I headed off to work while the others went to Universal (sucks to be me…). I ended up getting extended by 2 hours and missed most of the 3 month anniversary celebration at Sam’s but got back in time to enjoy some drinks and chill time with the whole gang.

On the 21st I was supposed to be on podium but extended to Chippy registers to cover for someone who was not feeling well. It was the midnight screening of Brave that night so I was happy to stay as I had no plans until the late evening anyway. I ended up going straight to downtown via Port Orleans and was there in about 20 minutes. I met up with Aimee and some of the Canadians. I was really tired and I mean falling asleep in my feet tired at the end of day 11 but I really enjoyed the film. I did fall asleep for about 10 minutes but not because I was bored, it was simply my very long week catching up with me. In the end we got home about 3am and I was up again at 9 to go in for my final Assigning shift of the week.

Assigning on Friday I weeded myself badly at both Lunch and Dinner. We did quite good numbers considering the weather but it got pretty stressful at times. It is nice to know your limits and yesterday I think I found them! I did have a really nice moment at Diner though, we had a party of 4 come to podium and tell us there was a party of 7 with a reservation at the same time who were all part of the same family but they did not know that the 4 were in Disney. Originally they had not been able to make the trip but managed to change some things around and wanted to surprise them. We arranged it so the 7 would be seated and the 4 would sit next to them a few minutes later. It worked perfectly, it took the 7 a few minutes to recognise the 4 but then they were screaming and laughing – a nice magical moment to end my epic week.

On Sunday I took a shift from Janet (our permanent assigner) which was one of my best assigning shifts so far. We had a really good day with no rain at all and so lower deck was open all the way through. That meant that I managed to get pretty good numbers of guests in the restaurant throughout the day.

On Monday morning I got up early to get in to work for 8am to do my ‘Train The Trainer’ class to officially become a Disney Trainer. The first part was e-learning about the expectations of a Disney trainer and tips and techniques to help teach people with different styles of learning. The second part was practical and we had to practice teaching each other something new. At the end of it all we got our Jiminy Cricket pins which you can only get once you have completed the class. I have waited a long time to become a trainer so I have to admit I got a little bit excited! After the class I was on podium for 3 hours before I went home at 1430 which was my earliest finish ever. I spent the afternoon mostly chilling out and getting some food. I went to Lads in the evening which was pretty messy but lots of fun.

On Tuesday I had an 11 hour extra magic shift in Chippy. I was filling all day long and the air conditioning had failed so it was like working in a Sauna. We had some great people on registers so we got through and I had a pretty good if knackering day.

On Wednesday I woke up to heavy rain and was heading in for another 10 hours of Chippy filling. When it rains Chippy tends to be a little quieter so that was some relief. By the end of the day I was a little delirious with tiredness and coming home to discover I had basically no food in the house was not the best. I ended up walking over to McDonalds where I came across Leon and Rosie who were already there. We sat and chatted for a while before heading home for an early night (by CRP terms).

I had a nice late start on Thursday, podium 1430 to close. I should have got up and gone food shopping but instead I had a lie in and wandered over to the outlets to get a Subway. When I got to work it started raining and it did not stop for the rest of the night. I was greeter for most of the day and it went pretty quick as we were quite busy. I also found out that I might be able to do GT training as well which was quite nice – I should hopefully find out for definite in the next few days.

Friday I was back to assigning and I had a really good lunch where we got lots of walk ins and t he restaurant was nice and busy. The evening was not so great with lots of big parties sitting for ages and keeping the numbers down a bit. I came home totally exhausted from a 6th day of work but Sam, Emily, Lesley and G were playing sports on the Tennis court so I headed down and joined in as best I could with my legs in massive pain.

Saturday was the last day of my 7 day week and I was in theory on podium. In reality I did a few hours of seating before getting Dave’s break as the Assigner and then breaking Craig as the stocker. Just as I took over from Craig a massive storm started with torrential rain, hail and lightning. We had to close Beer Cart and I got absolutely soaked to the skin, despite wearing rain gear, while trying to put the cover on. At the same time all the Guinness kegs ran out in the bar which meant I also had to run through the rain to get them sorted out. Luckily I finished about 15 minutes later and could go and get changed in Cast Services before heading for a few hours in MK with Sophie Clarke. We did all the standard stuff and she even managed to persuade me to go on It’s A Small World! When we got back I got the standard text from Dave inviting me to McDonalds which of course I went to! I had planned to go to Cowboys but I was destroyed after my 7 day week and an early night was very needed, plus I was not feeling too great either – not sure if it was the food or just life catching up with me!

Today I got up early to get my hair cut and then went over to Epcot to pick up a costume for my service class at Disney University tomorrow. This evening is the last Hyperspace Hoopla of Star Wars Weekends so I am going there a bit later and a few people are going to meet me over there straight from work. The schedule for the next 2 weeks also came out today and I am working 12 days straight until I get another day off so I am making the most of this one. I do get to train some of the newbies this week though which I am very excited about – I have not even managed to meet them yet!

It has been 2 weeks since my last post – whoops! Life got a bit hectic recently and I have not really had time to post but here is the edited highlights.

On the first Monday I had my first ever early finish at 1815 and after going home and chilling out I went to Lads and had a really fun night. It was all great until the last 10 minutes when we came back through security and there was a bit of an incident with one of the Lads and security which to cut a long story short resulted in him being terminated. It is gutting to see great people go home like that. On Tuesday after work we all went out to Buffalo Wild Wings r for a last send off.

Wednesday I was back on podium and spent most of the day on greeter which was pretty uneventful as the parks are generally quite quiet at the moment. In the evening it was back to Emil’s for Beer Pong – it is now becoming a regular feature! I left fairly early and did not drink nearly as much as last time as I was had my first Assigning shift the next day and wanted to be on top form. To top things off I had also signed up for an focus group run by the programs office at 8am (!) the next morning which meant I had to wake up at 7.

I was awake bright and early on Thursday and made my way over to Chatham where I got to meet the general manager of the Boardwalk resort and Housing operations who asked us a lot of questions about our thoughts on the program and whether we had any suggestions for improvements. My big one was that there needs to be more information on future opportunities within the company for international participants in a similar way that it is made available to the domestic college program students. He seemed to be really interested in what we had to say and I hope the department will take on board our comments to make the program even better in the future.

On Saturday I picked up a 6th day working Laura’s Beer Cart shift. It was pretty quiet for most of the day so it was not too difficult and I finished at 1800 which was my earliest finish ever! I met Jaci on the bus on the way home and just as we got onto South International Drive it promptly broke down. We waited on the side of the road for about 10 minutes before we were rescued by another bus that was passing – it was really hot as well so I arrived home a sweaty, disgusting mess! Basically the whole pavilion was heading to Cowboys that night but I was dying after my first assigning shift and a 6 day week and decided I had to give it a miss.

Sunday was my only day off and a whole bunch of us headed out early to Hollywood Studios for Star Wars Weekends – we saw 2 of the shows which included a behind the scenes look at Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a show by voice actor James Arnold Taylor where he showed how versatile his voice was. It was an amazing show which included over 150 different voices and was hilarious – I would say everyone who goes to SWW should go and see it although getting in line early is a must. They recommend at least 45 minutes to be sure of a seat. In the evening we saw the Hoopla again and this time I had my good camera with me and got some really nice pictures (the best ones are below).

Monday was Memorial Day which is a public holiday here so we got paid extra. We get 8 hours pay anyway, whether we work or not, plus if we do work we get our regular pay and any overtime is paid double. I was on a 10 hour Chippy shift so I ended up getting 18 hours pay for that day alone. I love holidays that I don’t even celebrate!

Tuesday and Wednesday were on podium and were pretty uneventful. Thursday night we all went to Buffalo Wild Wings for cheap drinks and good times for Bailey’s birthday. Once again I had to call it an early (ish) night as I was assigning again the next day.

Assigning on Friday was hellish. It did not stop raining for the entirety of Lunch and most of Dinner which meant the park was pretty empty and filling the restaurant was very difficult. Assigning is a lot about keeping lots of different people happy – guests, servers, chefs and managers – on Friday all of these were unhappy at one point or another which was not a good thing. I was just pretty glad when the day was over to be honest. After work we went for a McDonald’s which I really needed and then came back to Commons to meet up with Bailey and the girls who were having drinks and Chinese for her actual Birthday.

Today was another early start to get to the Pavilion for 10am for a photograph to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee. We then had a bit fo a backstage party with cake and free food. I left about 12 and came back to the Commons as I had to move apartments. Luckily it was just downstairs from my old apartment and I was done in about an hour.

Due to the lack of arrival groups recently and lots of people going in to service most of podium are now on 6 day weeks and I have picked up a 7th day tomorrow Assigning so it is going to be another busy week but I will try to not leave it quite as long before I post again.

This week was all about Assigner training – all 50 hours of it. The Assigner allocates tables to groups of people coming into the restaurant. The idea is to make sure the servers all get roughly the same number of tables and that none of them are overwhelmed with too many guests. At the same time you have to balance making sure reservations are sat as soon as possible with getting extra walk in parties in to make sure the restaurant is as full as possible. To make it slightly more difficult we also accept requests for tables in the inside or outside sections of the restaurant and you need to try and fulfil as many of these as possible.

Initially I was following Janet, our permanent Assigner, and then slowly I started taking over. The first couple of days went OK but on the third day we were hit by a big storm which meant that nobody left the restaurant and I had not stopped the walk ins early enough causing some people to have very long waits. I felt really bad and in the end Janet had to help dig me out. I went home feeling pretty bad but the next day I came back determined to do better. We had an amazing lunch where we got lots of walk ins into the restaurant and the servers were nice and busy. I even got a GSF card from one of the servers for good Assigning while training! Dinner was also good which increased my confidence. On Thursday I was trained by Dave instead and he mostly left me to get on with it, giving me advice where I needed it. My first proper shift is next Friday for EMH before Memorial Day – we’ll just have to see how it goes!

Due to my schedule changing to accommodate my training I finished the week with 3 days off. On Friday I went to MK with G, Becky and Rob although it was pretty busy so we did not do too much. We were really just killing time until we headed over to the Polynesian for Cocktails for Katie’s birthday. It was lots of fun, I had a really nice cocktail and got to watch Wishes from the Poly beach which is always a lovely experience.

Star Wars weekends started this weekend so on Saturday Craig and I went nice and early to see what was happening. We met Jedi Mickey and saw lots of other characters before watching Indy. Craig had to head to work so I wandered across the studios to meet Sam who was there with her mum, we ate on Sunset and rode Muppets before meeting Jaci and her friend Ashley. Sam and her mum went shopping and the three of us rode Toy Story and Star Tours before meeting Lesley and doing the Backlot Tour and being attacked/photographed with Storm Troopers. We did GMR and then watched Indy (again) before getting a spot for the Hyperspace Hoopla. This is the closing show for Star Wars weekends which includes the YouTube sensation of “Dance Off with the Star Wars Stars”. Last year it moved from the small Star Tours stage to a massive stage in front of the hat – you can see why, it was so busy! The show was awesome, I have included a video below for anyone who won’t be able to make it but I recommend seeing it for real to get the full effect. We are going to go back next Sunday so we can get front row position!

Tuesday night was meant to be another midnight Kickball but a miserable day of weather meant that at about 10 I got a message saying the pitch was waterlogged and the match was abandoned. I was actually really disappointed as I had been looking forward to it all day. In a turn up for the books I was asked to be a Disney trainer which I am very excited about – I have the Train-The-Trainer class in early June and hopefully I will get to train some of the newbies who will arrive in the first week of June.

Wednesday was my first Chippy opening shift since training and G was training Luke and Stacey from the latest arrival group. For some reason we were all scheduled for a 10.45 start with 4 of us opening which meant we were actually finished with plenty of time to spare for once. Things took a turn for the worse later in the day though when problems in the kitchen meant that Chippy and the restaurant had to close for about 3 hours. I finished at 17.45 about an hour or so after we reopened and banked out my fairly empty till before joining Sam, Craig, Bailey and Emily who were drinking around the world for Sam’s birthday. G and I went and got changed at Cast Services and by the time we got back they had reached the UK and were enjoying some beers in the beer garden. I then got my first character photo of this program – with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger in the UK Pavilion. We then moved on to Canada where the slightly worse-for-wear group enjoyed some final drinks before we cam back to the Commons and everyone went for a post-drink nap. We met later by the pool before transferring to Sam’s apartment where we did our standard pizza order, although from Pizza Hut this time – never again, Dominos is way better!

Thursdays are getting far too exciting for my liking – last week I had to call 911 for a guest and this week a mother came up to me and told me she had lost her 4 year-old son. We did a quick sweep of the restaurant and surrounding area before I called Joe my manager who sorted a proper search of the pavilion and then started the normal procedure for lost parents. Everything ended happily when we found out that the child was safe and well at Baby Care. The group were dining in the restaurant and at the end of their meal came and thanked me at podium for my help earlier in the day –  I was only doing my job but it was really nice of them to come and say something.

Friday and Saturday I was off and both days were spent in the parks. On Friday G, Mel, Rob, Laura and I went to Epcot where we managed to not ride a single attraction but rather wander around World Showcase for hours – it was quite fun and I had a really nice burger from the American Pavilion which I definitely want to try again. When we got back some of the CPs (American College Program) text me and asked if I wanted to join them for their final Wishes and Main Street Electrical Parade at MK since they finish their program in the next week – I joined them for an emotional evening, some of them I have known since 2009 and I will miss having them around. When I got back to Commons I went with Dave and Craig to McDonalds for some very late night dinner and chats about life, the universe and everything.

Saturday started with G, Lesley and I going to DHS where we managed Tower, Lunch at the Commissary (Fish and Chips!), Star Tours and Coaster within 2 hours before dashing over to MK to watch the parade which I realised yesterday I had not seen since I got here. To finish the day we headed for our 3rd park, Epcot – we did Mission: Space, Sum of All Thrills, Ellen, Food at Sunshine Seasons (My new favourite Quick Service), Living with the Land and Nemo before deciding to call it a night. Lots of people were heading to Cowboys tonight which I really want to do but Lesley was not feeling great so I walked with her to Walgreens to get some Meds and by the time we got back it was too late to get sorted – plus I start Assigner training in the morning and it would probably be a good idea to have had more than a few hours sleep beforehand. Just have to go next week!

On Thursday I spent most of the day stocking which was pretty uneventful as the park was very quiet. As closing stocker I also had to close Beer Cart so at 9.00 I started counting and wiping down the whole thing. A few minutes later a guest appears and asks if she can see the paramedics as she got some firework debris in her eye. I of course offered to call 911 for her, I have done this a few times in my previous program so I am quite used to the questions that they ask and had most of the answers ready. A few minutes later the paramedics arrived along with security and the park duty manager. She was quickly treated and was fine but it had put me about 20 minutes behind on getting Beer Cart closed which meant I did not get out until almost 10.30.

Emily was hosting a Beer Pong night at hers so I rushed home and got changed and went over. All of the new arrival group who arrived on Tuesday had come over, it was nice to meet them before they get to the pavilion. They seem really nice, it is crazy how often new faces arrive!

On Friday I was on EMH Chippy Tills. It got pretty busy at one point and Whitnie our manager jumped in to help fill orders. I had a horrible feeling that I had given a guest incorrect change for $100 so I was slightly stressing that my till would be out all day. When I came to bank out I got a GSF card from Mr B for efficiency on Chippy Tills. My till was not out at all but due to being pretty stressed and fairly tired after a 10+ hour shift I left my hat on a table in the Pavillion and I dropped the GSF card somewhere – whoops!

On Saturday I was off and Lesley, Sian, G and I decided to head to MK. We got the B bus from Chatham which promptly broke down at Vista which meant we had to transfer to the C bus and go via Epcot and the Monorail. It did mean I could go and pick up my hat though so nobody would ‘borrow’ it while I was off. In the end the journey from Commons to MK took almost 2 hours – got to love American Coach sometimes! We did loads in MK and none of the wait times were too terrible, we then jumped over to Hollywood Studios where we did Coaster and Tower before deciding to call it a night. The evening involved a standard pizza evening at Lesley’s – I am pretty sure security are starting to think I am a pizza addict since I am almost always the one that goes to pick up the pizza!

Sunday was my first Beer Cart shift. Everybody loves Beer Cart but I am not a massive fan – I just find it a bit boring to be honest. Having said that about an hour before we closed things got quite exciting. A storm was approaching but nobody had told me to close so I stayed out and serving Beer. With very little notice a very powerful squall came in with high winds and driving rain. It lifted the display bottles and smashed them on the floor, it took all the beer cups and blew them across the street and lifted my receipt folder and blew a lot of my receipts away. I did not have time to get my raingear on so I was soaked. Once the storm had passed it took a little while to get everything cleaned up before I could re-open again. When I went to bank out in the evening I had to explain to Janet what had happened to my receipts – I felt really bad as I like to think I try and make her job as easy as possible but this time I had made it very difficult.

After work Craig, G and I met Sam and Bailey at Cast Services and Sam droves us to Downtown Disney to go to Ghirardellis for Ice Cream. We get a 20% discount which makes a Sundae about $8 – I had a hot fudge Sundae, it was amazing although it did give me a massive sugar rush. I got an early night as I had my first opening shift the next day – I am finally getting to the point where my seniority means I am not always closing. The new schedule also came out on Sunday and next week I am doing Assigner training which means a 50 hour week – I am really looking forward to it and the overtime will not be too bad either.

I was opening Chippy and was meant to be on an 11 – 6 shift and then had tentative plans to go to Starlit Splash, a cast only party at Typhoon Lagoon but during the afternoon the rain arrived and I decided I would not go and offered to extend. In the list of things I have left in places this week I also need to add my credit card in Sam’s car – it must have fallen out on the way back from Downtown, I am really not doing very well at the moment, I blame tiredness. In the end I worked until close – an 11 hour shift. I was pretty tired when I got home and just crashed out.

In my last post I said how crazy life in the Disney CRP can be – the last week has pretty much proved that!

On Friday I had a really fun greeting shift where I had some of the nicest guests I have ever met. The park was fairly busy but nothing too crazy which meant that time flew by. By the end of the day I was pretty knackered and I just ended up crashing out at the end of the day.

Saturday was a bit insane. I was on Chippy registers and Epcot was hosting the world championship dance competition and the Wide World of Sports was hosting the world cheerleading competition which meant there were quite a lot of people in the park. Due to some call-ins and the park being a little busier than I think had been expected at several points in the day I ended up as the only register with a nice long line. Since it was also EMH by the end of the evening Craig and I were inside doing both registers and filling and we were pretty busy right up until we closed. With the insanity of the day I was terrified that my register would be off but I was only out less than 20c on a fairly hefty sum of money. I again got home and just crashed out with tiredness although now with a new roommate – Luca from Italy who has finally moved in to the empty bed in my room.

Sunday was my day off and I was in desperate need of a haircut. I decided to head to the Contemporary where we can get a cut in the guest Salon for $15 but when I finally got there I discovered it is closed on Sundays. Fail. I knew there was another one at the Grand Floridian so I jumped on the Monorail and thankfully that one was open and I could walk straight in and got a really nice haircut for a very reasonable price – I will definitely be back. Once I was done I jumped back on the Monorail to the Contemporary and went to the Contempo Cafe to grab some lunch – their Flatbreads are amazing. When I went to pay the CM asked if I was a cast member and told me we get a discount there – I totally forgot to ask! Great news as I love eating there. Sian and Lesley text to say they were going to Typhoon Lagoon but since I was not dressed for it and on the other side of the ‘World’ I said I would try and join them later. In the end I did not quite make it as I got a bit distracted with other stuff back at the apartment. In the evening we went to HOB where we had to say goodbye to Jon Roscoe who had been termed by housing – sad news for everyone, he will be missed by a lot of people.

Monday I was back to work and was meant to be on Podium but due to Jon being termed and other people self-terming I was moved to Chippie registers for what turned out to be a fairly boring shift as the park was very quiet.

Tuesday I was back in Chippie again for another quiet shift. In the evening the UK had organised midnight Kickball at the Disney softball pitches. There were 3 taxis full of people going and it was so much fun. Kickball is basically softball but played with a Soccer Ball with the ‘batsman’ kicking instead of using a bat. Every team I was on won, I would love to say I was the contributing factor but I fear that was probably not the case! I had a great night although the lack of a proper warm up left my pretty achey by the end. Hopefully we can play again next week where I fully intend to be much, much fitter. Playing sport with friends at 2am when it is still 20 degrees having just finished an 8 hour shift at work is yet another slightly surreal experience that could really only happen in the program.

On Wednesday I was finally back on Podium where I had a nice seating shift and we got out of Chippie by 9:40 thanks to some speedy cleaning and speedy checking by Janet. In the evening Sam drove Lesley, Jaci and I to Perkins at Crossroads where we met Craig, Emily and Sian for some 11pm Breakfast delights. French Toast late at night is never a bad idea!

I was off last Wednesday and Thursday and did Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom with Craig. We got loads done in both parks since they are really quiet right now and nothing has a crazy wait time.

On Thursday night we had arranged to meet the girls, UK and Canadian, at Downtown Disney to watch American Reunion after they had all finished work. The show was at 10.40. I got there really early and did a bit of shopping before meeting up with Sam Sainsbury and co who were having some drinks in Raglan Road. When Craig arrived we went to AMC to wait for the girls who it turned out were still waiting for a bus from the Boardwalk to Downtown. In the end we cut it really fine and just got into the screen in time for the film to start after we basically threw money and our Disney IDs at the cashier. It was pretty funny and the company wasn’t too bad either! The highlight of the evening has to be Sam running across the DTD parking lot to hold the bus only to get there and find that it was waiting for 10 minutes as it was early anyway.

Friday was my first EMH shift of this program and I was in Chippy. It was really quiet, spring break is over and after the fireworks we barely served any guests. At least EMH in F&B is not too bad and we are done by just after 11pm – much better than the crazy MK times of my last program. After I got home I just went to bed and crashed.

On Saturday I was finally back on podium although I ended up stocking due to call ins – it was a fun shift and I managed to change 14 kegs without any problems which I was pretty pleased about. I did not have too many frantic radio calls which I hope meant I did at least an OK job. During my break I spoke to Whitnie about doing Assigner training so hopefully I will be able to do that within a few weeks, a nice chance to try something new. I finished the night in Chippy as ever and we were out super early, which was a nice surprise. We had planned to go round to Lesley for Chinese but we were too late to order so we resorted to our standard Dominos pizza order – her housemate even commented on our obese eating habits, awkward.

I managed to get back to podium on Sunday and Mr B, one of our coordinators, asked if I would extend to close. A few extra hours pay is always nice so I agreed. I had a really fun shift and spent most of it bussing tables for the servers who were really weeded or just needed a helping hand – most people object to bussing since it is the servers job but I reckon that if we do a bit of bussing for them we get people in faster which makes life on podium nicer for everyone. At the end of the night I got a Great Service Fanatic card from Whitnie for helping my fellow cast members – was pretty pleased with that. We spent the evening at Craig’s for a few quiet drinks.

On Monday I had a nice early shift on Chippy Tills and finished at 6. I had arranged a meeting with a manager from Disney who I knew from my previous programs and those in the know will know the outcome – not something I want to put the details of here at the moment but suffice it to say I had a good evening. I did not get back till late so missed Lads but when I arrived back at my apartment a Mexican party was in full swing – it was broken up by security just as I got back. My apartment was not in too bad a state and by the next day they had cleaned up after themselves pretty well – I was very impressed.

Tuesday was my Friday and I had a closing shift on podium. I met some of the nicest guests I have ever seen. They wanted a table but we were not taking walk-ins so the gentleman said he would wait in the bar and could I wave at him through the window if we started taking them again. An hour or so later I got his attention and got him checked in – he even offered me a $5 tip (which I refused of course). It turned out they had dined at the Rose & Crown on their honeymoon and were now returning for their 28th wedding anniversary. We managed to get them fireworks viewing on Lower Deck and I even managed to seat them myself when Mel took over greeter. They were so nice and patient, if they ever read this, unlikely as that is – guys you made my week! I also got to do the rope for Illuminations, it separated our private viewing area from general viewing, and met a really nice family who wanted to know all about the UK and the program. I had such a nice day and it reminded me exactly why I came back.

Yesterday I went to DAK with Emily and Lesley. It was again super-quiet and we did pretty much everything with no wait including 2 ride of Everest and Dinosaur. In the evening we went to Sam’s apartment where the Norwegians were having pre-drinks for Chillers and then to Emily’s for a few more drinks.

Today we went to Universal and Craig persuaded me to get there early to make the most of it. In the end we managed almost every attraction in both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios with no wait of longer than 20 minutes. It was so much fun and I got to do loads of stuff I have never done before since I have not been to Universal since I went with my family in 2001. I am so pleased to have been here during a quiet time when I can really make the most of my annual pass. Yet another reason to love the Disney CRP life!

I can’t believe I have been here a month already!

I was off Thursday and Friday last week. On Thursday I spent most of the day just bumming around doing laundry, shopping and other essentials. In the evening we all went to MK since it was open really late. Lesley’s Canadian roommate Jaci also joined us. It was a lot of fun and although the park was quite busy we managed to do quite a lot. We of course watched Wishes and I took my camera out for the first time since I got here and got some quite nice fireworks photos, they are not perfect yet but I have 11 months to get better!

On Friday I went with Geraint to Animal Kingdom which was basically empty. We rode Everest with a 20 minute wait and Dinosaur was a walk on. I also showed Geraint the Finding Nemo musical which he had not seen before. In the evening we were all a bit tired so we just went to McDonalds near the outlets for a chat and some munch. Emily and I then went to Lesley’s apartment for a few hours to chill.

I was back in Chippy on Saturday which was pretty uneventful apart from the screens stopping working which meant we had to fill orders one at a time while checking receipts which made the day go pretty quick. After work we all went to Lesley’s again to chill out with some Dominos pizza – nom!

On Sunday I finally had another Podium shift. It was pretty uneventful since we are quite quiet now that Spring Break is coming to an end. I made sure to get an early night and not go to HOB since I had 10.5 hours of Beer Cart/Stocket training the next day. Once we got back to Commons I dashed back to my apartment to get changed and then it was another trip to McDonalds where we met Dave who we realised was going to be my trainer.

I arrived for my training shift at 11 and Dave trained me for about 3 hours on Beer Cart which is really quite fun. You only have a very small number of products so it is not too difficult. Dave also taught me a few pouring tricks which make the whole thing a little easier. Dave had to break the assigner for a few hours so Charlotte trained me on Stocker for a while. Everyone complains about Stocker since it is hard physical work and you have lots of people calling for you to do things. I actually quite enjoyed it. I then went on my break and when I came back Dave had to go on his so I had to do Stocker on my own for a while. It is the Stocker’s job to change the kegs for the bar which is not really that difficult, you just life a handle and twist but if you don’t life the handle all the way you get sprayed with beer. It was a bit daunting at first but once I got into it I felt a lot better and I only got sprayed with beer once – whoops! In the evening I went back to LADS again and we met the Norwegian girls.

Tuesday it was back to Chippy and since we were relatively quiet it was just 2 Chippy tills doing filling as well. This made the day very hard work but it went really quickly. The only bad thing was that Craig and I needed to get away to go to Jellyrolls with the gang and since we were short of people we did not get to bank out until after 9 which meant it was almost 10 before we finished closing Chippy. We still had plenty of time though since the girls were meeting us at the Boardwalk and their bus was stuck in traffic – we ended up sitting on a bench in the Boardwalk for over an hour waiting for them to arrive. Jellyrolls was lots of fun as always and now I have 2 days off with no specific plans yet although I am sure some park visits will be involved!

My day off on Saturday started with a trip to get my hair cut in the MK Tunnels. Not the best haircut I have ever got but at $10 it is hard to complain! I also went to Walgreens to pick up a very strong cough remedy which worked pretty well and was much stronger than anything you can buy in the UK, drugs here are expensive though so it cost me about $15 for 2 days worth of dose. On the long walk back to block 28 I bumped into Geraint who was also off and we decided to head to DHS in the afternoon. We managed quite a lot including RnR from the Single Rider Line where we actually got to ride together with just a 20 minute wait – I love it when that happens.

On Sunday and Monday it was back to Chippy training with Sophie and Dave. It is quite easy once you get the hang of it and to be perfectly honest we have not been that busy considering it is still technically spring break. I did have a minor scare when I came to bank out on Monday when my till was massively out but it turned out I had forgotten to include the wrapped stack of 100 $1 bills – silly me!

On Monday night I went to my first UK Lads. I was very undecided about going until the very last minute but thought I should probably give it a try. Despite the rumours and stories I had a great night and it was a brilliant chance to meet people but what happens at Lads stays at Lads so that is as much detail as you are going to get here! I would however say to anyone coming out that you should give it a try, ignore the hype and the rumours and try it once before you make up your mind.

On Tuesday was back to Chippy early (feeling very little ill effects of the night before) and opening on my own. I think I got most of it right but because the paperwork wasn’t ready when I went down I forgot to grab a clipboard and a radio – lesson learned for the future though. I got pulled to seating for the end of the shift and spent most of the time bussing tables for Janet – I feel like I am getting faster at bussing which is nice and Janet seemed to be appreciative of my efforts.

After work Canadian Sam drove Craig, Emily, Sian and I to the Boardwalk to go to Jellyrolls. It is a piano bar with duelling pianos that take requests and can pretty much play anything you want. To make a request you just write the song on a napkin and wrap a tip in it and then place it on the bar – we only made one request and we did not get it this time! We get in for free with Disney ID and the drinks are pretty reasonable. I had a fantastic night and will definitely be back again.

Wednesday was back to Chippy again and we actually got quite busy towards the end of the day. It was my first proper long run on Chippy Tills on my own and at the end of the day I was only 20c out on a fairly hefty total which I was pretty pleased about.

I came home on the bus with Fiona, Katy, Katie, Sarah and Geraint. We originally planned to walk to Longhorns to get food but once we got there it was already closed so we walked back to Commons, got changed and called Kojak (Orlando’s friendliest taxi) to take us to TGIs at Crossroads. I had their 3 for $16.99 deal which is pretty cheap for what you get.

Off for the next few days and no specific plans yet although Corin has just sent me a message with just the word ‘Pool’ – that is always a good plan!

Monday was spent at DHS with Sian and we managed to do a lot of stuff although none of the big attractions. We also managed to get in to Fantasmic which was awesome, it is the first time I have seen the show since 2008.

Tuesday was my first proper shift. I had to open Greeter, which was fine and was on greeter for the entire day. The greeter is the first person guests meet in the restaurant and this means a lot of talking and then a lot of typing to enter their details into the computer system along with any special seating or dining requests they might have. I made a few mistakes but thankfully Janet who was assigning fixed them fairly quickly. She was also training Laura to assign so I felt bad about making things more difficult for her. It was a fun day but I came home very, very tired. We went to Emily’s for Pizza in the evening which I was happy about since I do not think I could have walked anywhere.

On Wednesday I started at 4pm and for the first hour and a half I just got tasks from CDS (Cast Deployment System), these are little extra jobs that need doing like arranging strollers, sweeping the restaurant and bussing tables. This was a bit annoying but I eventually got greeter once again. I think I did a bit better but I ended the day with a sore through. It is probably partly all the talking and the ‘Commons Cold’ which everyone seems to get after being here for a few weeks. Lots of people were going to BDubz after work but I felt really horrible with my cough so I decided to give it a miss.

The rest of my arrival group had to get up at 5am to go to the Social Security Office on Thursday. Since I already have a Social Security Number I did not have to go but this meant I was working. I was opening greeter again but I was only on until 4pm. After work Sian, Emily and I came back to Epcot to watch Illuminations and we realised that MK was open until 1am so we dashed across to catch Wishes as well, the others were naturally very tired after their early start so we headed home soon after.

Friday was my first day of Chippie training. I was supposed to be trained by David Sergison by due to some call-ins he had to work as Stocker and I was trained by Melissa. She did a great job and she is not even officially a Disney trainer! I spent the day on Chippie tills which were not too difficult to get the hang of since most of my Matra (till) training from 2008 came flooding back. It is slightly different in F&B compared to Merch but most of it is the same. When we banked out at the end of the evening I was only out by $1 which was more than I would have liked but still well within what is acceptable. Craig managed 10c so that was a bit annoying!

I’m off today when nobody else seems to be, I need to get my haircut and find a stronger cough remedy to get me through the rest of the week until this stupid cold goes away again.

On Sunday I had another Seating training shift with Amelia. I have pretty much got the hang of seating so I she mostly left me to my own devices to just get on with it. I also started helping the servers to bus tables when it got really busy. Technically it is the servers job to bus their own tables and get them ready for the next party but when they are really busy or have very large tables it can slow the restaurant down a lot if they do not get any help so Seaters sometimes jump in to lend a hand to keep the wait time down for all the guests.

I have decided that this is my Achilles heel, You need to put all the old crockery and cutlery on a tray and take them to the kitchen and then clean the table and bring out new cutlery. I think my biggest problem is the tray carrying, I am just not very fast at it. I even managed to break a plate and spill water down myself. Hopefully it is just a skill that will come with time although I did feel a bit like I was letting the team down when it took me so long to get a table ready.

I met Sian on the bus on the way home and she suggested we all went to House of Blues in the evening. The others did not get home from work until later but eventually a plan made! In the mean time I realised I had lost my sunglasses, I have no idea where they fell out of my pocket, somewhere between the Commons and the UK Pavilion. I rang the bus people but they had not found anything so I think they are probably gone. A bit gutting since I only got new lenses for them a couple of weeks before I flew out.

We all had a great night at HOB and of course saw half of the Commons there including lots of the Canadians from our arrival date. On Sunday nights it is free with a Disney ID and they play good music in a massive club although the drinks are a little pricey for my liking.

I am off today and need to do some cleaning as we have a housing inspection on Wednesday and then I think Sian and I are off to Hollywood Studios.

On Wednesday I started training in the Pavilion. Half of us are starting on Podium, seating and greeting dining guests and half are starting in Chippie. This meant I got to wear the costume, it is really not as bad as some people make out, I have definitely had worse. The hat is a bit annoying but it is kind of growing on me. The only thing that I don’t like is that you get 3 pairs of socks and you have to launder them yourself and not take them back to costuming – I am not the greatest laundry fan at the best of times.

I got a Facebook message from Katy saying she and Rob were getting an early bus and I was welcome to join them. I did not really want to arrive on my own so I went with them, it was really nice to walk in with someone I knew. Sophie was training me and we started by going over table numbers, which are pretty simple except for a few randoms which you basically need to just learn. Seating consists of waiting for a ticket to print and then calling the relevant party over and showing them to their table – nothing too taxing. After that I watched Sophie a few times before being left pretty much to my own devices. It was actually quite fun and the guests were all really nice.

A lot of people were going straight to CityWalk from Epcot but I didn’t have clothes with me. Kirsty and Laura invited me to go to BDubs (Buffalo WIld Wings) with them instead – it was a bit of a crazy night but a lot of fun. I was glad I wasn’t working the next day though!

On Thursday Craig, Emily, Bailey and I went to Animal Kingdom. It was very busy and very hot – not the best combination. We did manage to do Kali River Rapids and Expedition Everest which was nice plus we saw the Lion King show which I always enjoy. Since it was so hot we left fairly early to get back to the Commons and then just chilled before getting a relatively early night.

Friday was greeting training with Charlotte. It was her birthday so I felt sorry for her having to train me – I tried to be the best trainee I could to make her day that bit easier. Greeting took me a little longer to get the hang of than Seating but your job is basically to check the guests in and make sure that all the details on the reservation are correct. You also work with the Assignor to try to accommodate as many walk-ins as possible and give them an accurate wait time. I did make a couple of mistakes during the day but hopefully I have learnt from them and won’t make the same ones again.

Because it was Charlotte’s birthday she asked for an ER and it was approved, which meant I got an ER too! On a training shift! I have only ever got 2 ERs ever so this was a lovely surprise. I am sure Karma will shortly return and I will be force-extended 4 hours or something…

I think today is probably going to include a trip to Epcot as a guest – it is the only park I have not been to yet.

Monday was our onboarding day and our first day at Epcot. We had an 8:30 am start where we were met by one of our Coordinators of Training (CoT), D.J., who took us to do some more eLearning including responsible vendor (alcohol service) training and training on the MATRA POS system used by the cash registers. Once again I managed to avoid a few of the classes as they were still on my record from 2009.

For Lunch we met up with the Canadians who had done their Discovery Day (Epcot orientation) that morning. D.J. went far above and beyond telling us a few tales about previous CRP experiences and even offering to help us out if we ever found ourselves in a bit of a bind. He is a really nice guy.

After Lunch we walked over to the UK to meet with Whitnie, one of the UK F&B managers. She welcomed us to the Pavilion and took us through policies and procedures and gave a quick introduction to what is expected of us and how the next few months will look. We even got some free Fish & Chips for lunch!

After we were done for the day we all trekked back to the Commons on the C bus and got changed before dashing to Hollywood Studios for a few hours. We managed to do the new Star Tours, first time for me – very impressed and Tower of Terror. We were going to watch Fantasmic but the line, even for the late show, was insane so we decided to give it a miss. Plus we also had another 6am wake-up the next morning to consider.

Tuesday was an even earlier start at 8am for Discovery Day. This started with a presentation on the history of Epcot and then we had a walking tour of the Future World including a chance to ride Spaceship Earth. For World Showcase we transferred to a boat tour to cut the walking. It was a really interesting morning and a really nice way to learn the park, even if I did have sore feet at the end of it.

For the afternoon we were met by Anna who is the UK Pavilion CoT. She took us to Lunch and then on a tour of the UK Pavilion. It is big! I can now tell you where a lot of things are but I am pretty sure I am still going to get lost in there. We also met our other managers, Jack and Joe as well as one of our Coordinators. We finished the day with paperwork.

I am training on seating this evening with Sophie as my trainer which means I have had a really nice lie-in and I feel amazing for it – looking forward to getting started now.

On Friday we decided to have a chill-out day after our crazy day at Universal. We went to IHOP at about 10 for some Brunch and the others got a taxi to WalMart to do more shopping. I decided I didn’t need to spend any more money and thought I would walk to Crossroads to get a bus back to housing forgetting the bus only goes there in the evening. This resulted in me having to walk from Crossroads to Downtown Disney to get a bus – fail! I turned out to be not such a bad thing since the bus back from WalMart that the others were meant to get on broke down leaving them stranded at WalMart for 3 hours. When they finally got back we all went around to Craig’s apartment for some drinks and we decided to order some Pizza. Craig is in Block 28 with me which is about an 8 minute walk to security. We ordered pizza, walked up to security to wait for it and it never turned up. We forgot to bring the number with so we had to walk back to 28 to ring them back and re-order before another walk back to security to actually pick up the pizza. All-in-all 30 minutes of walking backwards and forwards and some very unhappy CRPs.

Saturday was an early start for Traditions. We got the bus to Disney University and signed in all the CRPs were in one class together will Jill and Brad facilitating. Before Traditions we had a talk from the Union about the role they play and were given the choice to sign up. I am not going to advise on whether you should or shouldn’t, that choice is yours to make. The content of Traditions has not really changed since 2009 except they have created the 4 keys to explain the principles of Safety, Courtesy, Show and Efficiency which I am pretty sure used to be called something else. For Lunch you get to travel up to Magic Kingdom and have a little walking tour to see the 4 Keys in action and eat in backstage before returning to Disney U for more classroom work. We also got our Nametags (delivered by a special someone) and IDs making us fully fledged Cast Members. This obviously required an evening visit to a Disney Park, MK was open until Midnight so was an obvious choice. Emily, who is doing Merch, needed to go and buy work shoes for class the next day and Sarah had an early start the next day so it was just Craig, Lesley, Sian and I who ran home, got changed and dashed to Chatham to catch the A bus to MK.

The park was of course very busy but we did manage to do Mansion, grab some dinner in Pecos, watch The Magic, The Memories and You, Wishes, Philharmagic and the Main Street Electrical Parade before we decided to call it a night. We also got a change to enjoy the Tomorrowland Dance Party which looked like a lot of fun, I can’t wait to go back when it is a little less crazy.

Today we had Food & Beverage Core Training at Disney U which was an afternoon class consisting of an introduction to the types of WDW F&B Operations, some food safety training and then some eLearning courses. It is quite long and boring but you are getting paid and it is not too difficult so it is alright. I managed to avoid a couple fo the eLearning courses the others had to do since mine are still valid from 2008/2009. This meant I got out early. We also finished our HUB (Disney intranet) sign-up. The day finishes with a trip to costuming to choose some work shoes, which are provided by Disney.

This evening we were all knackered and decided to go for a quick dinner in the Food Court in premium outlets before returning to the Commons. We all have a 6am start tomorrow for an onboarding day at Epcot. I spent a bit of time at Craig’s before coming back to my apartment to write this.

I have seen my schedule online and it looks like I have Thursday and Saturday off but I am not sure how final that is at the moment. It is nice to finally be getting started with work, I can’t wait to actually get to Epcot tomorrow.

When I got back I started sorted a Wireless router for the apartment, $22 from the Front Desk which was nice and simple and means I can now blog and Skype from the apartment nice and easily. After I got online I spoke to Katie, also from March 6th, as I had been told she was in an apartment in the same block. She said a few of the UKs were around at hers so I popped down to say hi, turns out she is literally the apartment below me. It was nice to meet some more UKs especially ones I have chatted to on Facebook for the last few months.

Universal was just a little bit busy!

On Thursday morning we had agreed to meet at 10am to get a taxi to Universal. It was pretty reasonable, about $25/30 between 6 of us. We walked all the way down to Islands of Adventure through an extremely busy CityWalk, it is Spring Break at the moment so everywhere is packed. There was a pretty long wait at the ticket window, when we finally got to a window we tried to persuade them to give us Florida Resident discount based on our housing IDs, the girl tried to give it to us but after she phoned a manager she said she couldn’t so we had to get non-Florida resident passes. It was only $30 more expensive – about $290 including tax which was not too bad. That gets Merch and Food discounts and has no blackout dates. She was very pleased to be selling 6 annual passes, lots of commission I guess, but when we came to pay the system would not accept any of our cards. Turns out it was the entire park having a system problem! Thankfully we all either had cash or went to the ATM to get cash and were sorted but it took quite a long time.

We went straight to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and rode Dragon Challenge with a 20 minute wait. I have never been to IOA before so it was all new to me and was a lot of fun. The park was SO busy, we decided against the Forbidden Journey as they wait was very long and we wanted to do as much as we could. We wandered around for a bit before eventually getting lunch where we realised we got a discount with our annual passes (yay!). Then we rode Jurassic Park and got just wet enough to cool off nicely in the hot sun. When we rode we left our valuables in a locker outside. After the ride we grabbed everything back and were heading down to Marvel when I realised I did not have my phone! Cue a fast run back to ask them to re-open the locker, thankfully it was still there and tucked behind a corner in the locker which meant I did not see it the first time – lucky escape!

Later in the day we rode Spiderman which broke in the middle so we were allowed to re-ride as well as Dr Doom which I actually really enjoyed despite being a little terrified to start with. We finished the day with the Hulk coaster which I have to say actually hurt although it was enormous fun.

We got a taxi back to the Commons for a few chill-out hours before heading to Downtown Disney for the evening. We wandered around for a while before heading to Paradiso 37 for some drinks which was a really nice end to a very busy day.

We made it to Orlando and eventually onto Mears

We had agreed with Craig and Rosie (the other 2 UKs on our date) that we would text them when we arrived and try to meet up for the Mears shuttle. As luck would have it I got a message from Craig saying he was waiting at Mears as we were about to board our shuttle – unfortunately it turned out to be a different Mears desk so we missed each other by a few minutes. We arrived at Vista Way and were met by the ever-lovely Programs Staff who showed us a quick video and gave us some information and free food and drink in the from of water, fruit and cookies. Then it was off to our apartments, we were all in the Commons.

I had Block 28 (the furthest possible block to walk to) which I sort of gulped at when I got it but it turned out to be a nice 2 bed apartment with some really nice roommates so I am pretty pleased. I am sharing with a Mexican, an Italian and a French guy who is my actual roommate. After 30 minutes to meet and greet the roommates we were off to WalMart on the bus (specially extended for new arrivals) – we just grabbed the bare essentials, bedding and breakfast with a plan to go back later to get proper food and stuff. While we were waiting for the bus we bumped into Rosie and a canadian girl, Candice, who she had met on her Mears shuttle.

After I got home I just unpacked and crashed. The 24 hour day had finally caught up with me.

Today started with an 8.20 meeting at the Commons clubhouse with the completion of some employment paperwork followed by a talk from Immigration compliance on the rules and regulations of our visas. We then had a talk from Price Management, the housing management company on the rules and regulations of housing and finally a talk on all the program rules from the International Programs team including all the multitude of reasons you can get terminated.

We then had 25 minutes for lunch where Rosie, Candice and I dashed over to the Premium Outlets to grab some Subway – the first ‘proper’ food I have had since I arrived. We then had to catch a bus to the Vista Way pavilion to check in to housing and get our proper housing ID cards. This works on a series of stations which you work around, completing one piece of paperwork at each station. My tip for the whole process is sit and the front of the bus and get off quick, you will be out and through faster.

The embarrassing button

When I got checked in the girl said “Oh, you have been here before” and presented me with a button (badge for you brits) with Disney Internships and Programs Alumni which she told me to wear. Embarrassing or what? This resulted in a conversation withevery other station about where I had worked and when.

Once we were done at Vista Way we took another bus to the Casting building near Downtown Disney. Here we went through another series of stations dealing with paperwork and finally a Disney Look check. It was a fairly painless experience, just a lot of waiting in lines.

Then it was back to The Commons and I think the plan at the moment is for a proper WalMart trip at about 5 and then who knows!

I leave tomorrow! I am all packed up, one bag, 22.9kg. Minor crisis today in that the Virgin Atlantic online check-in has totally failed on us. After over an hour of trying they finally came up with a message that it is broken and they are trying to fix it. Luckily we have all booked seats already so hopefully once it is back up we should all be good and should all be sitting together on the plane – fingers crossed. Silly Virgin Atlantic!

During the past few days I have activated my US SIM card so I should be able to start using it as soon as we land. Which means I can tweet like crazy, if you follow Dan@Disney on Twitter you will get all my Disney-related updates between posts.

I am planning to get to the Airport for 8:30 tomorrow morning which leaves plenty of time for delays or problems. It is about a 2 hour drive from my house to Gatwick so it means a 6:30 start which is really not bad considering the early starts that will be ahead in the next few weeks.

We have all exchanged numbers and arranged a meeting point so we can find each other at the airport and then meet people on other flights once we get to Orlando. What did people do before Facebook?!

The Oscars Speech

As I get ready to leave it feels like an appropriate time to thank all the people who encouraged me to apply for the program and helped me along the way. Unlike the Oscars I am going to keep this short and sweet. I would particularly like to single out Roger Antoniazzo who was my Disney recruiter for my ICPs and has since moved on from Disney who was invaluable in helping me to realise my dream of returning to Orlando. Thanks Roger – I definitely owe you! Also I must of course thank Yummy Jobs for all their help so far – lovely people, always.

Some Blogging Rules

I decided I need to come up with some blogging rules. As much as I would love to do a daily blog I know from 2009 that it would simply not happen. My plan is to blog at least once a week although for the first few weeks during training it will probably be a bit more often. If I have not posted for a long time you have full permission to get in touch or give me a prod on Facebook.

I can’t believe it is finally time – let’s do this!