Meet and Greet with Dan Campbell

Today I had another Meet and Greet, this time with Dan Campbell an Entertainment Leader at Disney's Animal Kingdom's Flights of Wonder. Dan started working with Disney when he was like a junior in high school and began as a character performer! He has a lot of entertainment experience and has been in many different fields.

When I got there I got to watch the Flights of Wonder show from the tech booth. For those of you who don't know, Flights of Wonder is a free flighted bird show and it's one of my favorites in all of the Disney parks! After the show was over, I got a backstage tour and got to see where the keep all the birds. It reminded me of my uncle's bird farm growing up, that's right folks, my uncle owned a bird farm!

Then Dan and I had some time to sit down and just chat more about my aspirations, etc. He even showed me some photos of when he was friends with Winnie the Pooh back in the 80's! It was awesome. Overall, it was a very nice Meet and Greet and I'm glad I now have a contact in the entertainment area of this company.

Sick: Calling In and The Point System

Yesterday around 3:00pm I started feeling sick and by the end of last night I knew it was something more. I think I have the flu so today I called in. "Calling in" is when you call the Labor Service Center and say you're not coming into work for either sick or personal. Calling in gives you one point on your record card. Your record card stays with you no matter where you go in the company and no matter how long you stay with the company. Here's the point break down:

1/2 point for being less than two hours late, even if you're one second late
1 point for calling in or being more than two hours late
3 points = 1 reprimand

Now I can't really recall, it was spieled to me so quickly, but there's a certain number of reprimands or points you can get in 30, 60, and 90 days before you get terminated. I do know that three "no shows," which is not calling in and not showing up for work, results in immediate termination.

I'm definitely still not feeling well, but I have work at 7:45am, so we'll see how it all plays out!

Photo Update

We've had a lot of fun days at the parks. We met the princesses at Magic Kingdom, ate breakfast at the Tusker House with the characters, saw Illuminations, and much more! It's not always just on our off days, most often it's just right after work, we run to the park to get that last ride in!

First EHH Shift at the Magic Kingdom

Tonight I picked up an "Extra Hours" (EHH) shift at the Magic Kingdom doing Strollers from 9:15pm-12:45am. I got there SUPER early because I wanted to give myself enough time to park, ride the Westclock bus to the entrance of the utilidoors, navigate the utilidoors, and figure out where to come up into the Magic Kingdom. Earlier in the day I went to costuming to pick up the wrong costume.......the WRONG costume, like an idiot. It was a pretty similar costume, but the wrong costume nonetheless.

WRONG COSTUME! HA!

Because it didn't take me as long as I expected to get through the utilidoors and everything, my leader let me clock in 45 minutes early and get paid, woo! Stroller was really easy! The first position I took over was "Tunnel 4." Basically I just stood in front of one of the tunnels with one of those glow sticks that are right pasts the turnstiles and told people who were exiting the park where to bring their stroller rentals. The best part was, I got the watch Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade! It always reminds me of my grandma and I had a great spot to watch it.

Tunnel 4 made me realize that I don't know the Magic Kingdom that well. There were a lot of basic question I had a hard time answering and I know had I been in Disneyland I would've been able to answer almost anything!!!

After I got switched out of Tunnels 4 I did Back Room for the rest of the night, which was literally only stacking and rolling strollers. It was pretty boring but the people I worked with were cool and my manager was awesome! I think I'll definitely pick up another Stroller shift! It was definitely cool to work one night in the Magic Kingdom, but I definitely wouldn't want to work there full time. Hats off to the people that work their full time!

Disney Heritage: Week Two

This week's Heritage class was about "Walt and Roy: The Original Dream Team." I had another tear jerker moment when we watched some interviews with the Disney family regarding Walt's death. At the end of our session we got to play with toy monorails, which was a lot of fun! Heritage is definitely my favorite of my two classes because I get to learn about one of my favorite figures: Walt Disney.

Very First Meet and Greet

Today, I had my very first "Meet and Greet." This is a common term around the Disney company for short meetings with professionals from around the company. They are totally up to you to set them up, but they are highly encouraged nonetheless. It's pretty much the main way to network while on your program, something you do not want to miss out on while you're here, especially if you plan on staying with Disney. 

Because I've never really done a Meet and Greet before, I made it easy on myself and started with my teacher, David Horvath, he teaches both my classes so I figured he'd be a great resource, plus I'd get to know my teacher better! He was a great resource indeed, he gave me a lot of advice for moving forward with my future Meet and Greets as I already have a few more set up, including: 

Dan Campbell - Disney's Animal Kingdom Entertainment

Emily Carreon - Global Content Development (Yellow Shoes)

David basically explained that each Meet and Greet should last about thirty minutes, to respect the other persons' time. You should come prepared with some questions and a basic vision of what you want to get out of the meeting. David also helped me by telling me that I HAD to go back and finish my degree and that it was okay doing so. It obviously feels super hard to leave when I have started making connections here and can see where my career could be headed, but he made me feel okay about returning for my degree.

I'm really looking forward to both of these and I even have a "Spotlight on Disney's Dream Weddings" coming up soon! Many departments do these "Spotlights" when the have a lot of people interested in Meet and Greets, so they invite many people at once.

In total I have already emailed twelve professionals on property to set up Meet and Greets and am waiting to hear back. I'm excited that I get this opportunity at all, and frankly I don't think there's such a thing as OVER networking.

4 Four Keys Basics Cards

Walt Disney Cast Members have the opportunity to receive or give out Four Keys Basics cards and today I was lucky enough to get three in one day, and another two days before! Two of them were for getting "BINGO's" for this BINGO card we got to get donations for Disney's Worldwide Conservation Fund, which is pretty easy to do if you simply ask your guests to donate the rest of their change and round up to the nearest dollar on their purchase! But the other two I received today were for the way that I interacted with guests and just doing my job the best that I could do! It was such an honor to get these two from two of my managers and I am so appreciative. Yes, it may be a little piece of paper, but to me it's another reason to keep doing what I'm doing and keep doing it well, and even work a little harder! I'm excited to get more cards and I'm going to keep working just as hard, if not harder, to receive more!

Inspections

About three times a term all apartments undergo inspections to check on the cleanliness of each apartment. If you ask me, I think it's a little silly considering they literally white glove our surfaces.......... I get it, they're your properties and you want them to be treated well, but we're all adults here, come on. Regardless of what I think though, they still had to be done. You are given a time window of when inspections will be, about ten days, but you are not told what day your apartment will be inspected, which means your apartment must remain spotless until you finally get inspected.

On the third day of inspections we were finally inspected and we passed. Although we did not get the "White Glove" award (you get cookies or something as a prize), I'm glad we didn't fail because failing means you get fined. We passed in every section except in my bedroom's "trash" section because we hadn't taken out the trash... -.- I find it pretty funny that that's the only section we failed because I was the one being the most uptight about inspections, haha I guess that's my karma.

Below is the page in the Programs Guide about inspections, spelling out what is required and what is inspected.

Even though my roommates hated having to clean the apartment every night with the chance of inspections in the morning, my OCD self LOVED having the apartment as clean as it was and with that in mind, I'm not exactly hating the idea of the next inspection!

Exploring Marketing: Week One

Bright and early this morning, at 8:30am I had my first class for Exploring Marketing. I have the same teacher that teaches my Disney Heritage Class, David Horvath, and he's still just as awesome as ever today. He did his typical introduction, which I had already heard before, so the new part of the class for me was the guest speaker, Randi, who works in the marketing department! It was awesome to hear from her because she literally went over every segment of Disney's marketing department and helped me narrow down where I could see myself based on what each department is responsible for.

Thanks to all her insight and her break down, I could definitely see myself in any of the following departments:

• Content Development/Broadcast Production-Digital content development: Responsible for digital shorts, YouTube/Facebook videos, DVC Virtual Events
• Digital Marketing
• Public Relations
• Special Event Management

My Disney Heritage class makes me very excited about working for the company, but my Disney Marketing class makes me excited to have a future in the company! After Randi's lesson, I was so excited to meet with Randi one on one, so I emailed her immediately after to set a meet and greet up.

Exploring Disney Heritage: Class One

Today I had my first Exploring Disney Heritage class! It was exactly what I need as I'm starting to fall into the slump of my forty hour weeks. Today's class was simply an introduction to the course and our instructor, David. David has been with the company for a VERY long time and his story was actually awesome to hear, it made me excited to start anywhere in the company because he moved around all over the company!

The actual content portion of the class was the last little bit, but it was awesome! We learned about the Disney family tree and took a closer look at Marceline, Missouri where Walt Disney was raised! It made me really, really want to visit the tiny town and see Walt's roots. My favorite part was where they talked about the barn they rebuilt on the Disney's original farm. The old barn had deteriorated past the point of restoration, but the new barn, fashioned after the old one, had allowed for new traditions. Every cast member that comes to visit the property is asked to write a message to Walt on the walls of the new barn. It made me tear up...corny I know.

The whole class made me excited for next week's class and the entire class as a whole. I have my Exploring Marketing class on Thursday with the same teacher and I'm definitely looking forward to that!

Trip to Cocoa Beach

Applied to Professional Internships

This evening I applied to six Professional Internships. I accessed these applications through the My Disney Career tab on The Hub and the applications were very simple considering Disney had most of my information already. Here are the internships I applied to for Summer 2014 and below are a list of the progress thus far on the My Disney Careers Dashboard.

Getting Into the Groove

I'm definitely starting to get into routine being here in Orlando now, both in living here and in working. Work has been very good, I really do love the guest interaction that comes with a merchandise role. I had my first shift floor stocking, and let me tell you, I was NOT looking forward to it...one bit. But I think I have actually found my new favorite part of merchandise...floor stocking the Expedition Everest gift shop. It's perfect for a person with OCD like me, I get to organize a whole store. I couldn't think of a more perfect job for someone like me! Plus, floor stocking shifts FLY BY!

The past couple days have been more of those days that just make me super appreciative that I get to live and work in a place like DisneyWorld. The average family saves 3-5 years just to come to DisneyWorld for a short period of time. I get to go the parks every night after work if I wanted to, it's not something I take lightly. The magic is still there for me and I still love Disney, if anything changes, I'll let you know, but I highly doubt it.

I've been making lots of friends and lots of memories and I know it's all just really beginning!

Female Character Look-Alike Audition

This morning I went to a Female Character Look-Alike Audition. The audition was held at the Animal Kingdom Costuming building which was convenient because I had to pick up some new costumes. The auditions started at 10:00am and sign in was at 9:00am, but being as I have work at 12pm and I didn't know how long it would take, I got there at 8:00am. I did costuming first, which only killed about ten minutes of my time (greeeaaatttt), but with still lots of time to spare I noticed girls already lining up at the door, so I hoped in line. They let us in around 8:20am where we got a number and we got measured. I was measured at 5' 2.25".

After about maybe twenty minutes, they began auditions and took the first fifty of us into a rehearsal room where stood in five lines of ten. Two of the Casting Directors stood at the front of the room while they played music, so we couldn't hear them talking. They looked at each line of people for about two minutes a piece and then we rotated lines. Line by line, this went on for about ten minutes. They shut of the music and thanked us all for coming. After that they told us they were going to call the people who made it to the next round......two. They picked two people out of fifty! I, sadly, was not one of these people. After that we left the rehearsal room, did the walk of shame back through the 200 women waiting in the waiting area and that was it. The end.

I wish I could give you more of an insight into the wonderful world of auditions, but sadly, that's all I got for you people! I'm so glad I went though, and Emily went too! Now I'm off to work!

Epcot

Today was my first day off for the week and I spent it with a couple of the boys at Epcot. I've only been to Epcot twice before this, but I have never experienced it like this before! I had no idea all the things that were in Epcot! My family always gets pretty bored with Epcot because they like riding rides more. But luckily, we have all the time in the world and so we did absolutely everything in Epcot today, and when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING! We went to every country as well as The Land, The Seas, and Future World. We had an absolute blast. We did Kidcot where you get a stamp in every country, that actually made it more fun because you got to see more of every country. I think my favorite country was England where I got to see the Berryhill coat of arms and learn the history of my last name, they have a huge database!

After Epcot and after Emily got off of work (she works late at the Magic Kingdom working Main Street Operations), her and I went to House of Blues! We actually had an awesome time and I can't wait to go again! It was crazy and definitely a new experience, I'm not used to being at a place that has 18+ clubs!!

Once again, it was another fun day for the books and I'm know there will be many more to come during my Disney College Program!