Last Day of Exploring Disney Heritage

Today was the final day of my Exploring Disney Heritage series. We finally got to learn the winner of last week's Hollywood Studios scavenger hunt...the winner was..........MY TEAM! We all won DCP graduation cap pins, which was really neat! Today was also the day we all received our "Mousters Degrees" for completing the course!

Overall, the course was really fun and I look back to when I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to register for it in the first place...it was all worth it. The class was fun, informative and I learned a lot about this wonderful company! I definitely recommend it to anyone who is on the fence or even thinking about not taking a course at all! It definitely enriched my program. No homework, no tests, and it was free! It's just another added bonus of the Disney College Program, so you might as well take advantage of the opportunities at hand!

Final Days of Disney Heritage and Disney Marketing

My classes, like my job, were sort of becoming just part of the humdrum of it all. Luckily, I have one of the best teachers out there who knows what he’s doing and he’s good at teaching his classes. Disney Heritage has been especially exciting the past two classes as one took place in Magic Kingdom and the other took place in Hollywood Studios. Both were great because we got to get out of the two-hour classroom environment. Two hours goes by a lot differently when you’re in the classroom vs. the parks. 
At Magic Kingdom we really got to learn some fun trivia about Disney. I mean that’s really all Disney Heritage is anyway, lots and lots of fun facts about the company and our wonderful creator, Walt Disney. At Hollywood Studios, we broke into teams of 4-6 and competed in a scavenger hunt! Everybody has fun at some friendly competition and my group was no exception. We found out who the top three teams were via the EDU website and you’ll be happy to know that my bad-a team was one of the top three. Now we’ll just have to see what the rankings are. If you ain’t first your last people (Ricky Bobby reference).

Marketing has been nothing but guest speakers. Lots and lots of guest speakers and lots and lots of videos. This class really has done a great job showing how my field of study could be translated into this company. It highlighted all the areas of the Marketing department and I was able to discover what I know I don’t want to do and things that really strike my interest.

All in all, I definitely recommend taking classes, I don’t think my college program experience would have been the same without them. Woah……it’s crazy that I can talk in hindsight now, my program is almost over people! Just remember that time flies!

Exploring Disney Heritage: Week Four

I can't believe that this week is already the fourth week of class. Even crazier is there are only ten weeks left in my Spring program. WHAT?! This week in class we talked about the theme parks. Disney theme parks are, of course, my favorite part of this company and we focused mostly on my favorite park of them all: Disneyland. We got to watch a lot of neat videos of opening day and "re-opening" of the park, openings of attractions like the Matterhorn, the Monorail, and the Submarine Voyage. It was neat to see how far things have come but it was also neat to see how things were back then. Everything was just so different, from the way people talked, dressed, their mannerisms, it was all beautiful, in my opinion. This week's session was just another reminder of how special Walt was and how special the things he did were.

Next week will be very exciting because next week's class takes place IN Magic Kingdom. We don't have to dress in business casual (thank God), and I'm sure it will be a very fun class!

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.

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!

Post Course Registration

Here I am four hours later and I was finally able to register for classes! The system was down for what felt like forever and finally at around 2:45am my time (that's Arizona time people) the system was up and I was able to get into both classes that I wanted: Exploring Disney Heritage and Exploring Marketing.

I will be taking Exploring Disney Heritage Tuesday's 4-6pm and Exploring Marketing Thursday's 8:30-10:30am. I am very, very, very excited to be learning from this company!