Bucket List CRP 2015/16

So because I have been on vacation here quite a few times a lot of things on other people’s bucket lists I have already done so these are the things I want to achieve in my year:

1. Do the Kitchen Sink challenge

2. Ride Summit Plummet

3. Attend the cast member party at Typhoon Lagoon

4. Go on a backstage tour

5. Campfire at Fort Wilderness

6. Drink around the world

7.  Watch fireworks from Polynesian beach

8. Attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party

9. Attend Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights

9. Participate in a RunDisney event

10. Participate in Voluntears

11. Go to a concert

12. Go to a sporting event (been to one but too young to remember!)

13. Stay in all the Disney hotels

14. Travel to New York, Las Vegas, Michigan (to visit friends), Grand Canyon, Miami, Tennessee, Nashville, California and as many states as possible!

15. Go to the beach!

16. Attend the Winter Formal

17. Go to the Christmas Parade filming

18. Go to a Stars Wars weekend

19. Go to the Grand Floridian Spa

20. Visit Celebration

21. Visit all the parks in California

22. Do the Dive Quest at Epcot

23. Four parks in one day challenge

I’m going to add to this as I think of and discover new things!

Pre-move preparation!

Ok so I was rather keen and did a lot of prep very quickly! I paid my CRB fee which is about £60 ish a couple of hours after I got my offer because it’s not until you pay that they send you the forms.

I had to wait a couple of days for Disney to contact me because it was the weekend before I could do anything else but on the Monday they contacted me and they send you a series of emails with instructions to pay programme fees which cover things like housing events etc which costs I think around £100 and filling in some online information including passport details etc a lot of which I had already done.

A girl called Debbie who is on my start date added me to another facebook group for my arrival date which is really great and turns out there is actually 5 of us UK girls going on the same day along with quite a lot of people from other countries! Because they had all found out about 2 months before me they had sorted quite a lot and I was a little panicky about how far behind I was but they were all a great help!

So 4 of the girls on my date were all taking the same flight so I phoned STA Travel and asked to be booked on the same flight and luckily managed to get the last seat on the flight phewww! I also sorted my insurance with them too and just decided to buy a whole 12 months so I didn’t have to worry about it! I managed to sort this within like 3 days haha!

A week later my CRB forms arrived and it was all pretty simple to fill out as Yummy Jobs sent their own instructions as well as the ones on the forms but I would recommend following theirs because the differ slightly and they worked for me as a couple of weeks later my CRB check arrived back and it was confirmed I wasn’t a criminal horraaay!!

So now I can’t do anything else until my visa application comes through but it won’t be till about 6 weeks before we go. But I have bought a new suitcase which was very exciting and I have definitely started packing already on the 3 months before mark! I have also been buying a lot of stuff like clothes, bags, shoes etc also dry shampoo because I can’t get by without it and they don’t sell it in America?!!

The time is actually going so quickly which is aided by talking to the girls on my start date a lot on whatsapp/facebook and also been talking to other people from different start dates and countries which has been really cool and interesting! Also, my family gave me a jar which they decorated with pictures they cut out of brochures and they filled it with American chocolates like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey’s Kisses and it is one of the greatest most thoughtful things I’ve ever been given! And of course I have countdowns to when I go and when I finish work on my phone which really helps and today as I’m writing this it’s exactly 3 months before I go and 89 days 😀

Application, interviews and the longest wait of my life..

Welcome guys! So before I actually talk about the actual programme I will fill you in on a bit of the application process for those interested. So I applied for the programme through Yummy Jobs back in January 2014. It is an online application including uploading your CV, work experience and also a few questions you have to write about in quite a lot of detail about what being a cultural representative means to you etc. After this you get an email to say whether you have been successful or not a couple of days after the applications close and I got the date of my first interview in February in London. This took place at Brassiere Blanc on Southbank but quite a lot of us met up previously in the Starbucks round the corner. If I could give you any advise about the application process is join the facebook groups. Joining the groups means you don’t make the journey alone especially as I kept the fact I had applied very quiet! It was a great way of keeping track of how people are getting on, who got dates and getting to know the people I interviewed with and now living in Florida with! So, back to the actual interview! This was done in two groups and I was in the second in the afternoon. We all went in to a room where Louise from Yummy Jobs did a presentation on the programme, did a fun quiz and then told us what times to come back for our small group interviews. Luckily I was in the first group so I didn’t have to wait around and my interview was led by James. There was I think 5 of us and it was a sort of open discussion/going round the group sharing thoughts on the questions answered. The questions were mostly scenario based i.e. If you were told to do this what would you do.. etc. Then we went through the menu of The Rose and Crown (the main restaurant in the UK pavilion) and we all had to describe a dish in an interesting way as if you were describing it to a customer. And then we had the ultimate question: If you were a Disney character who would you be? I tried to think a little out of the box on this one because as I guessed what might happen is we had like three Ariels in my group! I chose Sully from Monsters Inc because he always tries to do the right thing and is a great friend! Haha! I got to know some really great people in this interview and quite a few will be sharing my time in Florida! So the waiting now began and a couple of weeks later I received an email to say I had been successful and got to book my next interview at the UK’s Disney Headquarters in Hammersmith, London. I was pretty lucky as when the email came through it was on my day off work so I managed to pick a really great time for my individual interview. So this interview was at the end of March and I headed up to London the day before at stayed in a hotel overnight with my family who then dropped me off the next day. Of course we all met in Starbucks again and headed to the headquarters together. Even just going to this place was really cool it was full of movie memorabilia and posters etc! We all came in together in the morning and went through to a screening room where Sue from Disney recruitment and a man from ESPN did another presentation and it all got very exciting! We were split into time groups which we had booked online and we all went off and did our own thing till we had to come back. I picked to go in the second lot so me and the other girls went for a hot chocolate in Costa and got to know each other. We headed back for the interviews but they were running really late because they were also interviewing for another programme at the same time. The whole time I was just getting more and more nervous and of course I was the last in my group to go in! So, my interview was with the man from ESPN who was absolutely lovely! It was a lot of the same type of questions as before plus things like where would be convenient to fly from, start dates etc. I came out thinking it went thinking it went really well and was really pleased and inspired. Now for the painful bit!!! So probably two months passed and we heard absolutely nothing apart from a thank you email and some people got nos and it was horrible. Then sometime in May really late on a Friday night a handful of people got emails to start on a few random dates around September time but that was it. Months passed and just a few random people got dates filling in for dropouts and meanwhile it just got harder and harder for everyone else because we had no idea what was happening all we knew is that we were on a waitlist. At around the six months mark I went on facebook on my lunch break and saw that pretty much everyone apart from 4 of us had got their dates and my heart was broken I was absolutely gutted! This wait was incredibly hard I can’t even describe what it was like apart from saying I was stuck in a job and life I was really not enjoying and couldn’t make any plans cus I was still holding out for Disney but at the same time worried it was going to be a no I had been waiting so long and every time my phone went off with either an email or phone call my heart stopped, surprised I didn’t have a heart attack or something to be fair haha! Eventually, after 8 longggggg months I had been working away for a week and we were sat in the pub at the end before getting the train home and my phone went off and it was the last thing I was expecting…an email from Yummy Jobs!! My heart was absolutely racing and I wanted to cry but the hardest thing was I couldn’t even say anything to the people I was with because I couldn’t tell work yet. I read the email quickly under the table and it said congratulations for my offer and to accept it on their website. So I went on and clicked confirm but still didn’t know my date so I was very confused! I made some excuse about needing to make a phone call ran outside did a mini happy dance haha and then called Yummy Jobs who explained Disney should have already emailed me with my date and that it was 7th April Food and Beverage and I was over the moon!!!