INTRODUCTING WALT DISNEY WORLD'S NEWEST CAST MEMBER | DAEP UPDATE #1 & #2

*ALL VIEWS ARE MY OWN AND NOT OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY OR YUMMY JOBS*

Hey there, pals!

Holy moly, I officially moved to Florida two weeks ago and I am now a part of creating magic for Guests! I cannot believe I have just said that in a sentence! I have had an action-packed week for my first two weeks in Florida, so let's just get right into it...

On Sunday July 7th, 2019, I flew from London Gatwick to Orlando. My flight was relatively early (about 11:15am UK time), but I had to be up at 7:30 am as I arrived at the airport during the morning rush through security. Let's be honest, I was way too excited to get to Florida, so I ended up being awake at 5 am! My family and I travelled to Gatwick for 8:30 am, so I could go through security straight away, having dropped off my bags the night before. Thank goodness we did that because the queue for checking in was huge! The time had come to say goodbye to my family and this was very emotional. My mum and my sister were both in tears, but, despite holding back tears, I was so ready to go! After a body scan check, I then collected a couple of orders that I had placed to pick up once I had gone through security. Then, I met two fellow participants on the program, who were on the same flight as me, and we went to Starbucks for a quick breakfast before finding out our gate number. Before we knew it, we had departed the UK and then 9 hours later after watching a lot of Disney movies, we had arrived in Florida. All in all our flight was very smooth with a bit of turbulence here and there. And then, we landed in a typical Florida storm, as you do.

Once we'd landed, gone through immigration and collected our bags, we found the iconic Walt Disney World Resort wall at Orlando International Airport and had to get a photo in front of it!

We jumped onto the Disney Magical Express service to the All Stars resort area, checked into the All Stars Music hotel and completely crashed on one of the double beds when I first opened my room because I was so tired from travelling. After I had cleaned myself up from the 9hr flight, I caught a Walt Disney Resort Guest bus that went to Disney Springs to meet up with a lovely girl who was on the Disney Academic Exchange Program (DAEP) for the past 12 months. She has been helping me to get ready for my move to Florida, especially where there has been so little information out there specifically for the DAEP, which was really sweet. And so, I was finally able to meet her in person and we went to Blaze Pizza in Disney Springs! And then, we walked around Disney Springs, as I had never been before and we found my merchandise location, which is honestly the cutest little store and I cannot wait to begin my classes at Fairy Godmother School!

The following day, I checked into my housing complex and moved into my apartment. But, let's just talk about the breakfast and jet lag I had that morning... I was up at 5:30am (EST) bright and early, so I video called my sister while I got ready to let her know how I was doing. One of the participants accidentally slept through their alarm, so we left for breakfast a little later than planned. But, it was all okay because the Mickey waffles I had were AMAZING and we checked out of our hotel on time, even though I nearly forgot to pack all of my chargers!!

We managed to organise an Uber ride to take us to the housing complex where we were going to be living for the next year. Fortunately, after the security guards had seen our arrival itineraries and discovered that we had afternoon check-in appointments, the security guards allowed us to wait onsite at the complex until our check-in time. To bypass time, the other participants and I were trying to guess where existing Walt Disney World Resort Cast Members worked based on the costume they were wearing. Then, I was taken by a member of the housing team to go and get my apartment number. Once I had found my building number, I met three fellow DAEP participants at the bottom of the stairs trying to lift up their heavy suitcases to the top floor. Once I had settled into my apartment, I took the bus to Walmart with my friend who I travelled with and her roommate - they had forgotten a few things and I needed to get food. So, our trip was basically like a late-night Tesco shop as some university students from the UK would say! I had never built myself up from scratch before and it was this point where I thought I had gone one step too far. Grocery shopping was harder than I imagined. Grocery stores in the United States are laid out very differently to the UK, so I was incredibly stressed out! Safe to say that after I had completed my grocery shopping for the first 24 hours, I crashed out on my bed because I was exhausted.

Another fundamental aspect of my beginning steps towards becoming a Walt Disney World Resort Cast Member was visiting the Casting centre. I woke up to the sound of my Norwegian roommate's alarm early in the morning, which I didn't mind because I expected this from living in shared accommodation. On the other hand, I had a lie-in and then got ready to go to Casting to get my Disney ID photo taken, which didn't require me to be in business casual clothes, but I still matched the Disney Look guidelines for my photo. There were a lot of Cast Members-to be on the bus and none of us knew what we were doing. But, the majority were getting off at this particular stop, so we all got off the bus and thankfully we were at Casting.

We had to wait in a little queue to get some of our documents checked and waited in another queue that led to the stations for setting up our Disney Cast ID cards. We could only go three at a time, so my group had one of my housemates and a lovely Canadian woman and we were chatting about what work locations we had, our program in general, amongst other things to bypass time, even though the process seemed to go really quickly (about 20mins or so).

One of the Cast Members there mentioned that it was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A. A roommate and I literally laughed so loud because we had never heard of such a thing where people decorate the Chick-fil-A restaurant with cow decorations, have cows prancing around the restaurant and give out free food. And yes, this is a real thing!

Also, I had my Central Michigan University orientation session. My British roommates, a few other friends and I arrived early to avoid the torrential rain and thunderstorms that were circulating the local area. Thank goodness we got in just in time because it hammered it down with rain. We had Dominoes pizza for dinner, which I was so happy about because I didn't have any other dinners to make! While we were eating, the CMU staff members introduced themselves and went through the academic part of the program, which was all relatively simple. And then, we had a bunch of immigration documents to be completed for the very next day! While my roommates went off to chill out by the pool, I wanted to get the immigration part over and done with, as well as fill you all in on this crazy and hectic week. I had been having some issues with the immigration documents, but I managed to get the majority of the requirements done that night.

Every new Cast Member has to go to Disney University and take part in a Traditions class, which is the symbolising moment of you joining the Walt Disney World Resort family. I purposely did not research anything around what happens during Traditions because I wanted to keep it a surprise and to have a magical experience. And, I definitely got that! All I am going to say is Traditions is absolutely magical!

And so, the tradition straight after Traditions is to head straight to Magic Kingdom... And, that's exactly what I did!

My first stop was heading to the Casting Agency door, as that's an iconic photo area for any brand new Cast Member after attending the Traditions class, and obtaining a 1st Visit badge as a brand new Cast Member! Throughout the rest of the day, my friends and I had many conversations with Cast Members who were congratulating us for getting on the program and becoming a Cast Member, as well as asking where we were working and living etc.

We decided to ride Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain and It's A Small World and we also met Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, as well as watch the Happily Ever After fireworks show, which is also the tradition for your first visit to the parks as a Cast Member. All of us were crying because our dreams of becoming Cast Members had finally come true, and we couldn't quite believe that this was really happening.

During my first visit to the Magic Kingdom, I was able to tick off the first thing off my bucket list, which was to get my Disney ears personalised at Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe in Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom. I was so happy with them and it was well worth the purchase for having cute ears to symbolise the beginning of my Disney journey 😊

By this point, this was the third Walmart run that I had to do this fortnight I had to do another Walmart run because I had realised that the apartment didn't have any kitchen utensils or sharp knives to be able to cook with. So, I went out and bought everything that we needed, as well as the last few groceries that I needed to complete my first weekly shop here in Florida.

Then, I found myself with an afternoon/evening of free time and my friends were heading to Hollywood Studios for the evening, so I decided to join them. We rode Rock 'n' Rollercoaster, which was so much fun but my adrenaline was going really fast. And just before I boarded my 'limo', I realised that my very first ride at Hollywood Studios just so happened to be the fastest ride! We then jumped in the queue for the Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror. However, it started pouring down with rain. As a result, the evening show (Fantasmic) we were planning on seeing that night got cancelled.

While I had to attend the first of many training classes, one of my friends was at the Magic Kingdom for the day. After my class, I did a spontaneous trip to the Magic Kingdom to join her. We rode different rides this time, compared to our very first visit to the park. These included the Peoplemover Transit System, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Mickey's Philamagic and Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. We met Rapunzel and Tiana as well. I got to chat about painting and frying pans with Rapunzel and then British food for Tiana's recipe book with Tiana.

We also bought some refreshing Disney treats, as it was a super hot day for the trip! Although my treat was melting straight away, it was very very delicious!!

We didn't do as much in the Magic Kingdom as we would've liked, but this was purely down to the operations at the Magic Kingdom attractions, which were most definitely not the best for the weekend. We knew that the Magic Kingdom was going to be super busy being a Saturday, but the Cast Members at the attractions were letting through all of the FastPass+ Guests through to the attraction before letting the standby guests through. This will definitely be something that I will have to be watchful for when I become an Attraction Operations Hostess.

As I have already mentioned, I had a series of training classes. This continued into my second week on my DAEP where I collected my fairy school uniform and got to know the location I would be completing my fairy school studies at: Disney Springs.

And just like that, I enrolled into my 1000 years of fairy school at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, attending sewing classes, accounting classes and learning how to turn pumpkins into carriages. I had almost missed class registration a couple of times because the human bus transportation that I use is not as fast as flying on a magic carpet. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the beginning stages of fairy school, but I have really enjoyed my time so far. During my second week of program, I made sure I visited the remaining theme parks for the first time this trip.

First was Disney’s Animal Kingdom – my favourite theme park! I met up with a friend from my program and we got to ride my favourite at the Walt Disney World Resort, which is Expedition Everest. We didn’t do it once… not twice… but four times in the few hours that we spent at Animal Kingdom! I have zero regrets because, in my opinion, it is THE BEST ride! We even got a celebration badge to showcase our silly little achievement of riding Expedition Everest so many times during our visit! My friend and I even came up with a challenge of seeing how many times we could ride Expedition Everest in one day!

We did experience a few other attractions as well including the Kali River Rapids, which we were soaked to the skin; Kilimanjaro Safaris, in which we got to witness some amazing animal encounters during our trip; DINOSAUR, which we were laughing our heads because neither of us had done it before and there were so many unexpected parts of the ride that scared us, but we ended up laughing at ourselves afterwards; and, we watched the Rivers of Light water show.

And second was Epcot. We managed to experience the majority of the attractions in the few hours my friends and I spent there, including Test Track, Spaceship Earth, Frozen Ever After, Grand Fiesta Tour and Soarin', which I hadn't done before so this was a fun experience! We were also able to meet Anna and Elsa due to such a short queue, and then my friends and I took a stroll around World Showcase before finding a spot for the Illuminations fireworks display.

It was at Epcot where I made my first official Walt Disney World Resort ear headband purchase. I bought a pair of limited edition Illumination farewell ears, as the show will be departing from Epcot and Disney World at the end of September. So, I will definitely make sure I watch the show a few more times before the fireworks display is no longer launched from the World Showcase Lagoon.

Now, I know what you're thinking... what happened? Did you manage to get it out and do your washing? As dramatic as it is, excuse my french, but I was sh**ting myself at the time because we didn't know how to use the washing machines or how to get my card out of the machine.

At this point, apart from the cash that I had stored away safely, my currency card had all of my American funds on it. One evening when we used the washing machines, my roommate accidentally got my currency card stuck in the washing machine’s card reader and could not get it out! We tried using kitchen tongs and using our clothes to try and get a grip because our hands were sticky from the humidity, but nothing was working. So, we called security and they then called maintenance over. Within a couple of minutes of the security guard arriving to our building, he managed to dislodge my currency card it out. Meanwhile, another participant collected their laundry from the machines and told us how to use them.

At least I could rest easy now aha. And on that note, I am going to leave it there.

As you can see, I've had a pretty crazy first couple of weeks, but I really hope you did enjoy reading my post and I look forward to sharing the rest of my journey with you very soon!

Thank you so much for reading and have a magical day!

-Hannah

DISCLAIMER: this blog is my personal experience on the Disney Academic Exchange Program and in no way reflects everyone's experience! Other programs and future participants on the DAEP may have slight adjustments which may not be reflected in my posts. That being said, if you do leave any questions, I will try to answer them as best I can or cover topics in blogposts :)