One Week Down!

I've known about the Disney College Program since my first semester of college and therefore have spent many hours watching vlogs and reading blogs written by people who have participated in the program. And regardless of what role the author had or even which park the author worked in, there was almost one common denominator: tons of posts ramping up to the beginning of the program with excitement and pictures and information on the check-in program... and then absolutely NO information about what happened during the duration of the program until the very end when there maybe was a really short "Ok well I'm home now and here's a quick 2 paragraph summary of my college program experience".

I committed and swore to myself that I would not become that blogger. I would be consistent. Not for anyone else's sake, but because I wanted to be able to remember everything that happened and have it all recorded for myself.

I had this whole mental plan of how I would bring my journal on the bus everyday and I'd write about what happened during that day with lots of detail and nothing would be forgotten. I was going to not only succeed in completing the DCP, but I was going to excel at recording it all.

Well I'm one week in and I have a whole new level of empathy for those bloggers who I so harshly judged.

Just a quick timeline of the last few days:

• Wednesday: check-in, move in, and casting
• Thursday: housing meeting, resort hopping
• Friday: no meetings (woot woot!) and more resort hopping
• Saturday: Traditions (orientation to working for Disney) where I received my name card and my employee ID; used that employee ID to immediately head over to the Magic Kingdom and played in the parks for 9 hours
• Sunday: slept and hung out at home--super chill day
• Monday: property orientation to Pop Century--all new employees regardless of assignment had classes to just introduce you to the resort, the themes, some traditions, policies, etc
• Tuesday: first day of on-the-job training, VERYYYY basic introduction to where merchandise is shelved and spent most of the day just kind of hovering and observing...longest day of my life; dinner with the parentals
• Wednesday: Merchentaining class (made-up word: merchandise + entertaining) where we learned the basics of the cash register system that Disney uses; went to Hollywood Studios with a group to ride Star Tours, Rock n Roller Coaster, and see Fantasmic
• Thursday (today): early morning shift starting at 5:30 am where I worked the register for the first time, 'Up'-themed housing event where I met Russell and Carl :)

I really like where I'm working. Over the weekend I got a little hesitant about Pop Century just because it wasn't what I had imagined I'd be doing during my college program and I wasn't sure if I'd like working in basically a glorified Disney store like you'd find at the mall. I've had to learn about a lot of the different programs that are new: the Magic Bands are pretty awesome and I had a glorious 2 hour class yesterday on the details of the Disney Dining Plan.

But I love it. The hours are much nicer and it's more of a close-knit feel. The parks would be fun simply because you're always busy, there's always something to do, and you have that chance of spotting the electrical parade or watching the fireworks every night. I haven't worked a night shift, but I'm told that's when the place gets really busy. It's the off-season right now so the latest park that's open is Epcot and it closes at 9 pm. Because the parks close so early, guests come back to the hotel and that's when they shop. It gets busy but it doesn't get "line all the way out to the door for several hours" busy. And I will never ever be sick of the parks this way. There's no 'tainted' memories associated with work that I would bring into a park with me.

There's a lot of interesting lingo that goes with working at Pop Century. Because we're themed from the 1950's through the 1990's, we get to speak in decade-appropriate vernacular. "Have a groovy day" is still not a natural phrase for me to say and in some ways I hope that never just starts freely flowing forth from my lips. When directing guests, they advise us to say things like "ok just go out those doors, make a right turn, and then time travel down to the 1950's". It's cheesy dorky goodness, but it's fun.

I've learned some interesting Disney trivia over the past few weeks:

• 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was originally meant to be a walk-through wax museum and it was mostly completed when Walt told the Imagineers to scrap it and start from scratch. He wanted to incorporate the water-ride technology from "It's a Small World" with the animatronic technology from "The Tikki Room"
• Disney parks used to be partnered with the U.S. Treasury to start circulating silver $1 coins around the parks to be used as regular tender. They had to stop doing that because guests started trying to redeem them---thinking that they were just 'Disney money' and not actual U.S. currency because they thought that the faces on the coins were characters from the 'Haunted Mansion' ride when in face they were the faces of U.S. Presidents. Round of applause for Americans knowing their history.

I'm really happy with what I'm doing. Last night (Wednesday) I was a little bummed out because I had spent 3 straight hours completing learning modules at a computer as part of my training and I knew that I had to be at a bus stop at 4:30 in the morning which is just altogether a depressing concept. I wasn't too happy about it but my wonderful roommate invited me along to go see Fantasmic and I'm really glad that I went. Getting into a park for free for even just a few hours after work is absolutely worth the crazy schedules that require you to maneuver the bus system. When we went, 'Star Tours' was completely empty so we walked directly on and were seated in the first row. 'Fantasmic' was incredible. I had seen it at Disneyland a few times before but it was so great to see it in a big open amphitheater in a space designed specifically for that show rather than just cramming it on Tom Sawyer island and trying to watch it as you wait in line for 'Haunted Mansion'.

The one thing that they kept stressing over and over again is that the core of any job at Disney is to create happiness. It's a powerful idea to wrap your mind around but being paid solely to make someone else's day better...it's not a bad way to live. The buses are rough (I have to be at my bus stop at like 3:45 am to catch a bus that leaves at 4:02 am so I can clock into work at 5:30 am. It literally takes less than 15 minutes to get to Pop Century from my apartment but these are the joys of taking a bus). The hours are long. My feet really hurt. But it's worth it.

I'm in bed at 6:30. Not just on my bed: I am in my bed and under the covers. I've kept myself propped upright so that I don't fall asleep but I'll be surprised if I make it through one episode of Supernatural (thank goodness for Netflix woot woot!) before I fall asleep. There is some kind of twilight zone phenomenon on the DCP buses: you could get on a bus at the peak of an energy-drink induced spaz attack, and have all life and energy zapped out of you before you go five blocks. It's insane. 

It's been a little over a week but I'm so excited. I'm loving it. Some days are going to be hard, I know that. But there's a great pay-off. A lot of families swing through the store between breakfast and catching a bus to one of the parks. The excitement in tangible. Those kids are bursting at the seams and if you give them a chance they will tell you all about their favorite movie, princess, ride, all of the characters they want to meet and everything embarrassing thing their parent has ever done. I'm here making people happy and when you see people smile like that it's utterly contagious.

Disney magic is real and true people. Life is good and I am so grateful to be doing this.

The only thing that might make make this more magical is a nice big Dr. Pepper :)

DCP Day #2: Housing and Resort Adventures

Yesterday (Thursday) was a pretty easy-going day. We didn't have anything until a mandatory housing meeting at 2 pm so I slept in and it was quite lovely.

The housing meeting was at The Commons--which used to be an apartment complex solely for international participants in the program, but they've now opened it up so anyone can live there. We walked over from Patterson and it was maybe a 15 minute walk or so.

It was a pretty straight-forward meeting: don't kill anyone, don't burn your apartment down, don't do drugs, no drinking under 21, no means no, be respectful to security officers, that type of thing. Pretty redundant but it's Disney so they made it fun: the room had a fog machine and flashing lights and loud remixed Disney songs being played when we first got there. They made it less tedious, which was well-appreciated.

Coming out of the meeting, it was pouring rain. My roommates and I took a bus straight out to Walmart to go grocery shopping. Gazillions of groceries later, we piled back onto the bus and headed home. We basically got home, put our food away, and immediately ate dinner before turning back around to go resort hopping.

I'm scheduled to work merchandise at Disney's Pop Century Resort. My roommate Jackie is scheduled to be a lifeguard at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge as well as Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. The two of us have never been to Disney World before and since we don't have our passes to go into the parks, we thought it'd be nice to at least go poke our heads around to see where we would be working. Each resort was on a different bus route so our logic was that whichever of the three buses came around first, that was the resort we would go to first. The G Bus came through first so we were going to Pop Century! :)

Jackie, myself, and our roommate Megan had the bus to ourselves. We headed out to Walt Disney World (shrieking when we drove under the Disney World sign) and were very enthusiastic about going resort hopping. But...we got off on the wrong stop.

Welcome to my next 4 months!

Long story short: we got off at the employee entrance to the Pop Century resort and while we felt confident in our ability to find the guest entrance to Pop Century...we wandered around for an hour and tried to use Siri to help us. The pinnacle of the evening was when we went bushwacking up a hill through the trees to at least try to see what was over the hill. I accidentally kicked a fallen log and Jackie and Megan freakeddd out because we had just been talking about alligators and they thought it was an alligator at their feet.

Thankfully the college program bus comes around once an hour, so when it came back around we dejectedly hopped on. We laughed pretty dang hard when we realized the bus drove less than a minute and the next stop was the main entrance to Pop Century--what we had spent an hour trying to find. We got off and spent the next few hours looking around the resort.

Prince Eric <3

Pop Century is decades based: each wing of the hotel is based off a different decade. The resort spans the 1950's all the way to the 1990's. In each wing are large statues to commemorate either a pop cultural item popular during that time period (a Rubix Cube, bowling pin, large tub of Play-Doh, etc) or a Disney character whose movie came out during that time period (Mowgli and Baloo, Lady and the Tramp, Roger Rabbit, etc). The lobby has shadow boxes full of pop cultural icons for each decade (My Little Ponies for the 90's, a He-Man action figure for the 80's, etc).

We went into the main lobby to see the shop where I would be working. The store opens right up to a large food court that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't know if I'll be working selling the food as well or just the merchandise, but I at least have some idea of where I'll be! The store is a pretty standard Disney store.

A bridge across a lake connects Pop Century Resort to it's sister resort Art of Animation so we walked across to check that out next.

Early draft of Timon...

Art of Animation is one of the newest resorts (according to my roommate Megan) and it's wings are based off of different animated Disney movies: Cars, Finding Nemo, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid. Each wing has different statues with iconic characters from those movies so we naturally posed with them as well.

Art of Animation was set-up very similarly to Pop Century: a food court and souvenir shop all connected. I absolutely adored their lobby: the walls were lined with different character sketches of characters from the highlighted movies. You could walk along the wall and see different versions of how Timon was drawn before they settled on the final design. It was pretty neat to see. I was geeking out over the Lion King sketches.

We caught the bus from Pop Century and headed home where we basically all passed out. Today is a free day: nothing is scheduled. I think we might head back to Walmart for some returns and then go check out where Jackie is working today.

DCP: Survived Day #1

Well, I made it to Florida. I kind of wimped out on finishing that whole 30 Day Disney thing. If I feel super ambitious maybe I'll wrap it all up tomorrow....but doubtful.

A quick run-down of the last 36 hours or so:

• Flight to Austin, Texas
• Finished "The Book Thief" and LOVED it
• 2 hour layover in Austin
• Bought a hard copy of "Allegiant" (third book in the Divergent series) and read a good hundred pages or so
• Flight from Austin to Orlando
• Sat next to a couple planning on doing the Official Dopey Challenge this weekend: Disney 5K run on Thursday, Disney 10K run on Friday, Disney half-marathon on Saturday, and a Disney full marathon on Sunday
• Smiled like a dweeb the whole way through the Orlando airport, met up with 3 roommates, got a shuttle to our hotel
• Applebee's for dinner took 2 hours; AWFUL service
• Slept like a rock
• Woke up, took a shuttle to Vista Way for check-in and got there at 7:50 or so
• Received an apartment assignment (Patterson, for those of you who know which one that is)
• Got assigned to my location: Merchandise at Pop Century Resort! :) 
• Had a bus take us and all of our luggage to our buildings; 3 flights of stairs later and I was completely moved into my apartment by 10 am
• Slow unpacking and socializing with the roommates, walked to Subway for lunch with two of the roommates
• Headed to Casting at 4:30
• Received information about Traditions on Saturday (I'm in the group that goes at 6:45 in the morning...yay...), got fingerprinted, filled out an I-9
• Spent 2 1/2 hours waiting in line after line after line after line after line to fill out more paperwork
• Disney is awesome and because we were there so late, they bought us pizza :)
• Got home, turned around and left with the roommates to Chik-Fil-A for dinner and Walgreens for some basic groceries to tide us over until we got to Walmart tomorrow

And...that pretty much is a run-down of everything that's happened thus far. Tomorrow all I have is a mandatory housing meeting at 2 pm and then I'm free until Traditions (aka first day of orientation) at 6:45 am on Saturday. It sucks that it's so early in the morning...but that's also the day we get our park passes. My group is going to be done by noon so you can guess what I plan to be doing Saturday afternoon/evening... :) Exploring Disney World for the first time? I think YES.

Not going to lie, I was pretty intimidated when I realized what I was doing. I was outside of my parent's house and outside of the Mormon bubble. But everyone has been so nice and so friendly. The good thing about waiting in lines for literally hours is that you have ample opportunity to talk to people who are stuck and have nothing better to do than to talk to you too. I'm so excited for the next few days.

After Traditions on Saturday, I have Sunday off. I start actual training at Pop Century on Monday and Tuesday from like 8 am to 5 pm. That still intimidates me a little bit. I'm hoping to catch a bus and at least go poke my head around Pop Century some time this weekend and get a lay of the land so I don't go in there completely blind.

Am I bummed about not working inside one of the parks? Not really, actually. I think it will turn out really really well.

For those that are interested, there are 6 of us in my apartment (myself included) and we all come from BYU-Idaho. I'm in merchandise along with one other girl who is working merchandise in Adventureland in Animal Kingdom, one girl is a lifeguard at the Animal Kingdom lodge, one girl is working as a 'Fairy Godmother-in-Training' at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo Boutique in Downtown Disney, one girl is a character performer, and one girl is working in attractions.

I don't remember when the last time was that I was ready for lights out and sleep before midnight, but...I'm tired and really don't have much more to report from today.

One day down and lots more to come! :)

Bucket List (For the Disney College Program)

Holy Macaroni.

I have 4 days before I leave to go live for 4 months at Walt Disney World in Florida. To say that I'm a tad big excited would be a major understatement. Call me sadistic, but I smile way more than I should when I think of my friends returning back to the great frozen Rexburg in the next few days. I love you guys...but I'll see you when the weather warms up ;) I probably should be packing...or doing laundry so that I can pack...or cleaning my room...or making sure that I have everything that I need in order to go... SO naturally I'm online instead!

I've seen this done on other blogs and by other people I've met on the DCP (Disney College Program, keep with me on the acronyms I'm gonna use them a lot) Facebook pages, but I wanted to make one specifically for me.

 A DCP Bucket List. It's sooo much harder than it sounds because I've never actually been to Florida so I have no idea what's worth doing, what actually is a challenge, and what is just lame.

 So... in no particular order...here we go!

• Collect as many smashed pennies as humanly possible without repeating any of the designs
• Get as many pictures with the Fab 5 (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto) in as many of their different costumes as I can find them. Bonus points for Daisy. I don't think I've ever met her
• Do every ride in every park at least once
• Stay from opening until closing at least once in every park
• Be the last riders on a ride
• Take advantage of as many backstage opportunities as possible (Space Mountain w/ the lights on, etc)
• All 4 parks in 1 day, 3 rides in each park
• 1 day with no rides
• Photograph as many Hidden Mickey's as possible
• Pick 1 ride and ride it as many times as possible in one day
• See every show
• See every parade
• Take a picture with each park's landmark
• Watch a custodian paint a water picture
• See Illuminations, Wishes, and Fantasmic all in one night
• Buy a balloon on Main Street
• Ride all 3 mountains in one day (Space, Splash, Big Thunder Mountain)
• Meet all of the Disney princesses in one day
• 1 day that's dedicated only to meeting characters, no rides
• HARRY POTTER LAND
• Drink a butterbeer

Pretty generic right now. I definitely plan to add to this in the coming days (EEK!) and weeks, especially as I get down there and start talking to more people about all the "can't miss" bucket list items.

I'm excited. So excited. Holy cow I'm excited.

Alright. I should go do laundry now.

Disney Challenge: Days 1 and 2

 

Finals are over. The apartment is cleaned and moved out of. I have evacuated out of the cold frozen potato-infested region. I survived one heck of a car accident (goodbye Phyllis the Toyota Camry! I have never had a noble steed to call my own, but I do believe you were the noblest of the noble as far as car/steeds go!). My 15 hour road-trip morphed into a 30+ hour road-trip due to the complications that come with totaling a vehicle in the middle of nowhere.

But all is well! I am home at last in the Golden State where you can step outside in a tee-shirt and not catch hypothermia. As much as I love that quaint little college town, I do not miss my nosehairs freezing when I'm outside. Life is beautiful. There's nothing before me now except for four months of pure magical bliss. Yes, Christmas is going to be wonderful. This is my favorite time of the year for all of those happy warm fuzzy reasons. But for me, the joyous feelings aren't going to stop and I can postpone the entrance back to the real world for a little bit longer.

Why, you might ask?

Because I'm going to go live and work at Walt Disney World for four months. I'm under no illusions: I'm hired because college kids are totally cheap labor and yes, my pay is going to be less than it would be if I had a minimum wage job here in my hometown. I'm totally aware of it. But on my days off I can take a picture with Flynn Rider and ride Space Mountain...so I'm not complaining :)

In order to channel my somewhat-obsessive/overly excited feelings towards this new adventure, I turned to Pinterest for some ideas on how to keep myself busy/distracted. And I stumbled upon a 30 Day Disney Challenge for bloggers. According to the beautiful CountDown App on my phone (hush, don't judge me), I have 14 days until I catch a plane to Orlando which means that I'll have to double up and do two days worth of challenges at a time butttttt that's totally fine with me :) So....let's do this thing!

Day Number One: Favorite Character

The issue with me (and trust me, I have many many issues) is that I have so many favorites that I really struggled to nail them all down into one category because they could fit in so many. For example: Belle is my favorite princess but technically she's a heroine. But anyways, I digress.

For the issue of favorite character, there really was no debate. If you know anything about me and my love of Disney, it's that I absolutely adore the Lion King. So my favorite character is, naturally, Simba.

It took me many, many moons to understand the themes and the dynamics all at work in "The Lion King". No, it's not completely original. Yes, it's based off of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. But man oh man do I absolutely love it. 20 years of life later and I can still enjoy it. I have way too much of it committed to memory and I'm at the point where I have to monitor who I'm with when I watch it because I will do the full running dialogue throughout the entire thing.

Last Christmas the Broadway stage production of "The Lion King" came to San Francisco and my Christmas present to myself were two tickets to go and see it. My younger sister accompanied me and while she enjoyed it, I don't think she geeked out nearly as much as I did. I was in absolute heaven. If you ever have the chance to go see it GO. I'll be going again in a heartbeat if it ever comes to my neck of the woods again. The costumes are incredible and the way that the actors have taught themselves to move like wild animals...it's pretty amazing to watch. I'm a fan. 

The nerdiness has continued since my discovery of using 'Spotify' to listen to movie/musical soundtracks while I work on homework or write. The soundtrack for the Broadway version of the Lion King is powerful. My personal favorite song: "Endless Night". So much beauty and depth. It's more than a story about a lion and his silly meerkat/warthog friends. It's a movie with powerful themes and motifs on life and accepting who you are despite the mistakes that you've made. Plus...c'mon, Pumbaa is adorable ;)

I'm including a link to a YouTube video of a performance of 'Endless Night' on the Rosie O'Donnell show back in the day. Seriously go watch it and just fall in love. Plus: look at that costuming. A man. But a lion. At the same time. Pure genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7AeTFYsBgc

Disney College Program: My Adventure! :)

On January 8, 2014 I'm going to be moving into an apartment on Disney-owned property in Orlando, Florida to work merchandise at Walt Disney World. I'll be down there participating in the Disney College Program from January 8 until April 11.

I've mentioned the Disney College Program (DCP) a few times before on the blog but I'll give a brief overview for newbies just poking around my blog for the first time:

In a nutshell, the DCP is a program for college students to come down and get work experience by working at a Disney park. The program is available at both Disneyland in Anaheim and Disney World in Florida. The program has been around longer and is more fully developed in Florida, so most participants get assigned to work there. You can be assigned to many different 'roles' (attractions, lifeguard, custodial, etc.). The application process involves filling out an application, taking a web-based interview, a phone interview, and then being offered a position. Disney has a few different housing complexes that kids on the DCP can live in, and rent is taken out of your paycheck each week. Depending on what your major is, participating in the DCP can actually count as a formal internship. Participants of the DCP are offered college courses through Disney that, again, some schools will recognize for college credit. In my case, school courses won't count and the internship won't count either so I'm just doing it for the experience. That's the basis of the program. If you want to learn more about the program, I'll put the link at the bottom of this post so you can read about more of the nitty-gritty details :)

I learned about the DCP during my first semester of school almost two years ago. I had two different people tell me about the program, but for the life of me I can't remember who I talked to first. The wonderful Jordan was my beautiful roommate back when I was a wee little freshman and her older sister had done the DCP. Jordan and I bonded over quite a few things that semester ('Friends', Harry Potter, Dr Pepper, etc.) but our love of Disney was definitely one of them. We went to a meeting on campus about it and heard about the program from official campus reps. Jordan had nothing but good things to say about it based on when her sister had done the program, so I got really excited. Around that same time, my friend Melanie and I went out to lunch. Her older sister was down in Anaheim participating in the DCP that semester. Melanie and I both were really excited about applying and all that jazz.

I applied several times to the DCP. Most of it was half-hearted 'oh wouldn't this be fun: I'm just going to run away to Disney' and I never got accepted. Last February I actually DID get accepted for Attractions, but felt that I needed to turn down the offer (which I did).

I applied, again, in September (I'm nothing if not persistent!). After applying, I got majorly hit with Disney fever. It was insane: staying up until all hours of the night reading blog after blog after blog of different people who had done the DCP and what they experienced. I watched just about every YouTube video available. I was a full-on freak. School hadn't started up for the semester so I was still back home and I'm pretty sure that every other sentence that I said to my Mom had something to do with Disney. Once I had my phone interview I, thankfully, calmed down and was able to focus on school like a semi-normal individual.

Disney says that 2-3 weeks after your phone interview you should expect to hear SOMETHING back: congratulations, thanks but no thanks, or a 'pending'. After I hit that 2 week mark I got ridiculously hopeful every time I got an email. But I figured that no news was good news at this point, so I kept waiting.

EXACTLY on my 3-week deadline, I got my email from Disney. I teach a class of toddlers every Tues/Thurs morning and during that time we're "professionals" so our cell phones have to be put away on pain of death. I pulled out my phone to check the time RIGHT before I went into the classroom, and saw the 'Congratulations' email but didn't have time to actually read any of the details before I went into class. I was able to shoot off a text to my Mom and a few other roommates/close friends who knew that I was waiting to hear back, but that was about it.

After class, I logged onto a computer with lightning speed and opened up the email that listed my role. I couldn't read for very long, because I had to go to work (I babysit for the world's greatest family EVER).

Suddenly it was all real: I could move across the country and go work for Disney. I expected to be off-the-walls ecstatic and crying tears of joy but I was FREAKING out. I was super nervous all of the sudden. Accepting the offer would mean moving across the country. I had to move across state lines to go to college, but I was about 3 hours away from both of my grandma's house and I have an aunt and uncle that live half an hour away. I'm still familiar with this part of the United States so it didn't seem THAT intimidating.

Not only that, but I go to school in a very small Mormon bubble. Literally everyone and their dog is Mormon here. Which is great because I've been able to grow spiritually and improve my life in so many ways. I wouldn't change that in a second. But moving to Orlando...that's like the REAL WORLD. I mean... people drink and do drugs and have sex. Whoa. Stop the presses. Scandalousssss ;) Now to be fair, I've had friends do all of those three things and it's never really been an issue in my life. They know what I will and won't do, and they've never pressured me to change. But the idea of living in a place with strangers who may not understand why I'm the weirdo that I am and might want to pressure me to do some of that stuff....kind of intimidating.

I'm not big on taking risks. Ever. A very good friend of mine pointed that out in a semi-loving way. I was the kid that wouldn't ever climb a tree because the thought of falling out and getting hurt was just too much to handle. I refused to pull out ANY of my baby teeth, for crying out loud. I wiggled and wiggled and wiggled until that tooth was literally only hanging on by a thread...but I would not pull that sucker out. It would hurt too badly. THAT'S the kind of kid I was and I haven't really changed much as I've grown older.

So to move across the country to Orlando where I don't know a soul and have no one to hold my hand and support me in all of my Mormon ways of living...are you getting why I was freaking out? When I called my Mom that afternoon--the same afternoon when I had gotten the Congratulations email--the first thing she said to me was "So have you accepted it yet?" and when I said no, she laughed. That's my mother, ladies and gentleman.

To be fair though, she wasn't laughing to be mean. When I first told my parents of my interest in DCP many many moons ago, they weren't exactly thrilled. I mean... having your college-aged daughter run away to work in a theme park run by a mouse isn't exactly every parents hope and dream. I get it. But as I kept being persistent, my parents were finally shown the light. Something about 'follow your passions' or something equally dreamy that belongs on a Hallmark card. I guess they just grew to realize that while I was still getting older physically, Disney made me revert back to that little girl.

So Mama dearest was on the phone with me when I clicked the 'I accept' button. And as soon as I did, THAT"s when the excitement hit. I've had several dozen Disney dreams since then (Space Mountain on a Monday afternoon while my sisters suffer through high school? YES PLEASE!).

So that's my story. I'll be down in Disney for 4 whole months. Since accepting my offer, I've harnessed the power of social media (oh hail Zuckerburg for giving us Facebook!) to locate roommates who are also natives of my dear ol' college. We've met up for a cupcake date and I am SO excited to live with these lovely ladies who have lived here in the Mormon bubble as well. My fears about moving to Orlando have been greatly lessened.

I have 44 days until I move down to Orlando for my adventure. And I am so freaking excited for it.

http://cp.disneycareers.com/en/default/