The Mandatory DCP Bucket List Post!

So, I know this is a little late--I'm leaving in less then 48 hours--but better late then never!
I have the list split into a couple categories....well really just two: The food category, and the none-food category! LOL I am really looking forward to trying a lot of food!!!

Food:

MK-

Try Dole Whip!

Eat the grey stuff at Be Our Guest

Attend a character breakfast at crystal palace

Get a milkshake at the Plaza Restaurant!

Get a waffle from sleepy hallow!

Eat pasta at Tony's Town Square and watch a parade!

Attend a Tomorrowland Dessert Party!

Epcot-

Try German Pretzel Bread!

Eat at Biergarten

Try a bakery item at Kringla Bakeri!

Get French ice cream at L'Artisan des glace!

Eat at San Angel Inn

AK-

Try the jalepeno cheese pretzel!

Try something at the Kusafri Bakery

Eat at Rainforest Cafe

HS-

Try a cupcake at Starring Roles!

Resorts-

Eat at Beaches and Cream!

Eat at CA Grill

See the Hoop De Doo Musical Revue!

Eat at Trails End

Attend a character breakfast at 1900 Park Fare!

Eat at Planet Hollywood

Everything Else:

Watch MK Fireworks on the Polynesian Beach!

Get a haircut at the Harmony Barber Shop!

See the electrical water pagent!

Take a carriage ride at Port Orleans River Side

Find Cinerella's Wishing Well

Get embroidered DCP Mickey Ears (If that is allowed)

Listen to the pianist at Casey's corner

Meet Characters in Epcot!

-Aladdin in Morocco

-Belle in France

-Aurora in France

-Marie in France

-Snow White in Germany

-Alice in UK

-Mary Poppins in UK

-Winnie The Pooh in UK

-Mulan in China

-Anna and Elsa in Norway!

Other-Must see Characters:

-Merida by Cinderella Castle

-Mickey Mouse in the Town Square Theater

-Ariel in Fantasyland Grotto

-Gaston in Fantasyland

-Peter Pan and Wendy in Fantasyland

-The Tremains by the castle

-The Beast at dinner at Be Our Guest

-Cruella

-Phocahontas in AK

Rent a surrey at a resort!

Design a Tee at DTD

Go to Disney Quest!

Ride the Characters in Flight Balloon

Spot River Country, the abandoned water park

Spot Discovery Island, the abandoned Disney Zoo in Bay Lake

Spend a day devoted just to meeting characters!

Get a Birthday Button when I arrive! (Birthday is February 12th)

Visit Cinderella's Royal Castle Suite

Walk through the Haunted Mansion

Dress up for Dapper Day!

Find the Metrophone in Tomorrowland!

Get a spot in front of the castle to see Wishes instead of watching from the end of the Main Street!

Find the Wooden Leg named Smith in MK (From Mary Poppins)

Find the Brides Ring at the Haunted Mansion Exit

Find the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion Windows

Find the Haunted Mansion Service Bells in the Wheelchair/VIP Entrance

Look for Phantom of the Opera Poster in the Haunted Mansion Attic

Find the Lady and the Tramp Paw prints on Main Street

Find Walt Disney's name on the Main Street windows

See the Kiss Goodnight

Try to be picked to be a guest conductor on the MK Railroad and get the conductor card

Ask to ride in the pilots house of the Liberty Belle and get the Pilot Certificate

Find picture of Mr. Toad handing a deed to Owl on Winnie the Pooh

Visit every park for rope drop!

Find Pharaoh Mickey and Donald on the Great Movie Ride

Get the Cowboy/Robber side of the Great Movie Ride

Find key under moppets welcome mat

Get a fan personalized in Chinese for free in Epcot

Find the Beasts Rose in the France Perfume Shop

Find the Epcot talking fountains (If they still exist)

Collect Resort pressed coins, one from each

Collect Attraction pressed coins, one from each

Three Days 'Til Take Off!

Wow, where did the last three weeks go?? I am now down to three days until my departure, and four days until check in, which is so crazy! Time has a way of running away from me when I have a lot to do, and even though I have not been going to school or work this month, I somehow still have a lot left to do! I applaud those I know who kept working up until their departure and have still managed to get everything in order for the move. 

I have also been getting a lot of emails from Disney over the past three weeks. Exactly three weeks before arrival, I received my new hire document link and password. These were basically a lot of online documents about different rules of the program and Disney in general, including the Disney look and standards. There was also a section for signing up for direct deposit. These documents were rather lengthy, and required you to electronically sign them after reading.

Two weeks before check in, all my potential roommates and I received our DORMS email, which allowed us to access the Disney Housing site to put in our roommate requests, as well as our apartment size and location requests! After waiting a couple hours for one of our roommates to get an issue figured out with her DORMS, we were able to get on and link all of us together! We requested a six person, three bedroom in Chatham as our first choice, followed by Patterson and the Commons, and placed Vista last. One part of the DORMS Housing process that surprised me was the fact that it included more documents to read and sign! I'm not sure why I was surprised by this, since Disney likes to cover their  bases and be sure everyone is aware of the rules. However, these ones were a lot shorter then the ones you have to read for the New Hire Documents thankfully! Once you submit,you will be emailed and presented with a boarding pass with a bar code on it, which is very important so be sure to print it! You will need it at check-in.

Around this same time I got emails from Disney Education inviting me to log on to Disney's own Education portal for the classes I'm enrolled in, which is really cool! It lists the courses you're enrolled in, the class roster, the teachers bio, the time, date and location of each class, a calendar that lists when you have class, and even a class syllabus that tells you exactly what you will be doing in class every day! It was really fun to explore and made me even more excited for Disney Heritage and Disney Guest Services!

Last but not least, just today, five days before check in, myself and all of my probable roommates received our specific check-in times for Monday! When I chose my arrival date after I was accepted way back in October, it only told me to check in between 8-11am on February 2nd, it didn't give me a specific time. However, we got them now and we all got the same time, 10:45-11:45! I am so glad we all got the same time so that we can meet up before hand and go together. 

So we are all set for check-in now, and I can't wait! I'm very anxious to find out where I am going to be living, although I am not terribly picky about any of the complexes. I did a lot of research and honestly couldn't find any of them all that much worse than the others, besides Vista Way, but even that one isn't too bad. I think Patterson is the prettiest, and has the fanciest feel to it. The Commons has in room washer and dryer, so that is obviously something to be happy about if I am placed there. And Chatham has the best bus situation and seems like a great complex over all! 

As for my work location placement, since I didn't request a location during my phone interview, I have utterly no idea where I will be placed but I am super excited to find out. If I could go back and request somewhere, I would request Epcot, particularly the World Showcase, but I know that is a long shot to hope for now! So if I get Epcot at all I will be sooo stoked, but I will be really really happy if I get Animal Kingdom or Hollywood Studios as well! Magic Kingdom would be amazing of course, since that is where all the magic happens, but I am not thrilled by the idea of super late hours and the huge crowds, so I wouldn't say it is my very top choice. I also think working a resort would be pretty fun, particularly The Grand Floridian because it is my absolute favorite to visit and it would be sooo cool to work there every day!!

I still can't believe I am really going to be in Florida in three days, and that all the waiting is about to end. I will keep you posted about anything else that happens before then, and also work on getting up my bucket list!! Thanks for reading and have a magical day! :D

Getting Ready for the Move!

Okay, I've got three weeks left, time to talk about travel plans and packing!

I have begun the packing process, which is proving harder than I expected. I am bringing one large suitcase and one medium, plus a good-sized carry-on; however I am finding it difficult to fit my whole life in those bags! Clothes are the main issue, and shoes. I know everyone says you don't need that many clothes since you practically live in your work uniform except on days off, but it is really hard to narrow it down. Then I have all my hats, jewelry, lotions and purses, as well as my art supplies and tech accessories and favorite books and movies! I also want to bring some Disney and Harry Potter accessories to wear in the parks, and some writing supplies for my Disney classes.

I've already decided I will have to buy bedding in Florida, as well as laundrey baskets, storage racks, hangers, bathroom accessories like mats and towels, a hamper, small trash can, table lamp, and possibly a mattress pad. So I will have a lot of shopping to do on my first day!:D And on the bright side, my roommate wont have to worry about me taking up too much space in the room, since I am not bringing very much:)

Speaking of roommates, I realized I have yet to write about them! I have five lovely roommates, so there are six of us total, and we are hoping to get a three bedroom apartment. That way we will only share the bedroom and bathroom with one other person. Right now we are working on our plans for our first night after moving in, with some of our ideas being visiting the Disney Boardwalk, eating at Ohana and/or watching Wishes, or going to Downtown Disney and exploring down there! I am also busy working on the gifts I am making for the girls for our roommate gift exchange, which I am very excited about! I will share photos of what I made after the exchange so as not to ruin the surprise:)

The Grand Floridian and The Polynesian from the Monorail

Out of all six of us, I believe I am the only one flying. I am going to fly out of Portland on February 1st at 9am on Southwest airlines, and originally was going to arrive at 9pm in Orlando with two stops along the way. However, thanks to my observant travel partner, we were able to switch to a flight which has only one stop, and arrives at 7:50pm, and save a little money! I believe there will actually be three of us on that flight heading down for DCP, so that will be nice!

Arriving at AOA on my 2013 trip

Me and the fellow DCper from Oregon who I am flying with, made reservations for the Art of Animation Resort that night before check-in, which I am so excited about! The resort is brand new and VERY Disney oriented, which is so fun, and we got our room for a pretty decent price!

The view from the AOA Little Mermaid suites at sunrise

I am beyond excited for the adventures that lie ahead, and can't wait to share them here on the blog. Thanks for reading, and have a magical day!

Less Then One Month to Go!!!

Well Hello Everyone!

Can you believe check-in for the program is in less then ONE MONTH?!?!?
December was such a busy month, I had utterly no time to write, or even think about DIsney very much, so I have a lot of catching up to do!

I worked 35-40 hours every week last month, and was switched from cashiering to guest services, which means I spent my entire 8 hour shift standing at the service desk answering phones, processing returns and helping customers with their layaways, online pick-up orders, or other questions. It was a really challenging position, but I learned a LOT, and feel that I have so much more experience than I did before I started at Toys R Us!

Disneyland Monorail in Tomorrowland

It was also my first job with such long hours--my last job I got about 20 hours a week. This was nice, since the minimum work week at DIsney is usually 35 hours, I was happy to get the experience of working that much now so I am prepared for it. I actually found it to not be that much work at all; in fact, at the beginning of the job before Christmas break, I was handling 6 hours of class before work, and then going to work in the late afternoon for a 6-8 hour shift, and still managed to stay on top of things with finals and homework! Obviously during busy season Disney's work hours go up to the 50's and 60's, but during the slow season, I feel like I will still have adequent free time if I work 40 hours or so.

So, besides that, a few things have been happening in the DCP world! For the past month I have been receiving plenty of emails from Disney, reminding me about different aspects of the program such as Educational Opportunities, The Disney Look, A tax credit form to fill out, and a DORMS update telling me when to expect to be able to get on and fill that out for housing options. I also received an email about a new arrival date Disney was asking people to switch to if they like, which was in early March. I thought that was sort of weird, why would anyone want to switch to March? I think February is late enough as it is!

Finally, on Christmas Eve I received my new hire email, which had a password and link to a site where I had to fill out information about myself and if I had any dependents or a spouse. I also had to read about 12 documents and "sign" that I read them. The only problem was that it was not letting me click the "Sign and Submit" button not the documents. I tried downloading the new Adobe and tried all different browsers, but finally came to the conclusion that it just doesn't really work on a Mac. My plan now is to try my Dad's windows computer later and hopefully that will work!

I also got one last email on my one-month-out-from-check-in day which was just letting me know that check in is coming soon, and I need to fill out the new hire stuff. I can't believe how fast all of this is coming up! In my next post I will discuss my travel plans and packing ideas and everything else going on as far as my preparations for the move.

Have a Magical Day!

Signing up for Disney Classes!

Welcome back everybody!

Wow, things have got really busy recently! Between Thanksgiving, working black friday at Toys R Us, and finals approaching, I never even realized until today that I never posted about signing up for Disney classes! So I am going to take a little bit of time to tell you all about the process.

The Syllabus for Exploring Guest Services Seminar Course

On the onboarding site for DCP, there is a page where you can read all Disney class syllabi and decide what classes you would like to take. DCP has two main types of courses. The collegiate courses, which are college-level courses with homework and textbooks, have a small cost and are about four hours long, once a week. Some Universities give credit for these classes, but sadly mine does not. The other kind of classes Disney offers are seminar courses, which are two hours long once a week and have no homework or textbooks. The classes I was interested in were Exploring Disney Heritage, and Exploring Guest Services, both of which are seminar classes.

The Registration page, which hours prior had said registration began at 12am EST

Class sign-ups were supposed to be November 10th at 12am EST, so 9pm on November 9th for me over in the Pacific time zone. However, a few hours before that the DORMS website randomly changed to say sign ups would not be until 10 am EST the next morning! This was really random, and stressed a lot of people out who had plans that morning! I didn't think it was really quite fair of Disney to change it at the last minute like that without sending out an email or anything letting us all know. But if there is anything I have learned through the entire DCP process, it is that Disney works in strange and  mysterious ways, and no one will ever truly understand it.

The email I got after requesting a temporary password to get into DORMS

So I got up at 7am PST that morning, and had to get a temporary password to get onto the DORMS site in order to register. When 7am hit, the site started crashing, and everyone on the Facebook pages were panicking because they couldn't get the site to work! It took me almost an hour of refreshing the page over and over before I could finally get onto the actual sign up page to see what class times were available for the classes I wanted. Thankfully, Disney Heritage still had a class with spots available, and the other class I wanted to take was available as well! After I submitted my registration I received a confirmation email, and I was all set!

After registering, I could log onto DORMS and see the classes I was signed up for, including the class number, time, date and location of the class.

The process was stressful for many because Disney never sent any instructions on how to sign up for the classes, and many were confused by the fact that we went through DORMS to sign up. Sadly, many of my friends were unable to get into the classes they wanted to take and were put on the wait list because they couldn't figure out how to get into DORMS or couldn't make it to the class sign up time since Disney changed the time at the last minute. The only reason I didn't have all that much trouble was because I was watching the Facebook page and doing whatever seemed to be working for everyone else.

It wasn't easy, but I definitely wouldn't stress about it. Just keep an eye on the registration time incase it changes like mine did!

Sad Day…

Hello fellow Disney lovers!

As some of you may know, the acceptance period for the Spring and Spring Advantage 2015 Disney College Program ended on Monday, and a lot of people got rejected. Sadly, my best friend who applied with me was one of them :( We knew there was a chance she wouldn't make it in, but it was still hard to hear. Since we applied together, we had high hopes of experiencing this incredible adventure together, but it looks like it is not meant to be this term.

City Hall on Main Street USA

However, she is planning to apply again for Fall Advantage Program, which starts in May, so that we may get to at least spend the summer there together. It is going to be hard to leave her behind, especially since we have been practically attached at the hip since we met in ninth grade, but she is very supportive of me going. We are already planning a trip for her to come out and visit me during my program!

In the days before the acceptance period ended, many people on the Facebook page talked about a huge wave of acceptance going out on the last day…I never saw any such wave. It was mostly just a whole lot of NLIC's--it was definitely a sad day for a lot of people. But the good news is that now everyone who is going to get in, is in, and we can all start preparing for the move!

The Soundsational Parade

For those of you who are curious about the details, she applied on the very first day applications opened up, and waited until the very last day of the acceptance period before finally getting her No Longer In Consideration email. She was put into submission right after she submitted her application. However, she was taken out about a month later and passed both her Web-Based-Interview and her Phone Interview. It was an especially long journey for her, and it makes me so much more grateful for being given the spot that I received in this terms program! It was a long, hard journey. If you weren't accepted this time, don't give up! I know the process is hard, but if you keep pushing towards your dream, you've got to get there eventually! And for those of us who made it to the other side--Congratulations! I can't wait to meet you all in Florida! 74 days until Check In at Walt Disney World! :D

93 Days to Go!

Hey guys!

So, I am at that point in the DCP process in which I have a long time to wait and not a lot to do! I have 93 days until check-in, and a week until I can sign up for Disney courses, so for now I thought I would just write a little up-date post about what is going on in my life!

First off, my best friend who applied to the program with me is still in progress! Which is stressing me out since it is November second already! She applied before me, around August 25th, and was immediately put in submission. However, in late September, she got her Web-Based-Interview email and changed to In Progress! Now it has been just over a month since her Phone Interview, and she still has yet to be pended, NLIC'd or accepted, so we are all just keeping our fingers crossed!

Paradise Pier, California Adventure

I recently got a seasonal position at Toys R Us in order to save money to for Florida, which is going very well! I hated both my past jobs, so I am really grateful that this job seems to be working out better! I mostly run the cash register, but also spend time doing item put-backs and neatening the aisles…just the usual sales associate jobs. The store has lots of cool Disney merchandise, and the children who come in are all so sweet and adorable. They also play a lot of Disney music, which is a fun touch. I almost feel sad about leaving the job after Christmas….just kidding, how could anyone feel sad about leaving to go work at Disney World?? ;)

Mid-terms are this week at school, so I'm studying for those, when I'm not making plans for my move to Florida! I'm taking writing, journalism, science and sociology courses this term. I enjoy writing and sociology a lot, but journalism and science, not so much. Journalism is just not my style, and science bores me to death. How people find joy in scientific experiments and theories, I will never know.

As far as my Disney plans go, I have been working on a bucket list which I will be posting soon! I am thinking about what clothes to bring on the program, because everyone always says they way over-packed as far as clothes go, but it is so hard to narrow it down! I love all my clothes! I want to take some dresses because I wear dresses all the time, but which dresses should I bring? I need my mint green dress in case I want to Disney bound as Little Mermaid (it is going to happen), and my maxi dress for a nice dinner, and my comfortable cotton floral for wearing to the parks, but let's not forget about my pink high-low dress, the cute sundress, or the Belle dress I wore on Halloween! And what about skirts--there is no way I'm leaving behind any of my skater skirts. Now you don't want to even get me started on tops!

I am thinking about making some reservations for some of the more popular restaurants before I go, such as Be our Guest, Crystal Palace, Prime Time Cafe, Trails End, and 1900 Park Fare! I would love to go to the California Grill to watch wishes, and the Hoop De Doo Revue, but I'm going to see if my budget will allow it once I am down there before I make any plans for really pricey things. I've only been to WDW once, and although I experienced a lot of the highlights of the World on my trip, I know there were a lot of things I missed and I want to see everything!


Fun fact: a month ago today I was accepted for the Program! :D It seems like wayy longer somehow, maybe because I am so anxious for time to pass so the Program can start! But pass it will, and before I know it, I'm going to be living and working in sunny Florida!

Thanks for reading, and have a magical day!