The summer before my junior year of high school, I visited Disney World with my grandparents. On this particular day, I was at the Magic Kingdom. I ran into a little shop to purchase something and I noticed the cashier was from Schaumburg; a town very close to my own (For those who don’t know, a cast member’s name tag says where they are from). We started talking about that and somehow got into the topic of how she got to Disney. This was the first time I heard of the Disney College Program. I was hooked from that very moment and knew it was something I had to do.
When I graduated high school, I filled out the application for the program multiple times, but never submitted it. For some reason, I was scared to. Looking back now I think that it’s because I wasn’t quite ready to leave home.
Over this past summer, my friend and I talked about doing the program together. Her mom knew a DCP Alumni from work and planned for us to get together with her so she could share information about the program. We met at Starbucks and she told us everything about her program. Everything she said made me want this opportunity so bad. In fact, I think I almost cried when she was explaining everything the experience had to offer.
Applications came out September 5th. I didn’t apply right away; I was terrified of being rejected. Finally, I decided I needed to do it. I filled out the application on September 19th. For some reason, the server was acting up and I had to fill it out 3 times back to back just for it to finally be submitted. Right away, I received the email about the web-based interview. I did this one September 21st. This interview was the easiest thing ever! It asked questions like ‘are you organized’ and ‘are you on time’. Immediately after that, I received the email telling me I could schedule a phone interview!
I scheduled my phone interview for September 27th, 2013 at 7:45 PM. I was super nervous for the phone interview. I spent all my free time reading different DCP blogs online and watching different Youtube videos about the program trying to gather as much information as I could to help me ace the interview. I wrote down notes of my top roles and questions to have in front of me. The interview began right on time. I was asked very basic interview questions, nothing out of the ordinary. I was trying to get hints from my interviewer as to if she was liking me from the tone of her voice or if she laughed or anything. She sounded very automatic, so this kind of made me nervous. The phone call lasted I believe 27 minutes, which from reading blogs I knew this was normal. My mom (who I told to stay away from my door and not eavesdrop) told me that I “talked myself up an awful lot.” This made me even more nervous, but then I realized it’s an interview and that what you’re supposed to do! After the phone interview you are told you will hear back within 2-3 weeks, but I knew that sometimes it’s a lot sooner. You either get an accepted email, a ‘no longer in consideration’ email or a pending email. If you are pended, your wait is longer. You can bet that from the moment after my interview, my phone was not leaving my hand and I was consistently on it checking my emails.
Five days later, on October 2nd I was at work refreshing my email over and over. I refreshed it, there was nothing. I had to go help a customer and when I came back I refreshed it again to find a new email that read “CONGRATULATIONS!” in the subject bar. I saw it was from Disney, jumped out of the chair and screamed (giving my manager a heart attack). She frantically asked what was wrong but by that point I was already crying hysterically. I grabbed the store phone and called my mom. She thought something had happened to me because I was crying and she couldn’t understand me well. I just kept saying over and over “I did it! I got it! I’m going to move to Florida!” When I got home from work, I was able to open the email on my computer and view the PDF file that comes along with it. My role I was given was quick service food and beverage. Not my first pick, but I’ll take it.
The following day (October 3rd), I accepted my offer and submitted the program fees. I then got to choose my program dates. I was hoping to choose January 13th because I had already met a girl, Lauren, in the DCP Facebook group, who lives near by me and was doing the program and then that way we could possibly room together. The date was not available for my role, so instead I choose January 27th which came along with May 30th as the departure date.
The next step is to search for roommates. You can either meet and select your roommates or have Disney do it upon arrival at random. There is a Disney College Program group on Facebook and this is where you can go to find roommates, ask questions and make friends. I posted a roommate survey which everyone does so you can get to know a possible roommate and soon after I was contacted by Estefania, who told me she had a group of 4 girls together and they were looking for a few more roommates. I started talking to all of them on a Facebook group message and soon enough, we were all roommates! Estefania, Erica, Lindsay, Paige and I all text daily in a group text and recently have started video chatting. We get along so well and I cannot wait to meet them.
