Thursday 17 December 2009

Back to the real world for 6 months...

Well, after getting over the excitement of getting THAT email again, and telling practically everyone I meet... you find me back at Clarks for the Christmas holidays (the prospect of not doing Back to School next year does slightly fill me with joy!) and with loads of Uni work to be doing (i.e. what I should be doing right now). I have to hand in a 3000 word draft of my dissertation theory chapter and do a rough edit of my minor project before going back to Uni... oh, and fit in a week's work experience at The London Studios in January as well. So it's all crazy and I think the thought of going back to WDW will keep me going through the coming months which are likely to be very stressful!

I am glad I have been accepted onto the later date... the 20th June. Initially, I wanted the 1st June date but I realised I would just be cramming it all in, trying to finish uni and move back to Bristol before flying out. So, at least I have another 3 weeks now to move home and hopefully do a few shifts either at the hospital or Clarks so that I have some moolah earnt at a decent wage... LOL. At least the £/$ exchange rate is better now than in 2008...

I have just sent an email directly to the Disney recruiters... well, you could see it as a slightly begging letter really to ask if I can be assigned my role in one of the four main parks, specifically MK! I know it will only be "noted" but it's worth a try right? Anything so that I don't end up at Disney's Wide World of Sports or Downtown Disney. My ideal role would be at MK because you get to do PAC and all sorts of fun stuff with the guests but I am not holding my hopes that high... I have to remember that I was so fortunate with the role I got before in the Emporium that this time, I may end up with a role somewhere I don't want as much... still, it's better than fitting shoes day in day out for 11 weeks right!!?

x

Wednesday 2 December 2009

AHHH!

I'M IN!! I'M GOING BACK TO DISNEY!!

I am sooooo excited right now! Fly out 20th June 2010 until September 3rd 2010!! In Main Entrance Operations which I had a sneaky feeling would be the one I would get... lets just hope I don't end up in the Wide World of Sports.... that wouldn't be so magical.

BUT YAY!

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Wear it on your heart.

Just a funny memory from my interview the other day that I forgot to write about... Jeff came out of the interview room into the waiting area and beckoned me and Hannah in. As we approached him, he said "And your name is...?" as you do... well, the fact I was surrounded by Disney and he was wearing a badge and everything lead me to have to resist to an automatic reaction of moving my right hand to above my heart to touch my badge and say "It's Catherine"... except there was no badge there. LOL. I hope there is in 8 months time... only a few more days until I find out.



Sunday 22 November 2009

A long day!

I meant to write this post last night but I was so tired I went practically straight to bed! Let's start from the beginning of my second face to face interview with the Walt Disney company...

5am: Alarm goes off. Ugh, too early. After lying in bed for a further 10 minutes I thought I'd better get up. Don't get me wrong, I was excited and nervous but this had caused bad sleep so I felt really tired! Got up, got dressed, applied 'Disney Look' make-up, told myself off for not ironing my shirt before leaving Bristol the day before and got my bag together, triple checking all my documents.

6am: I had booked a taxi for 6am from Salisbury Hospital's main entrance (I was staying in the nurses's accommodation, i.e. Tom's flat, as it was easier to get a train from here than Bournemouth thanks to engineering works). Thought it was better to be on the early side... well, £10 later I was already at the station for 6.10am. Ended up getting on the train that was already on the platform which was the 6.17am train to London. Because it was a Saturday, my ticket meant that I could get any train I wanted there and back which was fab because it was only a £20 return!

7.50am: I arrive at London Waterloo a full 1 hour and 40 minutes before I needed to be in Hammersmith so I went to Burger King and had a very yummy egg and bacon 'butty' thing with little hash browns and orange juice. After hanging around for a bit, having a quick chat with Tom on the phone and smartening myself up in the toilets it was about 8.20am so I headed to the Underground to top up my Oyster card and get onto the tube.

8.55am: I arrive at Hammersmith tube station. It's one of those annoying ones which has about 3 exits so I just head for the first one I see and it comes out on a main road. It then occurred to me why it is good to be early when you don't know where you're going! I had heard on the forums that there were two entrances to the Disney HQ... finding the first one wasn't too difficult but after a quick scout around I couldn't see another one. What I did see however, was a couple of people looking a bit nervous and standing around near Disney HQ so I went in head first and asked them if they were there for the same reason as me! They were :P

9.15am: By now there was about 20 of us hanging around outside the main entrance, with no clear way of getting in! Eventually someone came down and collected us, took us right round to the back of the building to the back entrance - helpful. The Disney HQ is amazing...lovely big posters everywhere with the movies on them and sculptures/artwork of Mickey and other characters. So Cool. So we all signed in and then were taken upstairs to a waiting area with lots of comfy chairs. It was nothing like the last interview with Disney where I was in a restaurant! Random.

9.45am: We are all taken into this screening room place, essentially a cinema with really cool reclining seats! Then Jill and Jeff (brilliantly American recruiters straight from WDW) did the presentation which I have seen before... rather amusing and quite interesting. Before the presentation we did another trivia quiz where I won a ICP pin :-)

10.45am: We are told our interview times - mine is at 5.40pm!!! So late! I had thought that if I had travelled from further away then it would be reasonably early but obviously not! So, we all went back downstairs to the entrance to the building as we had so long to wait. I had been chatting to 3 other girls called Amy, Hannah and Emily so we decided to go and do something together as our interviews were all later in the afternoon. As I had promised to meet up with Victoria I thought it would be nice for her to come with us too so we all met up at the Pizza Hut on Oxford St.

12.30pm: So, we sit in Pizza Hut and had a good value for money lunch of pizza and garlic bread (for me) which was very nice. Victoria recounted the under 21 drinking story from the ICP08 and the others asked her and me lots of questions about the program which was great. I basically spent the whole day talking about Disney! After we had finished at Pizza Hut, Amy and Emily decided it would be best if they headed back to Hammersmith because not all the tubes were running so it was taking a bit longer to get around. I said goodbye to Victoria and told her I'd see her in January when I'm back in London again!

2pm: Hannah and I attempted to get to the shopping mall that had been mentioned earlier in the day located at White City (i.e. where the BBC is... excitement!) but because the tubes were so rubbish we ended up back in Hammersmith where we wandered around this little shopping centre. We sat and discussed the roles and what we were going to go for... I decided to go for character attendant as 1st option, operations as 2nd and merchandise as 3rd. More on this later...

3.30pm: We decide to go back to Disney HQ as we wanted somewhere comfy to sit down and with the hope that we could get an earlier interview we headed back. Cue about 1 hour and 20 minutes of sitting around, chatting to other people about the program and getting our paperwork checked.

4.45pm: Really funny coincidence. I was supposed to have my interview with a guy who hadn't come back yet so Katie (I think that was her name) from Yummy Jobs just went... "Well how about you two go together then!". So for the 2nd year running, I ended up having my interview with someone I had been hanging around with all day! Whilst I was chatting to the girls from Yummy Jobs, she told me that the roles they had the most positions for were Custodial, QS F+B, Housekeeping and.... Operations. Now in theory this would be fab as it was my 2nd choice on the form but I am worried I will end up at Downtown Disney or Wide World of Sports as a ticket seller which would be crappy... but then I guess it's the risk you take with any of the roles. I could equally end up in a resort doing merchandise which is what I was worried about last time and I ended up in MK.

5pm: Me and Hannah go in for our interview with Jeff. I think it went pretty well... he asked me questions about why I wanted to go back, what roles I had chosen (I tried to emphasize to him I really wanted to be in the parks because I really loved working in MK last time, who knows if that helped or not) and he told me that they had changed the role of character attendant now so that you don't move around all the parks, you are assigned an area of a park for the whole time. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

5.20pm: So at the time I was supposed to be going in for my interview, I came out of it! I hope it went reasonably well. At the end of the day I guess it's better to be working for Disney in a role that wasn't my top choice than not at all but fingers crossed that I get my first choice and end up back in one of the four main parks! That would be brilliant, I can't explain how excited I would be!! So, interview over, we all said goodbye to each other - exchanged numbers and facebook names!

6.50pm: Back at Waterloo I had my third fast food meal of the day - a McFlurry. So piggy! I decided to get on the train that terminated at Salisbury so that I wouldn't get back too late. I didn't want to have to get 2 taxis in one day particularly! Got back to Salisbury at about 8.20pm and got the bus back to the hospital.

10pm: After having a well needed shower and tidy up, it was time for bed after a very long day. Rumour has it (straight from the YJ mouth!) the earliest we'll know is Friday and if not then the week after... i.e. next week. Kinda scary but it will be good to know asap so I can get on with organising my life! In the meantime I have loads of uni work to be getting on with which is what I should be doing right now so I had better go get on with some more procrastination!

Wish me luck!

x

Friday 20 November 2009

F2F Interview tomorrow!

Ooooooh, I am getting a little bit excited and nervous now! The face to face interview is in London tomorrow and I think it's the last day of interviews in the whole of the UK - all the others seem to have been done! The really scary bit is that from looking at the WDWIP forums, lots of people have been told that they will know by next Friday! :O Considering it took them 4 weeks to tell me last time, I am taking it with a pinch of salt but it could really be true!

Also heard a rumour of there being a waiting list this year which sounds horrible... I would prefer to be told I didn't get the job than be put on a waiting list...ok, maybe I wouldn't. But I wouldn't want to be sitting on a waiting list for ages not being able to book flights etc etc... I guess I will have to try to be as flexible as possible with roles and dates etc. If I did get put on a waiting list I would have to set a final date I am willing to wait... say the end of January. Otherwise everything just gets too expensive and last minute - like last time.

The good thing about being one of the last interviewees is that I have heard of a few questions people have been asked and just generally about the interview day. Obviously I remember it in 2008 but it will have changed slightly in the 18+ months since then.

The uber question really, and I know they will ask it, is WHY I want to go back and why I deserve to. It's a tricky one which has lots of potential answers, especially if you want to apply for a different role. For example, I wouldn't mind working in Merchandise again but I would love to apply for a different role like Character Attendant or Main St Operations. The chances of me being able to work on Main St again are very minimal but one can hope right!

So I'm just trying to plan my minor film shoot (a week tomorrow, ARGH) and revise my Disney facts and think about interview questions. Normally, I don't get too worked up about things and sleeping is rarely difficult but I just couldn't get to sleep last night! I hope tonight will be easier...I doubt it! Wish me luck!

x

Tuesday 10 November 2009

All set and ready to go!

Well, as you can tell, I have Uni work I should be doing... the whole putting Disney out of my mind thing isn't really working too well! I have my train booked, an outfit sorted (unfortunately not a new outfit... I'm not made of money :P) and I got Lizzie to sign off my forms today... she remembered doing them two years ago and that she messed it up! So I filled most of it out and she just had to sign it so that's all good.

So to be honest, I don't have a lot to say except that I should be editing and putting a little update on here seemed like a good way of wasting 5 minutes. I have everything ready for my interview now with the photocopies and the documents, just need a folder to put it in! I am debating about what shoes to wear (typical girl comment) as I know that walking around London in heels is very painful but my trousers are quite long so I don't want them to drag on the ground... so then there is the possibility of taking another pair of flat shoes but then I'd need another pair of trousers to wear because I don't want to ruin the bottoms of the legs! Dilemma! It seems I will just have to waste a little bit more time with a trying on session! Oh dear!

x

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Face to Face Email!

Firstly, if any of you keen beans read my last blog, you will notice I attempted to use a Disney reference in every title of the blog posts... I am not doing it this time, too much hard work! Just simple, to the point titles!

Anyway, I got my email! Woo! Almost 3 weeks after my phone interview (but then I had a very early phone interview) and the face to face (f2f) interview is in London on 21st November which is a Saturday... in fact 2 weeks on Saturday. Quite exciting.

I had a really awful day yesterday and I have had a horrible cold/fluey thing for a week so I wasn't feeling great and then the Disney magic popped into my inbox! I have to be in Hammersmith (at the Disney offices... cool!) for 9.30am so I booked my train to get in at about 8.20am. Difference between 2008 and this time is that I have to actually get off the train and onto a tube to get to the right place so I need to allow a little more time. The train ticket was only £20 and it's an off-peak return meaning I don't have to get a specific train which is fab too.. hopefully going to meet up with Victoria whilst in London, haven't seen her since I was on my placement in July.

I ended up booking the train from Salisbury rather than Bournemouth... I presume that because it's Saturday it's the time for maintenance on the railways because it was telling me I'd have to get a bus to Southampton and the train from there to London - no way! And from Bristol I'd have to change at Bath Spa (and it would cost more!) so in the end I thought I'd just do it from Salisbury... it's a direct train, only take 1 hr 30 and it was only £20. Might even be able to tie in a HCSW shift the next day to pay off the cost of the interview!

Yay! x

Thursday 29 October 2009

Here we go again...

It surprised me how much that phone interview worked me up! I mean, I have a lot of stress on my plate at the moment anyway with final year projects and a dissertation to write so I don't think that helped. Neither did the fact that they didn't call me at 2pm as I expected them to....

At about 2.40pm after 40 minutes of literally sitting and looking at my phone, hoping that my brain waves would make it ring, I went back onto the Yummy Jobs website and logged into my profile bit. This is a new system that they are using and I think it's had a few teething problems as it still said on my profile a link to "book your telephone interview date and time". So I clicked it again (despite having already done it once, the day before) and it came up with the same page for booking the interview... so I thought there was nothing to lose and booked another interview at 4.15pm. At that point I then had to go out with my housemate Maria to pick up her new car which was a blessing in disguise because it meant I had something else to think about until about 4pm.

We returned home and I waited for the phone to ring. At bang on 4.15pm, Hannah from Yummy Jobs called me - thank God! The phone call only lasted about 6 minutes which felt like a lot longer. As predicted, she asked me why I wanted to go back (to which I gave a typically cheesy answer) and then told me she didn't need to ask me many questions because I had already been through the interview once, 2 years ago! (It was twice actually, long story... see the other blog) She also said that she recognised my name and so this gave me the opportunity to explain how I couldn't reapply for 2009 and thus, why I wanted to go in 2010.

This was two weeks ago today. Since then I have been busy with Uni work and having my 21st birthday so I have hardly been thinking about it... which is good. As I said before, even if I do get a f2f interview and even if I get the job, it's not going to consume me like it did before because I have far too much Uni work to be focusing my efforts on. Yes, I will get excited and yes, I will look forward to it but I can't let it distract me too much! I am of course jumping ahead of myself here... and as usual will adopt the opinion of hoping for the best. They are due to email me any day now, last time it was 2 weeks and 2 days between the phone call and the email so I shall just keep an eye on my inbox (but no obsessive refreshing!!)

x

Thursday 15 October 2009

The first post but not the first blog!

Well, well, well. I'm back!! With my new blog... and I'm waiting. In a similar fashion to the beginning of my Magical Summer 2008 blog I am currently waiting for Yummy Jobs to call me. For my phone interview for the ICP 2010!! I couldn't resist reapplying...I thought a lot about it and realised this would be my last chance to go back and work at Disney and I don't have anything to lose except a summer of fitting shoes or changing beds so I sent in my application during August. Yes, I know it was early but I knew they wouldn't contact me until mid-September and they didn't...but about 3 weeks ago I got an email saying that I was through to the phone interviews. And then yesterday, another email requesting that I choose a slot for my phone interview - very organised compared to last time where they called me out of the blue!

However, having chosen 2pm today, I am now regretting knowing when they are going to call me as I am clock watching and slightly freaking out. I don't know why seen as I have already been through this process once but it's very nervewracking!! So, I set up this new blog because I want to document my second round with WDW but also just to keep my hands busy!!

x