CHARACTER PERFORMER!

I spoke with Eric for more details this morning, and I am definately a character performer, which was my first choice of roles. I'm so thrilled!

I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!

Congratulations!

You have been selected to take part in Disney's International College program!

Your departure date will be May 25,2008 and your program will finish August 8,2008.
I need to go over some details with you. Please contact me ASAP to let me know weather or not you accept this job offer.

Our phone # is 514-694-1194, we look forward to speaking with you soon!

Thanks,

Eric Theriault

Yahoooooooo for Tuesday!!!! So after 11 days of nervously anticipating news, I finally heard today that I have a position at Disney World this summer!! So tuesday is officially my favourite day of the week. Today is also my sister's birthday though, and it seems every important day for her something significant happens in my life-- She gets honour roll for the first time, I win a poetry contest, she wins a backetball tournament, I get accepted to university. Now I find out I'm accepted to work at Disney World on her 17th birthday.

But anyways... Today was the one day I wasn't checking my email multiple times an hour, as I was busy with other things. A good day all around, dance class, group project meeting, class, a meeting with one of my TAs, more class, and coming home-- and then strangely checking my facebook before my email. People had asked whether or not I got an email and I was actually confused for a second-- and then I started freaking out. When I saw the email in my inbox, I freaked out more, then opened the email, and had a heart attack. So then I did my happy dance and read the rest of the email (spotting the typo) and ran to tell my floor. I attempted to call my mother, but I couldn't reach her for a couple of hours, so I texted my sis, my dad, and of course, changed my status on facebook to tell the rest of my friends. Tomorrow, once I have more info, I'll call my grandparents and let them know as well.

So much to think about now-- background check, visas, passport, flight-- I'm so thrilled!

The Interview

Ok, so the interview has officially happened and the waiting (the ten times more stressful than before waiting) has officially started. So here's how it all happened...

My mom arrived on Thursday night, January 31st 2008 at about 9:30, and spent a night in res. We were super concerned about the weather reports coming in predicting the worst storm of the winter the following day, and we wanted to make an early start of it. So after a slightly eventful evening involving chocolate chip surprise cookies (there were no chocolate chips in them. Surprise. Instead there were skor toffee bits) and me trying unsucessfully to put a sheet on an air mattress (it was funny. You maybe had to be there) we went to sleep. Or, rather, my mom fell asleep (and snored) and I stayed awake for what felt like ever stressing about the interview. I woke up early the next morning to my alarm clock, and we set off, after a bit (i'm slow moving in the mornings, and even Disney Interview day didn't speed me up.) After one false start (i forgot my cell phone, so we turned around) we set off into the storm. At first, there were flurries. Then there was a blizzard. Then we got on highway 401 and had no visibility at all. It was terrific. A trip that usually takes 3 hours took 5, and felt more like off-roading than highway driving. We couldn't see the pavement at all, the snow was completely covering the highway, and for the longest time, we couldn't see a single other car, even on the other side of the highway! Anybody from Ontario will tell you that on the 401, empty lanes are a rarity. At times we felt very isolated, and the rock build up along the sides of the road with their icicles on them felt very otherworldly-- almost as though we were on the moon. For a while, we thought we were going to turn back. Even at our tim hortons break at a truck stop, we saw more trucks stopped (during the day!) than I have ever seen before. The roads were terrifying, mostly because you couldn't see them. There was just snow.

Eventually, we made it to Toronto (although at our exit there was a church with a sign that said "prepare to meet thine god" We were a little scared about the implications of such a sign in snow storm driving...) and checked into the Holiday Inn Express at about 1:00, which gave me a chance to settle in and breathe before the interview (in other words I fixed my hair, makeup and changed into my 'professional business attire') then we set back out, through the snow to find the Grand Hotel, where the interview was being held. The hotel lobby said it was about two blocks away, and even in the blizzard we decided to walk it, though we budgeted about a half hour to get there, just to be safe. This was lucky, because somehow we misunderstood the directions and turned the wrong way onto Jarvis ave, and ended up walking for about 15 minutes, in slushy puddles and massive snowflakes.

When we at last arrived at the Grand Hotel, I realized the top button of my coat was not done up and my blouse was soaked, plus my hair and makeup were not the way they had been when we had set out into the snow. After a frantic few minutes in the bathroom of the hotel, I was looking slightly less like a drowned rat, a hotel employee came into the very fancy washrooms and mentioned that the disney recruiters had not yet arrived due to a fight delay. This calmed me down a bit, and I went on into the presentation room. The question put to me the second I entered the room was 'how many times have you been to walt disney world?' It seemed that all the people waiting for the presentation were chit chatting and having a sort of competition, not for who had been the most amount of times, but who had been the least. One guy had only been once, and at the time he was four. I guess the experience stuck with him to be going back years later to work. One other guy told a story about how when he was about 4 he really liked Cinderella, and when his parents took him to wdw, he wanted to see if she was wearing her glass slippers. Somehow, he slipped through the crowd and his parents saw two little sneakers poking out from under Cinderella's dress. Apparently she was missing her slippers-- instead she had on white cowboy boots.

After a few laughs and almost an hour, Eric, the rep from Cast-a-Way Cruise and Resort Hiring Agency arrived with the two Disney recruiters, Sue and Roger Their flight from Halifax had been delayed, and they apologized profusely. They were also impressed with how many of us had braved the weather, (as if SNOW would stop canadians) but apparently it did as only 15 of the 25 of us who had registered were present. We were given forms to fill out while they set up their presentation. My fav part of the forms was where you got to write your name and hometown as you'd like them to appear on your nametag-- as though we were for sure getting nametags. Ranking the roles I was interested in was def the hardest thing-- I knew character performer was my first choice, but after that I was a bit stuck- everything sounded fun!!

The presentation was good, funny but informative, with a cute little video complete with a fashion show of some of the various 'costumes' (uniforms) of the cast members. Some (easy) trivia questions were asked, I won a magnet for knowing the names of the two water parks at wdw. [As I had been frantically memorizing stuff like how many steps apart the garbage cans are (the same number it took Walt to eat a hotdog) and dates parks opened and movies came out, I felt a little over prepared. I had driven my mom nuts in the car reciting stuff like the names of the seven dwarves and cinderella's two stepsisters and mice. ] After the presentation, we were give an interview time. I was in the second group of 4 (4 at a time, 2 per recruiter) which was only 20 minutes after the presentation ended. We all left the room and milled in the lobby, filling out the rest of our forms and chatting while we waited for our turns.

I was interviewed by Sue, who seemed really nice. The interview started with the other girl, whose first role choice was full service f & b. She was asked a couple of questions, then I was asked a couple of questions, (ie. what made you want to apply, how did you hear about it, do you think you could handle living with a bunch of other girls, have you ever lived away from home before) then it moved into role specific questions, again her first, then me (how much experience do you have, how do you think that experience would help you, how would you deal with difficult guests, how would you deal with a confining costume, heavy head, what would you do if a child was scared to approach you, what kind of dance and theatre experience do you have, etc) and then she asked if we had any questions, and finally, I was measured. I am officially 'mouse height' (under 5 foot) and that means I have an advatage in being hired for a costumed role as many of the costumes are that size.

And then it was over. A few of us chatted once again in the lobby, and then my mom and I trudged back through the slow to the Holiday Inn Express and relaxed for a bit before dinner.
At 7:30, we again waded through the slush to go to Casey's to meet with other people, mostly crp applicants (and a few of their moms) from the wdwip.com forums. It was great to finally meet the people who had been chatting with me and answering my questions for so long, and we really hit it off. Somehow the moms hit it off even better, as it turned out they were all somehow connected,and had all been to slash lived in the same little town in northern ontario (random!). So friendships were forged, and then we again walked through slush and snow and past very scary characters to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, we watched Enchanted on my laptop and went to sleep. After breakfast the next morning, it was back on the (much cleaner, safer, less snowy) road. And now, 2 am the next morning, I am once again waiting-- an procrastinating starting some essay proposals I have to submit this week....