#CAClife: Part 1

Hola! 

WARNING: Okay so first things first, I am like the girl who cried blog but now this is it I am finally going to post this, excuse my grammar I probably wont be able to proofread this! 

So now that I have been here for a couple of months I guess it is time I finally tell you all how life in the most fun branch of recreation is treating me! You guessed it I am a Children's Activities Cast Member! Well you probably already knew that if you have roamed around the island mouse before, but anyways I am a CAC! Let me tell you something when your job is literally all fun and games, things get real! So since I work in a Disney Vacation Club resort there are two sides to the coin, Poolside Activities and Community Hall. This post will be all about poolside! 

This is the first training you receive, poolside activities! Basically this is all the entertainment that happens in the pool or by the pool deck starting at 1 pm in the resorts and then continues with the nightly campfire followed by the movie under the stars. When your training consists of tie-dying shirts,playing with a giant beach ball and watching a movie you know your job is going to be a blast! 

A typical day for me, and this is for my resorts it depends on your location, but for me I start my day with a quick meeting, followed by gathering all my materials and heading outside! This could be at either be at noon or at 2 o'clock.  That is where the fun begins, armed with my sunblock and water bottle I am ready to take on the whole afternoon in this Central Florida heat! On the pool deck we have pool party, trivia games and different activities going on. When its time to end the pool party we go on break and then head to prep our campfire. Campfire is then held nightly and after that we head over to prep our movie! Setting up the movie screen and taking it down seemed very intimidating at first but after so much practice you get the hang of it and can do it in around 15 mins or less! So that is a short over view of what a typical day poolside looks like, there are two of us outside and opener and a closer, so a lot of the day is spent with someone else which is amazing, because I don't know how you could ever do this all on your own! On the next post I will explain Community Hall and how the game changes when you are indoors. 

If you guys have any questions feel free to ask them on here as comments or post them to my tumblr page by the same name! I am off to work as the closer tonight! 

See you all real soon,

-Tyl

Quick Update!

Hey!

I decided to add a Page to my blog that I will be updating as I go this will have all discounts on and off property for Cast Members,  because the blue ID has so many perks that go along with it around this area. Also, since I haven't found many blogs with my same role I decided I will include that in a lot of my future posts but most importantly I will be including any of your questions! I have a log of questions from friends and other bloggers that I will be answering in the coming days/weeks!

-Tyl

Out of the Rabbits Hole!

Hola Everyone!

First off I want to apologize for being MIA for this last month, all I did was work and sleep and attempt to squeeze in a little bit of fun to my days off! But now that I am fully trained in all aspects of my job, I started my seminar and I turned 22 it's time to get back on the writing scene. So from here on out I will try to update y'all once a week, I am aiming for posting every Thursday so I will do that, in between I may be posting about the specifics, like my role, different events on property, what to do in Orlando, random adventures and anything else you want to read about. Also I ressurrected my instagram again, so feel free to follow @theislandmouse on instagram and you will find a picture tour of my day to day as a CP.  So that was my little PSA, I am actually heading to class right now so stay magical everyone! Ill leave you with this silly picture of my roommate and I our first day at the Magic Kingdom!

Check In and Other Shenanigans!

Hola! 

Just like that those 21 days went by extremely fast, I know I have been MIA since the last post but I had to strap down and power through my finals and the last week of school. Since then I graduated undergrad and made it safely up here to Orlando. I have been here for three days and it has been absolutely lovely, I want to keep this post short since i have to head to bed soon because of the early wake up call I have tomorrow for Traditions, but I will talk a little bit about my first few days. 

So I arrived bright and early on Monday morning and Vista Way, 15 minutes before my scheduled time of 8:00 am. I grabbed a program guide and was given a name tag sticker. The line was quite short and I don't think it took us more than 30 mins to come in the building and receive the first thing, your label with your official assignment on it. I had a fluorescent yellow sticker with my official Recreation Assignment: Children's Activities and the Resort were I was placed at. When she placed the sticker on the back of my program guide I almost cried, my placement could not be more perfect if I tried. From then we made another line and here we had or DORMS passed scanned, took the picture for our Housing ID and then received our room key. After that we received our housing ID and a piece of paper with the instructions and times for your casting, drug test,language test and the housing meeting. 

After that we were whisked off to Casting, and of course with that came all the fun of being in the bus doing the awesome countdown and heading into the building, once in the building though we did a couple of more serious things, like fill out paperwork receive our official training schedule and be finger printed. After coming back I had to do a drug test, now this is something that all CPs working lifeguard, recreation or attraction roles must do, this must be passed in order to proceed to Traditions and the rest of your training. That was that, I used the rest of Monday to move in to our lovely apartment in Chatham Square, and then all the girls in the apartment decided to head out to Downtown Disney! 

Home Sweet Home! 

Tuesday was quite a slow day with no plans except for our housing meeting, this was a very thorough presentations of the Do's and Dont's of Disney Housing. A lot of going over dorm rules, which seemed pretty obvious to me because I was an RA for three years, but a lot of people still had questions, which made the meeting last a little longer than expected. All in all it was harmless and pretty fun as well.  Then today Wednesday we had our Ariel's Grotto Pool Party over in the Commons Pool, which had a DJ and free food. This was a lot of fun and a nice event for new and current CPs to interact with each other! I made a couple of new friends from it and it was great!!  The rest of the afternoon was spent in Downtown Disney exploring and then coming back fro dinner. Now I am heading off to bed since I have to wake up in six hours so I wont miss the bus to Traditions, which will be covered in the next post. All in all these last three days have been swell! 

See ya real soon! 

Life until Check In!

Hola!

There are 21 days left until check-in, but 12 days until I am done with school for good. This will be the craziest week academically that I have with the amounts of lab reports, papers and test I have to work on and then the following week is finals week, which is even more dreadful. Anyways with that I must say that I don't think I will be able to blog for the next two weeks even though I might try to in order to distract myself from all the work. I wont, I will not...yeah. 

An update on the DCP frontier, I was able to register for my class, Exploring Disney Heritage so if you are taking that this Summer 1 term, let me know!! Also I have all my roommates which happened a long time ago but I never posted about it. As of now my best friend is set to to join me on this DCP adventure only a month late as a lifeguard! I was able to complete all of my New Hire Paperwork, which guys listen to Disney, don't think about doing it on Chrome it won't work. Now we are just waiting on our DORMS paperwork to get here, and I might do a mini update on that. Anyways I should get back to studying for my two test tomorrow.

-Tyl 

Unscheduled Interruption: Animated Disney Movie Challenge

Now that I am exactly 30 days away from check in to the program I decided to share with you my plan, Here I have a list of most of the animated movies from the Disney Studio and I will be attempting to watch them all before I move in.  Here they all are in release date order, I will be crossing them out as I go.

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs-December 21, 1937
• Pinocchio-February 7, 1940
• Fantasia-November 13, 1940
• Dumbo-October 23, 1941
• Bambi-August 13, 1942
• Saludos Amigos-August 24, 1942
• The Three Caballeros-December 21, 1944
• Make Mine Music-April 20, 1946
• Fun and Fancy Free-September 27, 1947
• Melody Time-May 27, 1948
• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad-October 5, 1949
• Cinderella-February 15, 1950
• Alice in Wonderland-July 28, 1951
• Peter Pan-February 5, 1953
• Lady and the Tramp-June 22, 1955
• Sleeping Beauty-January 29, 1959
• One Hundred and One Dalmatians-January 25, 1961
• The Sword in the Stone-December 25, 1963
• The Jungle Book-October 18, 1967
• The Aristocats-December 24, 1970
• Robin Hood-November 8, 1973
• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh-March 11, 1977
• The Rescuers-June 22, 1977
• The Fox and the Hound-July 10, 1981
• The Black Cauldron-July 24, 1985
• The Great Mouse Detective-July 2, 1986
• Oliver & Company-November 18, 1988
• The Little Mermaid-November 17, 1989
• DuckTales the Movie-August 3, 1990
• The Rescuers Down Under-November 16, 1990
• Beauty and the Beast-November 22, 1991
• Aladdin-November 25, 1992
• The Nightmare Before Christmas-October 29, 1993
• The Lion King-June 24, 1994
• A Goofy Movie-April 7, 1995
• Pocahontas-June 23, 1995
• Toy Story-November 22, 1995
• James and the Giant Peach-April 12, 1996
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame-June 21, 1996
• Hercules-June 27, 1997
• Mulan-June 19, 1998
• A Bug's Life-November 25, 1998
• Doug's 1st Movie-March 26, 1999
• Tarzan-June 18, 1999
• Toy Story 2-November 24, 1999
• Fantasia 2000-December 17, 1999
• The Tigger Movie-February 11, 2000
• Dinosaur-May 19, 2000
• The Emperor's New Groove-December 15, 2000
• Recess: School's Out-February 16, 2001
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire-June 15, 2001
• Monsters, Inc.-November 2, 2001
• Return to Never Land-February 15, 2002
• Lilo & Stitch-June 21, 2002
• Treasure Planet-November 27, 2002
• The Jungle Book 2-February 14, 2003
• Piglet's Big Movie-March 21, 2003
• Finding Nemo-May 30, 2003
• Brother Bear-November 1, 2003
• Teacher's Pet-January 16, 2004
• Home on the Range-April 2, 2004
• The Incredibles- November 5, 2004
• Pooh's Heffalump Movie-February 11, 2005
• Howl's Moving Castle-June 10, 2005
• Valiant-August 19, 2005
• Chicken Little-November 4, 2005
• Bambi II-February 7, 2006
• The Wild-April 14, 2006
• Cars-June 9, 2006
• Meet the Robinsons-March 30, 2007
• Ratatouille-June 29, 2007
• WALL-E-June 27, 2008
• Roadside Romeo-October 24, 2008 
• Bolt-November 28, 2008
• Up-May 29, 2009
• Ponyo-August 14, 2009
• Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure-September 3, 2009 
• A Christmas Carol-November 6, 2009
• The Princess and the Frog-December 11, 2009
• Toy Story 3-June 18, 2010
• Tales from Earthsea-August 13, 2010
• Tangled-November 24, 2010
• Mars Needs Moms-March 11, 2011
• Cars 2-June 24, 2011
• Winnie the Pooh-July 15, 2011
• The Secret World of Arrietty-February 17, 2012
• Brave-June 22, 2012
• Secret of the Wings-August 31, 2012 
• Frankenweenie-October 5, 2012
• Wreck-It Ralph-November 2, 2012
• Monsters University-June 21, 2013
• Planes-August 9, 2013
• Frozen-November 27, 2013
• The Pirate Fairy-February 13, 2014 
• Planes: Fire & Rescue-July 18, 2014
• Big Hero -November 7, 2014

The Disney Look

A little under a month ago I received the infamous Disney Look email. I guess they send it out 2 months before your arrival date. Now I am pretty familiar with the Disney look because of my visits to the park. During my phone interview I was asked if I knew what the Disney Look was and how familiar I was with it, my interviewer still gave me a short spiel on the Disney Look. So in turn here I am to talk about this very important part of being a CP. I know people worry a lot about this topic whether it is because of their piercings or their tattoos it brings concern to many applicants, and deters a couple of people from even applying. Disney does a good job of explaining in detail what the Disney Look encompasses, and I have read that your first day in Casting they give you a once over to make sure you fit their criteria. So if you haven't received your Disney Look email or you just got to me first here I will break it down for you: 

Costume Guidelines 
Hair- Disney doesn't allow for crazy hair colors, which is so sad because I was ready to dye my ends bright pink or blue again.  If you do color your hair do it very carefully as the colors you use on your head must be natural looking, this is the category that I fall under, since I had colorful ends before my ends are now blonde and as my hair grows and I cut it I still have a few inches of blonde left but since it blends I am in the clear (knock on wood). Hair should be kept in neat classic hairstyles, to keep these styles in check they allow you to wear hair accessories, but it has to match your costume and you cant wear more than three accessories at once so a basic headband with a ponytail up is allowed. 
Nails- Should Need to be clean, if you use nail polish which I have a serious addiction too, the colors must be neutral it includes deep, rich shades of polish. But sadly no black, gold,silver,neon or multi-color is allowed. Don't even think about embellishing your nails as decals and charms are not permitted. As for the length they specify that nails shouldn't pass 6 mm beyond fingertips but basically if you turn your hand around and you can see the nail, you can start filing them. 
Face- Just know how to blend your makeup very well, and use neutral colors.
For Jewelry- I have to take of all my bracelets, but you can wear earrings, rings and classic watches. This jewelry must in a color that blends with the costume, gold, or silver. one ring on each hand is allowed. 

Then there are non-costumed guidelines which will usually involve business attire. 

More specifics on the male guidelines, because there are many details on facial hair, specific mustaches and sideburns but you can find those here: http://cp.disneycareers.com/en/onboarding/fl/working-here/disney-look/male-cast-members/


Tattoos and Body Modification:  
This one is coming straight from the horse's mouth- 

Intentional body alteration or modification for the purpose of achieving a visible, physical effect that disfigures, deforms or similarly detracts from a professional image is prohibited. 

Examples include, but are not limited to, visible tattoos, brands, body piercing (other than traditional ear piercing for women), tongue piercing or splitting, tooth filing, earlobe expansion and disfiguring skin implants.

Tattoos must be discreetly and completely covered at all times. Jewelry, spacers, retainers, or plugs are not permitted in any body piercing, including non-visible piercings, while working.

All this information was found on the DCP website:
http://cp.disneycareers.com/en/onboarding/fl/working-here/disney-look/overview/

In the Big Blue World Anything is Possible: My DCP Bucketlist Pt.2 Things to Do

These are the activities I hope to accomplish while in Orlando for the Disney College Program., my second part Bucket List includes all the adventures I plan to complete mostly random things that I would like to get done during my program!

• First Purchase as a cast member : Disney Alex and Ani
• Wild Africa Trek
• Spend scientist time at the Seas with Nemo and Friends
• Have a family day as a cast member
• Meet Lane!
• Keep up with my blog and Instagram
• MNSSHP and EFW in one day (round three)
• Take a picture of all the topiaries in the Flower and garden Festival
• Take pictures with all of the characters from Star Wars Weekend
• New Starwars Vinylmation
• Buy new Dooney design satchel
• Collect the rest of the Sorcerers of the MK Cards
• Go to the filming of the Christmas Day Parade
• Rope Drop at each park
• Stitch my name on the back of my Traditions Ears
• Emerie: Food and Wine fest/ Drink around the world
• Nathaly: Record her first time in the parks
• Buy a Mickey mouse balloon
• Bowling and drinks at Splitsville
• Characters in Flight Balloon
• Solo day at the parks
• Mail a postcard from inside MK-> to Wyoming!
• Toy Story Mania
• Summit Plummit
• Find the beauty and adventure of Norway ;)
• Make my own phone case at the CoOp
• Mickey Vera Bradley something!
• Complete my Disney Autograph Book
• Learn more than 5 line dances at Cowboys
• Find all the CP's from my University and take a picture of all our name tags together
• Get to go to all the parks with all my roommates at least once
• Take the same picture in all four parks
• Embroider my traditions ears and then my graduation ears
• VoluntEAR
• Dapper Day!
• Jump into AMC fountain on last day
• Cirque du soleil

Unscheduled Interruption: VSPINK Pool Party

I figured that in the meantime, that is the next two months before I get to Orlando I will also be posting about my adventures down here in South Florida. This way you can all get to know me a little better and see the random things I like to do for fun,  and see that there's more to Florida just Orlando.  So without further ado, in this week's edition of Unscheduled Interruptions I present to you the Victoria's Secret Pink pool party.

My lovely invitation to the party

A couple of weeks ago I had told my friend about the Victoria's Secret pool party because I had seen it on Instagram I didn't think much about it and we joked about going but it was never brought up again. Saturday the 14th arrives and I get a phone call from my friend, needless to say I was out of my bed and ready to go in less than an hour. A spur of the moment decision turned into a 45 minute drive to Miami and even longer wait to get inside the pool party. After making through the long line, I was skipped down the lobby and saw a bright pink inflatable puppy, the first sign of Victoria Secret Pink along the path to the party there were little pink heart decals on the floor, it really is all in the details! 

It was the perfect sunny Miami day with tons of people and pink props everywhere. By the time we had gotten there we were only going to get around 45 minutes to enjoy the party but to our surprise the DJ announced that the party had been extended for an extra hour. This was the best thing, we went over to the photo booth and took a picture heroes we received our next freebie a pair of pink sunglasses. We decided to go up to the pop up shop and check out their merchandise needless to say I wanted to buy everything but I have self control. we headed back down and took a few pictures of the pool and the entire party, then we saw on the other line and decided to go ahead and make it because lines equal freebies. When we got over there was a line for hair braiding, and long lines equals freebies so as we were standing there an attendant came over and explained to us that the hair braiders were going to be leaving soon so she advised us to leave the line and enjoy the party. On our way out we found a little counter with their mini fragances. What I didn't realize was that all these mini body splashes were free, in between all of us we left there was more than 10 body splash all of them individually cost $8.00 which was crazy for me. After grabbing some refreshing fruit infused water we decided it was time to get in the pool.

The Lovely Party

We grabbed our bags I'm pulled them close to the edge of the pool and then dove in! It was a fun experience to listen to the DJ from the pool, it was an even cooler experience to get a free Cody Simpson concert. Although I don't really remember Cody Simpson last time I heard him he was already a busy the kid is talented. he played me a song but he also did his own rendition of no woman no cry by Bob Marley I'm listening to that in the pool really set the mood of an island getaway. after this they played a little bit more music and before we knew it the night was over. we decided to head over to the beach and tan for a bit after that we grabbed a bite to eat at Five Guys. Our South Beach adventure was completed with a nice top-down ride in reference convertible.

In the Big Blue World Anything is Possible: My DCP Bucketlist Pt.1 Food and Drinks

This is going to be all I hope to accomplish while in Orlando for the Disney College Program. This will be a series of posts regarding my bucket list and crossing the items of from it. I split my list in two the first Bucket List encompasses the food and drink goals:

• Eat something from every country during the Food and Wine Festival 
• Dole Whip with Coconut Rum
• Monorail Bar Crawl
• Eat at every restaurant in the Parks
• Tommorowland Terrace Dessert Party
• Try to eat in at least 3 of the hotel restaurants with the roomies
• Tea at the Grand Floridian
• Polar Pub at Blizzard beach
• Eat a Turkey leg by myself
• Happy Landings Ice cream bucket at Typhoon Lagoon
• Beaches and Cream Ice Cream Sink with the roomies
• Chef Mickey! 
• Mickey's Backyard BBQ
• Throw back some beers at Raglan Road
• Mac and Cheeseburger at Electric Umbrella 
• The Famous Hollywood Brown Derby Cobb Salad at the Brown Derby!
• Jiko at The Animal Kingdom Lodge 
• Planet Hollywood 
• Rainforest Cafe 

Getting Accepted!

Hola!

I guess I can talk about my acceptance timeline if only a little bit. Well I applied to the Disney College Program the day that applications came out which was January 26th. I submitted my application somewhere between 6-8pm that night, I remember this because I was in class! Around an hour and a half later I received my Web Based Interview link and I was able to complete that and scheduled my phone interview for the following week. The web based interview is quite simple, it is like a personality test a way for Disney to see if you would be a good fit with the company. Following that was a long week of waiting for my phone interview to come around, that week ended before I knew it and then I was sitting in my sofa with my index cards and my notepad waiting for my phone to ring as I watched Brave. After my phone interview the real wait began. Two weeks went by and I heard nothing, I was still In Progress though so that kept me at ease. In the meantime I joined like 4 Facebook groups for DCP, including the 21+, one for Greek Life, and a Puerto Rico Group. These groups were the thing that kept me going because it was a lot of fun to interact with people on the same boat as I. Acceptances started rolling out the week of February 16th, this was the first wave with a lot of the hospitality and concierge acceptances, one of my close friends received his acceptance at this time which was very exciting.

My Acceptance Email

The week came to an end and I didn't hear anything from Disney it wasn't until the following week on Friday February 27th that I received my Congratulations Email, the email I had been waiting for forever. I was ACCEPTED for the Fall Advantage program in Walt Disney World with the role of Recreation, this was my top choice so it was very exciting to open the PDF containing my full letter. After getting accepted the few days after that involved a lot of interactions, I joined two more groups one for my arrival date and one for Recreation.  I will be arriving to Vista Way on the first Monday of check ins and I could not be more excited, I even found my roommates, more on that later though.

After my friends came over to celebrate, and I had come back down from cloud 9 :)



Stay Disney my Friends!

DCP Fall Advantage 2015 Phone Interview

Hola everybody! This is probably going to be a long post so brace yourself :)

During my phone interview, I took some notes and have the general questions I was asked, again not word for word because I forget everything but I have all my answers I gave since I recorded myself.

After introducing herself, my interviewer began by confirming that I am a senior at my school and my major. She asked me if I was able to do the international program and confirmed that I was a citizen of the U.S.

Next, I am fluent in Spanish as well as English so she asked me if I there was a guest who needed help in Spanish if I would be willing to help them and she asked me if I would be wiling to take a Spanish Assessment once I arrived at the program, she said if I passed it I would wear a little gold plaque that states the second language I speak. (Side note: this was the moment I was the giddiness in because I have always dreamed of having the gold plaque with the white square that says Espanol on it.)

The following questions were asked:

• Have you worked for the Disney Company before?
• Do you have experience living with roommates?
• How you would feel about living with different people, even people from around the world?
• What would you want to get out of the DCP?

She brought up the roles I put highly interested in but most specifically my top 3, she asked me if we could talk about those since I had work experience in those. She asked me to rate them by which I’d feel the most qualified to work. Had me include any other work experience I wasn’t able to fit into the application.

• Back to Questions:
• Fast Paced or slow work environment?
• Work independently or in a group?
• Would you be comfortable working outdoors with the crazy Florida weather?
• Are you familiar with the Disney Look?
• Any tattoos or piercings?
• Do you have a Driver’s License? How would I handle an emergency and do I feel comfortable handling one?
• Comfortable leading activities?
• How would you tell a child if they aren't tall enough to go on a ride?

She was aware I knew how to handle cash so she asked me how I felt about all the technology involved with the cash registers at the parks, since they can even use mobile devices to check guest out now, also with processing credit cards, checks and hotel credit.
Since Lifeguarding is one of my top roles she explained to me how the swim test would be and if I felt like I could pass it. After this I was able to ask my own questions and then she closed by telling me how the rest of the process would go.


Here are my tips for you:

1. Smile, just be plain happy while answering the different questions, my interviewer and I would laugh constantly which kept the mood light.
2. Be ready to go, I had my interview scheduled for 2:30pm and I got the call at 2:29pm but I was ready to go sitting on my couch since 2:10pm
3. Don’t overthink it, just answer the question. If you go around and around and don’t answer the actual question it may be a little harder for the interviewer to evaluate you.
4. Talk about your work experience and try to tell a short story with it, my interviewer brought this up because a lot of my experience worked for my top roles, which were Recreation, Lifeguarding and Merchandise.
5. Last tip, record yourself or have a mirror in front of you it really helped me be attentive to my expressions.

Stay Disney my Friends!

Greetings!

Hola Everybody! Well I finally decided to do this, make my own Disney Blog! I have been all about all things Disney and visiting Walt Disney World for a very long time, so this blog has been in the back of my mind for a while. I was also accepted to the Disney College Program last week so come May I will be documenting that journey. In the meantime I will be posting about how my application process went, how I found my roommates and how I am coping these two months until I get to the happiest place on earth! So I hope you all enjoy and Have a Magical Day!