So, I have returned from my Disney World adventure.
It was magical, it was great, and I am sorry that I haven’t worked harder to keep this site up to date. But who knows in the future…the wonderfull world of Disney may cross my path again.

Thanks to those who have been supporting me, and I can hopefully take use of this site again soon.

David

Welcome…

…I am very happy you are here! Via this web log I want to keep the world up to date on my adventure of doing my internship at the Walt Disney World Resort as part of the J1 Visa Exchange program.

I will try and post as many things as possible and I want to share the experience I will get on the living, educational and fun aspects of this unique opportunity!

Have fun!

David

P.s. Do not mind my English!

For all other blogs please visit : http://davidhabnit.web-log.nl

Hi there…
…do you still remember me? Do you? Phew…I’m glad you do ’cause it has been a long time ago since I updated my weblog.

But here goes…

October 8 I made homework at the Magic Kingdom. I sat down at this beautiful location, where there is no one when that restaurant is closed, and I had a beautiful view of the castle and I was away from all the crowds (it sure was busy that day). It was great.

October 10 I went to Blizzard Beach water park with 2 friends. That was way better than I thought it would be. And the summit plummit slide ROCKS! That is soooo cool!  Of course there were many more nice slides, but that one was the climax.

After that we went to MGM Studios for dinner and to watch Fantasmic…that show is brilliant, but very different from the fireworks shows over at the other 2 parks.

October 11 was my birthday, that was fun we celebrated it in the Rainforest Cafe over at Downtown Disney. After that we went with one of the shuttle boats to Port Orleans Riverside because Mr. Van der Broek from the Rotterdam Universite was there with a colleague and they wanted to hear from us how we are doing and what we’ve learned so far about the company. That was fun…after that we went back and I had my birthday cake! Lilo & Stitch! I got some more Stitch goodies, I sure do like Stitch!

October 12 was the soft opening of the Finding Nemo ride in Epcot, after class we went there and I can tell you…that ride is nice! Very well done! The parts that I liked best is where you go in the tunnel with Crush with the stream and in the end where Nemo and his friends are "in" the fish tank of The Seas. Very nice!

Then we had three days of work at Fort Wilderness, 2 cashiering days, 1 luggage day. Yesterday I had another day off and I went back to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. That sure was fun…I have candy supply to last me the rest of the year…maybe 2 years.

Today is another day off. I did some school stuff and some groceries…gotta think of what I want to do next…

Oh well…

Talk to you later and enjoy these few shots.

David

Create Your Own!

Like always, a lot has happend since my last post.

Last week Thursday (after the Epcot class) there was a castmember pin event over at Disney’s MGM Studios. This event was in an actual sound stage. Pretty cool! Basically that day I bought my first pins. They make a great souvenir and are somewhat addictive. Especially if you get to trade with others. We got to buy bags with 10 pins for $10 (that is extremely cheap! for Disney pins). So now all you gotta do is find a castmember that has the pin you want, and get it for your collection. After the pin thing I did some eating around the world because that was also the start of Epcot’s Food and Wine festival.

Pretty much, the rest of the week I’ve been a Front Desk Cashier at Fort Wilderness. This week was also the start of the new celebration "The Year of a Million Dreams". So I received my new name tag which includes "Voorburg, Holland". Now  people get to see where I come from. However, I will receive a new one because they hadn’t put on my language pin.

This week my off days were on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday I went to Universal Studio’s. Yes, I did get an annual pass since you only need to visit the Universal Parks twice in order for it to work. That won’t be a problem since we have visited the studios and now all there is left is Islands of Adventure. The drive to Universal is cheap!!! Only 25cents with the I-Ride trolley, offcourse this is with Disney discount otherwise you pay $1 one way.

Universal was a lot of fun, lot of memory lane things going on there. I have to honestly admit though that Disney does do a better job. Our staff is friendlier, our croudcontrol is better, and we have way more staff walking around than they do. But that doesn’t mean it was no fun! We’ve had a blast, we have even been "evacuated" from the Men in Black ride. Somehow it just stopped. Oh, well. The Mummy coaster was fun too, really well done.

So Wednesday I had another Leadership class, did some grocery shopping and visited Wilderness Lodge and the Contemporary Resort hotels. The day endid with another Whishes fireworks show (it is just a good show!!!).

Thurday morning I had an exploring marketing class over at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. Pretty impressive sporting venue. It was fun to hang around there for a couple of hours, even though the class itself felt more like a promotional class for sports-marketing than that it was a learning event. So funny that that is a completely different section within Disney and that they precieve things different from most other company segments. I am reffering to the way the present and talk to the class.

After I came home Dora stopped by with a surprise. I got a thank you card that was signed by everyone from RBS with all sorts of thank-you’s on them for initiating the Disney internship. That was so nice!!! I loved it. And to top it off I got a Stitch soft-toy-teddy-bear. Kinda O’hana, so thank you "temporary-artificial" family for that.

Yesterday I also got an audit by one of our managers. As soon as I noticed her looking at me I got nervous, but you’ll be proud to now that I did a perfect check-in. So as a reward I got a candy bar, yeah! So it was fun after all.

The rest of the week I’ll be a Fort Wilderness Front Desk Cashier again. I hope I’ll get some more luggage schedueld soon. That would be nice.

Fri 14:00 – 22:00
Sat 15:00 – 21:00
Mon 15:30 – 00:00
Thu 15:30 – 00:30
Fri 14:30 – 22:30
Sat 14:45 – 22:30

So, that concludes today’s update. ‘Till next time!

Aparently there is some confusion over my last post. Well, that is because the countdown isn’t visible.

I’ll explain the situation: Disney has a theme for a certain time frame. The current theme is "The Happiest Celebration on Earth". The new theme will be "The Year of a Million Dreams".

Sorry about that.

So interesting stuff that has happend.

Last Saturday and Sunday we had a Triathlon going on in Fort Wilderness. It was funny to see that people in all shapes and sizes took part in that. Because of that, I don’t know if everybody made the finish line over at Epcot. During the triathlon a girl (not a participant) was hit off her bike by a deer. Those animals must have been confused because of the event.

Yesterday night I went to Arabian Nights dinner show. We had a (very!) generous discount on this via Disney. It was funny, but I discovered it sure is hard to watch the whole thing and eat at the same time. We went there with a group of 4.

When I came home 2 of my roommates had decided to throw/allow a party. They were willing to break up the party, but I didn’t want to be the party pooper so I slept on the couch in Dora en Yuana’s apartment. I had to get up early you see.

The next morning we had marketing class over at Epcot. The guest speaker was the director of brands of the Walt Disney World Resort. That sure was interesting and fun. I am glad I choose that class.

More challenging is my Wednesday class, we have homework, group-work. And I discovered that a huge part of Leadership is sort of a psycho-analysis-challange-thingy. But you do learn a great deal.

Gotta go to work, early shift today from 11:15-20:15. Got to be on the 09:45 bus. So I’ll be posting more later.

Yes, I should and will eventually post new photo’s ’cause there are quite a few.

…the year of a million dreams.

We are saying goodbye to "The Happiest Celebration on Earth". The transition from one party to the next. I hope the year of a million dreams is going to be just as great as the happiest celebration.

…another update!

So…by now everybody probably realizes that this is not just all fun and games but hard work as well (hence the few updates in my blog).

Most of the time I have to work evening shifts, so from 15:00 until 23:30. After that I have to wait for my bus to arrive, which doesn’t arrive until 00:10, so I usually go to bed right before 01:00 and I will sleep until about 09:30 or 10:00. Unfortunately this doesn’t leave much room for doing an awefull lot of other activities since I have to catch the 13:30 bus to be at work in time. In that short time frame I also have to cook a nutritious meal for myself and do laundry, little errands, etc…

I have 2 days a week off. Time to play, and do some bigger grocerie shopping. I have spent most of my free time playing in the parks. Funny how it still isn’t enough. I mean, there are 4 significantly different theme parks, so there is plenty to do. I still haven’t done everything….however most of it I can check from the list now.

I have to admit I still find it strange that I check people in for cabins and campsite over at Fort Wilderness. When you get assigned Front Desk at the Walt Disney World Resort you just don’t expect that. On the other hand, many front desk people tell me how lucky I am to work at Fort Wilderness since the people over there are more friendly than at the other resorts. That I can imagine, especially the camping people since they only wish for the bare minimum…and they can sure get that at the Fort.

Wednesday and Thursday I have had my first classes. The leadership class will take about 11 weeks, the exploring marketing will take about 8 weeks.
The leadership class really is about developing yourself as a leader and for that subject I will have to do quite a lot of home work and assignments. I have to do group work and give a presentation at the end. Well, that was like "WOW, that is a lot of stuff!" but I’ll manage. Plus someone told me that they make it sound more difficult than it actually is.
The exploring marketing is just fun, we go in class and out and about to explore a lot of the marketing thta goes on at Disneyworld, no home work, just exploring.

You know what, let me give you my scheduele for the next period:

….looking at scheduele…

Ow…according to workbrain I don’t have to work until the end of the month. Well, at least let me give you this weeks info. Today from 15:00 – 23:30 , tommorrow from 06:30 – 12:30.
I have classes on Wednesdays from 08:00 – 12:00, and on Thursdays from 08:00 – 10:00.

In other news…I have received my social security number! I can acces the key-vault now at Fort Wilderness, and log into the Disneys Magical Express handhelds. All I gotta do now is wait for my outlook, which gives me my own Disney email address. How bizar is that!

Talking about bizar. Yesterday I went first to Annimal Kingdom with Dora. After I stepped out of the bus I thought "huh?" and looked over my shoulder. Nobody in the world will guess who stood there. Andrew Steffy…I was his youth leader for several years, then he moved to Texas and now he is working here in Walt Disney World on one of Disney’s programs. I still can not grasp the "It’s a small world" concept if it comes landing like that. So bizar!!! and yet so funny. Hopefully I will get to meet with him soon.

I have quite some pictures I want to share, but I gotta prioritize. First cook, then picture. So hopefully I will give you the pictures soon.

Oh yes, both my family and Andre are coming in October. I fear that their visits will overlap…we’ll see.

Talk to you later!

Here I am with a new message from Florida.

I have lost track of time completely…I don’t know how long ago I have sent you my last message I didn’t know it was Saturday when I got up this morning.

So we didn’t get a huricane, we only had a mild storm. So now we have a huricane-kit in our house that should last until the end of October or beyond. I guess that is the time that hurican season is over. During that night I had my first training at Fort Wilderness for Front Desk. It was ok…a very late shift, but it was ok. Not a lot of people checking in. Actually I only did 2 check-ins. Still not completely used to the system. Anyway, that trainer I had took another leave, I guess he is not doing so well.
The day after I had a training day with someone else, he could only be my trainer for 1 day ’cause he has another trainee.

Now the third day has been my weirdest day yet. Because there was no Front Desk trainer available and we have to learn about luggage and phones room anyway, I got schedueled to be trained luggage. For hours all I did was drive around bringing people to where they want to go, picking-up people to bring them to front desk, and deliver birthday cards. For luggage it was a very slow day, however at the other side of the door it became busier and busier. You see, it is the Labor Day weekend, and many people come to the Walt Disney World Resort for the weekend.
Since there were so many people coming more welcome packs had to be created, no problem, I can do that, so I did. 25 minutes before my shift ended someone came running into the room and said "can you please walk the lines outside, the system is down!"
So next I was telling the people in the RV’s and trailers that check-in would take longer since everybody had to be checked-in manually. I guess the system couldn’t handle as many check-in requests as it did then.
Back inside in the lobby the line was very long. Armed with welcome packages and stickers for the kids I tried to assist people as well as I could. So I worked extra hours…although the situation may have been bad, it made the day very exciting and interesting. I like trying to solve issues guests may have.

At the end of the day I was handed a card called "Great Service Fanatic". That card is issued by other cast members if you’ve done something nice or well. It will be placed on file. So I am kinda proud for having one of those. How cool is that!?

Also I learned this week that living with other people is not always easy. Some are messy and others are clean. So we gotta discuss this with eachother as roommates. It sure made me appreciate my parents and especially my mother for all the effort she puts in maintaining and cleaning the house. So I am really thankfull for that.

Ok, next are some pictures of the days before I had to start work AND a video with a looksey in my home!

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Today I’ve had resort orientation. Basically it meant driving around in a golf cart and getting familiar with the resort. To be honest…the resort is really big so to remember it in one go…no. But at least I have an idea of how and what everything looks like.

Most visitors to the Fort Wilderness are guest that come with RV’s. Gigantic vehicles…unbelieveable. Somehow they manage to back up in their site locations. Other guests come in foldable caravans and only some come with tents. All others stay in one of the cabins. Really basic, but amazingly enough it is considered one of the more luxuerious resorts.

I’ll take some more pictures of the resort soon. And…you’ll also get to see what I have to wear. Just in case you have to laugh…there are worse costumes to wear at Disney World. But…it’s all part of the show, and people love it.

So yesterday I had a day off. I did some administrative stuff, somehow you are never ready with that. Talked to my parents…had a very busy week so they were wondering what was going on with me. Cindy called in the morning asking me to join her picking up her pay-check and to come to the Disney MGM studios. An offer I couldn’t resist. So we first went to Epcot in the afternoon, rode Spaceship Earth, and Soarin’. Wow, that is one amazingly cool attraction. I would highly recommend Soarin’ to anybody coming eithe Disney World or Disneyland California. It is so cool, and so well done. I think that even my parents would love it. Flying over California having the feeling you can touch tree tops and water. Very cool.

After that, we went to the Disney MGM Studios. We did Rock & Rollercoaster and we did the Tower of Terror twice. What an awsome ride. You never know what it does, you can ride it so often and still enjoy it. So much fun, very well done!

So afterwards I joined Cindy with some other fellow students and colleagues at her apartment for a pasta dinner. It was good.

Just in case you were wondering…I am eating pretty well here. I thing our group has done pretty good so far. Everybody joins eachother for dinner, and lunch has been sandwiches up till now. So that is good.

I promise to bring you a video of my residence soon…just need the right moment for that.

Lastly, there may be a huricane comming this way. Exciting!!! I am not worried at all, everything will be fine! Tomorrow we will go to the store to get some non-perishable foods, water and batteries just in case. It might be a huricane, it might be a tropical storm. Either way…we’ll have some wind and rain.

Here are your photo’s for today, have fun!

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Talk to you later!!!

I know it has been an awful long time since I wrote something in my blog. But I am having a great time! Now let me start from 15 August and work upto today (if I can remember that is).

At noon Disney picked us up from the airport with a bus. Almost everyone from the Hogeschool Rotterdam was there.

After half an hour drive from Orlando International Airport we arrived at the Chatham Square living complexes. This was the start for lots of paperwork and administrative stuff. The check-in at Chatham took a while but we got to our rooms eventually.

As it turned out I am sharing the same room with only Dutchies. Two from Rotterdam and one from Friesland. Up till now everything has been fine and sharing the appartment hasn’t been a problem.

So after checking-in most of us took off to the wal-mart to do some shopping, mostly groceries in my case. My dad picked me up from the wal-mart and we drove back to the apartment complex, so he actually has seen the place allready. After unpacking and kinda settling in we had our final dinner here before my dad would take off back to The Netherlands.

The next morning we all had to get up early and walk over to the other housing complex of Disney, the commons. This was information overload combined with a lot of paperwork. I don’t even remember what exactly I have signed, I do remember that one of the forms was for ideas I might have. If they are any good, it belongs to Disney. Also some tax forms, etc,etc,etc.

That room was soooooooo freezing cold, unbelievable. They actually told us to breang a sweater because it would be so cold!

In those two days we arranged social security and classes. Classes don’t start until September, I guess that works out with the American system.

On Friday the 18th we had Traditions. More information overload, but this was sooooo cool! They do make you feel you now belong to the Disney family, and they make you feel so proud of the company and the work you will be doing. It is true, we are the ones that preserve that magic, we get to see what happens backstage, it is a smooth operation and everythings is just perfect. But Mickey is Mickey and Donald is Donald, nothing more, nothing less. They call it "Preserve the magic." So the Disney traditions have been passed on to me and now I gotta spark some magic. Funny huh?

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Last thing we did on Friday was open a bank account and watch Illuminations over in Epcot. What a great show!

Saturday I had a day off. Slept ’till I don’t know what time. Actually I am completely oblivious to what I did that Saturday. I think I spend some hours in MGM studios. I did the Tower of Terror ride, so cool!  and the Muppets 3D. Also cool!

Sunday I was introduced to my new work location. Fort Wilderness, believe it or not. You go away from Duinrell where they have a theme park and camp ground, and you end up with Disney…at another location with theme park and campground. But luckily I can pretty much pick up hours at other resorts anywhere on property.

I got my costume, cowboy-ish. Jeans, jeans(like) shirt, some sort of red thread thingy around my neck (it is some sort of cowboy-tie but I keep on forgetting what it is called. Red belt and black shoes. The exceptional thing of Fort Wilderness is, is that they have a drive thru check-in. Quite funny. I had to shadow somebody and see what it looks like in operation. There was another cast member who needed training and therefore we moved to check-out. All we did was wave good-bye to people (with a Mickey glove) becasue they either went to play in the park or had express check-out. I have to greet people with "howdy" it that interesting or what. I guess it is part of the show, so I’ll be playing along.

At 13:00  I had to start my first impressions class. This is a 4 and a 1/2 day class!!! Just to familiarize you with the processes of check-in. I couldn’t have done with any less day, and I will still have problems but my class did pretty good I think. We had these great trainers, it was so much fun. Allthough these are long days, with lost of information they have been wonderful and great. I was sad we had no more class but I didn’t mind getting off two days. Yesterday, and today.
By doing this course I got my first certificate. How cool is that, my first Disney certificate.

For lunch we went with the bus from the Disney University, where they gave first impressions, to the Magic Kingdom tunnel systems. I am sorry to say, that is all I can and want to reveal about the Magic Kingdom tunnels on this medium. But it sure is fun seeing the operation from backstage.

Instead of being in the tunnels Brian and I decided to go to the Magic Kingdom yesterday. It was so much fun. We started at about noon and finished around 22:00 hours after the Wishes fireworks show. Which once again was done absolutely magnificently. It was a rainy day but I guess that was a good thing since that meant less people, but it a crowded park anyways. Luckily as cast members we may also use the fast pass machine, and that worked out really well. Also the Spectromagic parade was very cool.

For those of you who are Disneyland Paris fans, be aware that the Space Mountain in Paris is an exceptional one, do not be dissappointed by the ones in other Disney parks! Also seeing Jack Sparrow in Pirats was really funny, and the resemblence is so amazingly well done.

I slept until about 08:30…well not really because the alarmclock of my roommate woke me up first, but then you get a chance to fall back to sleep anyway. I now know he likes his snooze button so much he almost didn’t make it to his first impressions class today. That would have been a set-back in his scheduel, guess who had to wake him? Yup! You see, party is good, but limit it. Otherwise the snooze button takes control of your life .

So something about the area. The Publix supermarket is a 10 minute walk from the apartments, so is the Walgreens store. The Premium Outlet Center is about 15 minutes from where I live if you walk there. They are opening a 7-eleven also a ten minute walk from here. There is a pool, a fitness center, tenniscourts, postal service and laundry room all on property. Cast member busses pretty much stop in front my door taking us to all the parks and resorts and to the Wal Mart. Some buses run throughout the night even.

I would love to share a little video of where I live with you, but there are still people sleeping, they had to work until 02:00 this morning. Yikes! So we’ll get to that later.

In case you were wondering, I have only been able to find 1 Mickey Mouse on the Chatham Square property and that is a little bush trimmed like a Mickey head, so you actually have to go and look for one to find one.

All in all everything is really well organized, everything is beautiful around here and Disney makes great investment in people everytime somebody decides to come and work for Disney. It truly is an extrodinary company. I wonder if people feel the same way if they get to work for Disneyland Paris.

I want to thank Stacey (Traditions, MGM Studios guest relations), Chris (First Impressions, Yacht & Beach Club castmember), Tony (First Impressions, Boardwalk castmember), and Steven (First Impressions, Animal Kingdom Lodge castmember) for making my start with the Disney company and Walt Disney World in particular a memorable one.

So I will be writing to you again soon!

Take care!

David