We all left the room and Jason led us up another 3 flights of stairs to what I'm guessing was a large bright office area of their career's service. Julie and Anne were ushered into rooms off this area while we took seats around. Jason came over to us one by one and checked over our forms and documentation. He asked some questions (like if we had visible tatoos or any piercings-I dont) and noted this in the "office use only" section of our application form. He also asked what we wanted to be put on our name tags (i.e. what name and what town etc.). I was totally running on a high at that stage!
So, it turned out that I was the 4th in line-the second applicant to be interviewed by Julie. She ushered me into her room and we basically chatted for 10 minutes (felt like 2!). She asked me about Ireland, my home town, why I wanted to work at WDW, where I wanted to work at WDW etc. I answered with my best enthusiastic answers and I thought she seemed to like me. But then, she works for Disney, so I couldn't tell.
Afterwards, I returned to the other applicants outside and said "Anyone who's nervous about that... don't be! It's grand, it's just like a chat!".
On the way back to the airport and in the weeks after, I convinced myself I had blown it. I felt like I hadn't talked about anything consequential at all! And, at one stage, I complemented Julie on the presentation - because everyone had said how they enjoyed it and now felt at ease. I was convinced by now that she'd see it is sucking up and just deny me right then and there. I prepared for the worst.
December 1st 2005: Project season! Christmas was coming and that meant only one thing! Projects! I got out of my 2pm to 3pm lecture and went straight to the computer lab to keep working on our Visual Basic project. As always, I logged into Gmail first just to see if there was anything. And there it was, sitting in my inbox, an email from Alexis.
Those of you who use Gmail will know the feature it has where it shows you the first few words of your email. Mine had no subject line. Didn't seem promising. I kept reading... My heart leapt when I saw the next bit... "Dear Kevin, Get your passport ready as CONGRATULATIONS are in order! The recruiters from..."
I was IN! I read the email, then reread it, then reread it! I was in! AND, I got my first choice of position-Attractions! The dream had come true! At the end, I was told to call Yummy Jobs on the 19th with a decision on whether I wanted to accept and to get more info. Pfft. Like that was much of a decision to make!
Within 30 minutes, by the way, I had emailed Skipper Ben telling him the good news and thanking him for the tips. My email was read out on December 4th during the show. It seemed I had really made it!
19 December 2005: I called Jason, and he told me everything I had been dieing to know. It turned out though, that what had said "Attractions" in the email should have read "Operations" as it was in the system. Attractions is part of Operations, though, so I'm still holding out hope. It's still a definate possibility!
Over the next few months, I got intermittent emails from Yummy Jobs including a to-do list in February. I booked my flights (Delta Airlines... Shannon - JFK New York - Orlando) and got my start/end dates (May 30th/Sept. 1st). I bought insurance and did what I could to stay excited.
02 April 2006: Princess Tessa introduces me to DC.
03 April 2006: I recieve my Disney Info pack! The "Congratulations" package is the most exciting thing I've got yet and includes a welcome booklet, the Disney Look Book, luggage tags, stickers so Disney can identify us in Orlando and various other pieces of info and forms for us to look over and sign.
I hope Tessa won't mind, but seeing as I can't find my digital camera, I'm gonna steal a few of her pictures to show y'all what it looks like...
The package
The Disney Look Book
(note: my luggage tags are a dark blue-much similar to the colour of Europe in the package picture).
The luggage tags and Mickey Stickers
So there you have it! You're all up to date! There's only 56 days left until I flutter off to Walt Disney World for a magical summer with Tessa and the gang! And I
can not wait!!!
The suspense is quite literally killing me! On the interesting side, one day, I'm dieing with excitement-the next it's nervousness (I've never lived away from home for more than 2 weeks before and never with a gang of strangers!). I'm a bundle of emotions-mostly happy (but a few terrified)-right now but all in all I'm reeeeeeeeeeeally looking forward to it!
Sorry if I rambled on too long. Gimme a swift kick to the side of the head and that should sort me out!
Great to be here!
ICP Kev (<-- See what I did there? Kev... ICP... Geddit? I'm so original!
)
