AlliGirl
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 6, 2011
Hello everyone and welcome to the story of our trip to Walt Disney World! We visited from May 31st to June 5th, 2015. We are a bit delayed in starting to write this, but we have many fun memories and pictures to share!
We have written one previous trip report about our trip to Disneyland last summer. You can read that trip report here. However, since this is the first trip report we have written about Walt Disney World, we’ll redo the introductions for new readers.
My name is Alli and I am originally from a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I graduated from Texas A&M University and then promptly shipped off to Orlando, Florida to participate in the College Program at Walt Disney World. I grew up visiting WDW with my family a handful of times through about age eleven. Then, in 2011, after watching a smattering of YouTube videos about the parks, I just knew I had to make a trip back to WDW! My mom came along, and it was our first trip there in 10 years or so. It was an amazing trip, mostly because so much had changed in those 10 years! After that trip, I was totally consumed by the Disney Parks. I research and read about them frequently and daydream about them even more. That would be why I decided to be a part of the College Program. I started my program in January of 2013 and worked in Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom as a Jungle Cruise Skipper for one year.
Yup, I landed the dream job! I also landed the dream boyfriend! (It’s really hard to write about Disney and not be saccharine sweet and cheesy to the nth degree.) My boyfriend Scott was a part of the same CP and also worked in Adventureland at Magic Kingdom, but as a Pirate operating Pirates of the Caribbean. After our six month College Program was up, we still couldn’t leave the magic and stuck around for another six months. We left WDW in January 2014 and this was our first trip back since! So when I say “we” I’m talking about Scott and I! One of our very best friends from our CP also came along on our trip, so she falls into the “we” category as well, haha. Whenever I write on trip reports, Scott is never far, because he has an amazing memory and he takes all of the notes and pictures for our trip report. After I do the writing, he goes back and inserts all of the pictures from that section of the trip. I will let him introduce himself below!
Hey everyone… My name is Scott and I originally hail from the great city of New Orleans, Louisiana, although I’ve spent the last decade (minus our year spent in the most magical place on earth) on the Mississippi gulf coast. As I was growing up, my family frequented Walt Disney World… frequently. I fell in love with the parks and became the official Disney Park Fact Generator/Historian of my family. I read tons of books, I googled obscure Disney facts, and I constantly found myself exploring satellite images of WDW. I was obsessed with learning everything I could about the parks. So, naturally, I had to be a part of the magic. After my older cousin was accepted into the Disney College Program in 2011, I knew that was the route I had to pursue. I was originally accepted into the DCP as a lifeguard at Typhoon Lagoon. After 3 months of staring at water and smelling of chlorine, I knew it wasn’t for me. So I put in a request to transfer, and just two short weeks later, I was sailing the high seas with Captain Jack Sparrow. The job was everything I’ve ever wanted, and out of all of the jobs in the great wide World, I was lucky enough to be placed LITERALLY next door to my lovely girlfriend. Life was sweet.
If anyone out there has questions about the College Program or working at WDW, leave a comment and we will be happy to help!
We booked this trip in the middle of March and we were able to take advantage of the Cast Member Friends and Family hotel room discount via a very kind friend who still works at WDW. We weren’t looking to splurge, as twenty-somethings with ad infinitum relatively new necessities demanding our every dollar. So, we opted to stay at Pop Century. It was my first time staying there and I had my trepidations. I originally wanted to stay in a Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation, but the Cast Member I spoke with on the phone explained that because these are some of the most highly demanded rooms on property at any given time, they don’t offer the Cast Member discounts on them, or any other discount. So…Pop Century it is! We didn’t think we’d hang around the resort much anyway, as crazy park commandos who wanted to do it all in four days.
We also had saved four single day parkhopper tickets from while we were working at WDW. Cast Members earn these “complimentary admission” tickets twice a year, nice perk! Since we had four free tickets apiece, we decided we would spend four days in the parks and spend our first day driving to Orlando and visiting Downtown Disney and our resort. Since we had four single day tickets apiece, I was nervous about how this would all go with our My Disney Experience Apps and Magic Bands. We all worked in the trenches at Magic Kingdom when Magic Bands went live. So we knew one side of the process. The side of standing at the kiosk by the Fastpass+ entrance at our attractions and explaining what Fastpass+ was, how to use it, why only some people could use it etc. until our faces were blue. Blue like the flashing circles around the Mickey heads at the access points as the masses attempted to tap just about anything against them to no avail. If you haven’t been to WDW post-Fastpass+ yet, a flashing blue light = no go.
However, we didn’t know the other side of Magic Bands: that as a guest actually using them for every aspect of your vacation. We had participated in a few Magic Band tests over the years, but only as hotel room keys and they were always plagued with issues. So, being that we were having our first true experience, and we had an unusual circumstance, I was pretty worried that something just wasn’t going to work out. We had printed each of our One Day Parkhopper Tickets months back, and they say on the bottom that you can make Fastpass+ reservations with them 7 days in advance. Gulp. Only seven days? Kiss those mountains goodbye… (or so I thought at the time). But after a lot of research and phone calls about the tickets and MDE, we were instructed to go ahead and link them to our accounts. So we linked each of the individual tickets and assigned them to the correct person. After I linked the tickets I thought…well, I know the tickets said we had to wait until seven days in advance but it can’t hurt to try and make Fastpass+ reservations now. It certainly didn’t hurt, because we were able to, even though we were somewhere around 50 days in advance. Apparently the information on the tickets we had printed was already out of date. So I quickly snatched up FPs for all of our favorites…but not Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Oy. The only thing we hadn’t done in all of WDW…even though we stared at those darned construction walls for an entire year as we played in the parks…for free…okay, I guess we can’t complain! The first time slot for an FP on the day I was making MK FPs for was 7:50pm. Honestly, that’s not terrible! But I knew we wanted to ride 7DMT during the day, and we wanted to parkhop to Hollywood Studios that night for evening EMH. So, 7:50 seemed too late. Oh well…hopefully we’d be able to ride it another time without sacrificing our first born?
So...hotel reservation: check. Tickets: check. Fastpass+ reservations: check. Anxiety about everything going seamlessly: double check!
*disregard the names
If you made it this far in reading…thank you! I know that I’m longwinded! Next time we’ll post about our Pre-Travel Day and our first day on property!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see ya real soon!
We have written one previous trip report about our trip to Disneyland last summer. You can read that trip report here. However, since this is the first trip report we have written about Walt Disney World, we’ll redo the introductions for new readers.
My name is Alli and I am originally from a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I graduated from Texas A&M University and then promptly shipped off to Orlando, Florida to participate in the College Program at Walt Disney World. I grew up visiting WDW with my family a handful of times through about age eleven. Then, in 2011, after watching a smattering of YouTube videos about the parks, I just knew I had to make a trip back to WDW! My mom came along, and it was our first trip there in 10 years or so. It was an amazing trip, mostly because so much had changed in those 10 years! After that trip, I was totally consumed by the Disney Parks. I research and read about them frequently and daydream about them even more. That would be why I decided to be a part of the College Program. I started my program in January of 2013 and worked in Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom as a Jungle Cruise Skipper for one year.
Yup, I landed the dream job! I also landed the dream boyfriend! (It’s really hard to write about Disney and not be saccharine sweet and cheesy to the nth degree.) My boyfriend Scott was a part of the same CP and also worked in Adventureland at Magic Kingdom, but as a Pirate operating Pirates of the Caribbean. After our six month College Program was up, we still couldn’t leave the magic and stuck around for another six months. We left WDW in January 2014 and this was our first trip back since! So when I say “we” I’m talking about Scott and I! One of our very best friends from our CP also came along on our trip, so she falls into the “we” category as well, haha. Whenever I write on trip reports, Scott is never far, because he has an amazing memory and he takes all of the notes and pictures for our trip report. After I do the writing, he goes back and inserts all of the pictures from that section of the trip. I will let him introduce himself below!
Hey everyone… My name is Scott and I originally hail from the great city of New Orleans, Louisiana, although I’ve spent the last decade (minus our year spent in the most magical place on earth) on the Mississippi gulf coast. As I was growing up, my family frequented Walt Disney World… frequently. I fell in love with the parks and became the official Disney Park Fact Generator/Historian of my family. I read tons of books, I googled obscure Disney facts, and I constantly found myself exploring satellite images of WDW. I was obsessed with learning everything I could about the parks. So, naturally, I had to be a part of the magic. After my older cousin was accepted into the Disney College Program in 2011, I knew that was the route I had to pursue. I was originally accepted into the DCP as a lifeguard at Typhoon Lagoon. After 3 months of staring at water and smelling of chlorine, I knew it wasn’t for me. So I put in a request to transfer, and just two short weeks later, I was sailing the high seas with Captain Jack Sparrow. The job was everything I’ve ever wanted, and out of all of the jobs in the great wide World, I was lucky enough to be placed LITERALLY next door to my lovely girlfriend. Life was sweet.
If anyone out there has questions about the College Program or working at WDW, leave a comment and we will be happy to help!
We booked this trip in the middle of March and we were able to take advantage of the Cast Member Friends and Family hotel room discount via a very kind friend who still works at WDW. We weren’t looking to splurge, as twenty-somethings with ad infinitum relatively new necessities demanding our every dollar. So, we opted to stay at Pop Century. It was my first time staying there and I had my trepidations. I originally wanted to stay in a Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation, but the Cast Member I spoke with on the phone explained that because these are some of the most highly demanded rooms on property at any given time, they don’t offer the Cast Member discounts on them, or any other discount. So…Pop Century it is! We didn’t think we’d hang around the resort much anyway, as crazy park commandos who wanted to do it all in four days.
We also had saved four single day parkhopper tickets from while we were working at WDW. Cast Members earn these “complimentary admission” tickets twice a year, nice perk! Since we had four free tickets apiece, we decided we would spend four days in the parks and spend our first day driving to Orlando and visiting Downtown Disney and our resort. Since we had four single day tickets apiece, I was nervous about how this would all go with our My Disney Experience Apps and Magic Bands. We all worked in the trenches at Magic Kingdom when Magic Bands went live. So we knew one side of the process. The side of standing at the kiosk by the Fastpass+ entrance at our attractions and explaining what Fastpass+ was, how to use it, why only some people could use it etc. until our faces were blue. Blue like the flashing circles around the Mickey heads at the access points as the masses attempted to tap just about anything against them to no avail. If you haven’t been to WDW post-Fastpass+ yet, a flashing blue light = no go.
However, we didn’t know the other side of Magic Bands: that as a guest actually using them for every aspect of your vacation. We had participated in a few Magic Band tests over the years, but only as hotel room keys and they were always plagued with issues. So, being that we were having our first true experience, and we had an unusual circumstance, I was pretty worried that something just wasn’t going to work out. We had printed each of our One Day Parkhopper Tickets months back, and they say on the bottom that you can make Fastpass+ reservations with them 7 days in advance. Gulp. Only seven days? Kiss those mountains goodbye… (or so I thought at the time). But after a lot of research and phone calls about the tickets and MDE, we were instructed to go ahead and link them to our accounts. So we linked each of the individual tickets and assigned them to the correct person. After I linked the tickets I thought…well, I know the tickets said we had to wait until seven days in advance but it can’t hurt to try and make Fastpass+ reservations now. It certainly didn’t hurt, because we were able to, even though we were somewhere around 50 days in advance. Apparently the information on the tickets we had printed was already out of date. So I quickly snatched up FPs for all of our favorites…but not Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Oy. The only thing we hadn’t done in all of WDW…even though we stared at those darned construction walls for an entire year as we played in the parks…for free…okay, I guess we can’t complain! The first time slot for an FP on the day I was making MK FPs for was 7:50pm. Honestly, that’s not terrible! But I knew we wanted to ride 7DMT during the day, and we wanted to parkhop to Hollywood Studios that night for evening EMH. So, 7:50 seemed too late. Oh well…hopefully we’d be able to ride it another time without sacrificing our first born?
So...hotel reservation: check. Tickets: check. Fastpass+ reservations: check. Anxiety about everything going seamlessly: double check!
*disregard the names
If you made it this far in reading…thank you! I know that I’m longwinded! Next time we’ll post about our Pre-Travel Day and our first day on property!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see ya real soon!
Joining in!
Um, I'm hoping you get that perfect viewing spot done before I leave for my trip on 8/15.
All you would need to do is place a textbox with a white background in over the “your name” area. Scott had downloaded Disney fonts for free in the past to use on various photo projects and those helped with the authenticity of the letter. It looks as though Mickey's printer was probably running a bit low on color ink when he printed this…but alas, we'll forgive him.
