A Dose of Reality

While my Disney experience was perfect and I would change very little about it, it is important that people understand that you have truly been brought there to work. I have had multiple jobs before, everything from babysitting bratty children, to waiting tables at awful restaurants, to working with some at risk youth, and NOTHING was as difficult as my Disney job. Now hard work was nothing new to me, and I was perfectly willing to do it. But there were many College Program kids that expected is to be “Disney-like” all around and let me assure you, that is not that case. You will be expected to do some manual labor. Now of course the type is dependent on your job, and some of the jobs are certainly harder than others. One of my roommates was a house keeper and after her horror stories I am fairly sure I would run in the opposite direction if that was the role Disney gave me. And the life of a Princess is definitely not as difficult as those doing janitor work. But each job has its particular set of hardships. For example, I worked food and beverage at Animal Kingdom. There is a place in Harambe Village called the Fruit Stand. If you work the Fruit Stand you will be moving nonstop all day long. You have to keep the fruit stocked which means carrying large boxes of oranges and apples and bananas across the park to your location. You have to keep the fruit up to date, which means spoiling and throwing away fruit every hour and replacing all the labels and adding more fruit. You have to keep everything iced down, which means pushing and shoveling pounds of ice every 30 minutes and with the Florida sun, sometimes every 15. Not to mention you are outdoors, in Orlando, and if it’s not 112 degrees your entire shift, it will at least be for a majority of your day. Let’s add to that the general difficulty of dealing with guests every five seconds. They will interrupt you with seemingly dumb questions and you will have to stop everything you are doing to smile at them and direct them to the nearest bathroom, for the millionth time that day. Not to mention the thousands of guests you will attempt to communicate with, but don’t speak the same language as you. And as a CP (College Program) you are the bottom of the barrel. In Disney, there is hierarchy. At the top, you have Full Timers. Then you have the Part Timers. Then you have Seasonal workers (people that strictly work in the holiday’s seasons for the overload) THEN you have CP’s. So every crappy and unwanted shift, WILL go to you. Expect it, deal with it. Not that I would ever want to discourage you, but you need to know what you are getting into before you move and expect to be standing around whistling “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.” Just things to keep in mind!!