Disney ICP Video

Merry Christmas - and an Update

Hi everyone,

So you may have noticed that I kind of dropped off the radar. 

Unfortunately, this is not for the same reason as most - it was not because I was too busy with all the loads of fun I was having, I actually ended up having to self terminate because of some family issues back home. 

Anyway, I've been home for quite some time now and although i am glad to be back and enjoying living in Glasgow again, I have been thinking a lot about Disney the last few weeks and have one overwhelming feeling:  I really, really  miss it!

I was looking forward to doing the programme for a lot of different reasons - but the things I miss the most are things which I did not anticipate, mostly the whole atmosphere and the sense of community amongst the cast members.

The Walt Disney World Resort really does have a sort of magic to it, that is not just for children, the atmosphere when you walk through the front gate is unlike anything else, or anywhere else in the world. 

Also, the fellow cast members, particularly others on the college programme really do feel like family.  I met people in the few months I was there that I know will be friends for the rest of my life.  There is a real sense of community amongst the cast members and you feel as if you can easily just walk up and start chatting to anyone, even if you have never met them before.

So these two things combined are what I really miss about Disney, and unfortunately they are things that cannot be experienced by just having a holiday at Disney World.  So there is only one thing for it...

Going Back.

I am going to apply to go back in 2013, straight after I graduate.  I might have a bit of difficulty with this as I did self terminate but hopefully I can get another chance to go back and do all the stuff that I missed out on this year.  I feel like I didn't get to experience everything I had hoped for, for a mixture of reasons, so I want to do it right this time.

I couldn't go back in 2012 as I have to do a certain kind of internship during that summer, but hopefully 2013 will see me returning to DisneyWorld.  It is not easy watching many of my friends going through the process of booking their flights and getting excited for ICP 2012, but there are some advantages to going in 2013, firstly I will be 21, during my last programme I was only 19.  Secondly, the new Fantasyland should hopefully be open by this time, so that will be great to see.

Anyway have a lovely Christmas everyone and best of luck for the new year :)

Vlog 7 - Blizzard Beach

Vlog 6 - Pool Party and Dolphin Feeding

ICP Vlog 5 - The first few days

Princesses and Playing

This was my first week of working in the castle, I had my training and will have my assessment tomorrow.  It is a really great place to work, although its very tiring, especially due to the fact that they have quite bad hours and almost no breaks.  But it truly is a magical place to work; if you haven't read my blog before, I work in Cinderella's Royal Table which is the restaurant INSIDE the castle in the Magic Kingdom. 

Those windows are our restaurant!

 Cinderella greets the guests downstairs in the lobby, this is where all the little girls get really exciting and you get to see their faces light up.  Then they are led up a red carpet spiral staircase to the dining room, which is also absolutely beautiful.  Here over dinner, princesses are announced one by one including Aurora, Belle, Snow White and Ariel, they walk around and visit every single table during each meal.  It's such a great job because the guests are having a magical experience and you are part of it, although its very busy - the restaurant is full every single meal of every single day as it books up six months in advance ( thats the maximum time beforehand you can book).  

The best bit so far has been when I was training for podium, which involves checking the guests in.  The podium is just outside the restaurant and it looks out over Fantasyland.  The whole of Fantasyland is cleared off at night about an hour before Wishes, the fireworks display starts.  I got to watch Wishes from underneath the castle - it was incredible!  With every firework the whole of Fantasyland was lit up in different colours, it was stunning - definitely the best thing I've ever been paid to do!

Today I was off work and went to Typhoon Lagoon with Lotty and Caroline, it was such a nice way to spend my day off - so relaxing and chilled out.  But of course, I didn't tan :(  Once the park closed we headed over to Epcot to have some dinner and watch Illuminations.  Unfortunately the dinner was pretty crap, but the fireworks were breathtaking so it evened out. 

Anyhoo better get to bed as got to be up bright and early for my assessment!

Have a Magical Day!

Volcanic Ash

Okay, as you can probably see from my last vlog, I am here!  But it wasn't easy!

My original flight was supposed to leave at 7:35 from Edinburgh on Tuesday 24th to catch a connection in Gatwick at 11:20 to Orlando.

Firstly, it took us six hours to drive to Edinburgh (it should only be about 40 mins) because of the insane hurricane winds in Scotland on Monday night - we were staying overnight in Edinburgh.  We finally got to the hotel, checked my flight details, only to find that it had been cancelled because of the ash cloud!  So we went to the airport early the next morning to reschedule and i was booked onto the same flight the next day.  We drove back to Tillicoultry and i stayed glued to the ash cloud updates all day, at 3pm, BA announced that my flight for the next day from Edinburgh was cancelled as well. Soo I bused it down to London overnight (a 9 hour bus ride) and got off in Victoria the next morning and headed straight to the airport - and I made it!  Although I didn't sleep in about three days and was a complete zombie when I got here - its completely worth it!

So when we arrived at vista way I couldn't believe just how friendly everyone was - I mean, everyone knows they are like that here but not THIS much!  We even got a free bag of cookies each, and I think they were homemade!

I am in Chatham Square which is absolutely gorgeous and its right next to Mickey's retreat.  I live with two other girls, one from Mexico and one from England and currently have not roommate, but that will probably change on Tuesday.  So if you're coming on the 31st - you could be rooming with me! :P

Here are some pictures of the apartment:

Yesterday was Traditions - but I am not going to tell anything about this because it should be a surprise!
But we did get our namebadges and our I.D. that gets us into the partk for free :D

I also found out my role the other day.... you are never going to believe it!!!!

Drum roll please............

CINDERELLA'S ROYAL TABLE!!!!!!!

That's right, I will actually be working IN the castle!

I will be working HERE!

Here is me when I found out :P

Anyways I start training today so will post later about that.

Have a Magical Day!  xx

ICP Vlog 4 - The Journey!

Let the 10 Day Countdown Begin!

Wow

In ten days I will be in Orlando, Florida.

And yet it STILL hasn't sunk in!?!

I've been trying to keep my posts to a minimum as personally I hate having to flick through people's blogs and vlogs to find when they actually get to Disney World (the bit i want to see lol) but now with only ten days to go I think it's fair to be posting today.

I have been doing a lot of packing (both for disney and because I'm moving out of my flat!) so will likely do a packing vlog within the next ten days and I will also be filming during the trip over to Florida and as much as I can on the day we arrive etc.  So if you are going on May 31st or June 19th - watch this space.

Tonight is my leaving party so I'll be going out with some close friends and family for a meal and then a party at my flat and possibly going out in Glasgow for my last night clubbing with alcohol! (I'm only 19 so not going to risk it over there).  I have sooo much to do before tonight but all I keep doing is reading the icp facebook page and looking up stuff at Disney - urgh this is not good :P

Anyways, subscribe or follow if you want to see my journey over to Orlando before you go and I promise I will keep all of you that are still waiting updated in as much detail as possible!

Have a Magical Day!
xx

3 weeks to go!

Oh wow i am so unbelievably excited now.  Honestly i can't think about anything other than Disney!
The first lot of Disney icp people arrived yesterday and some of them have been kind enough to give us slivers of information on what its been like so far.  One girl is sharing with someone who is actually playing Cinderella - how amazing is that?!

Some people are discussing on the facebook group whether they should bring a duvet or buy one out there. i was going to buy a cheap one from Tesco and leave it there but i found out you can pre-order one for store pick up from Walmart and get it when you arrive so i'm going to be doing that now.  While i was on the Walmart site i thought i'd have a quick look through what else they had on sale there - oh my god.  i couldn't stop browsing through Walmart for a good few hours!  The food - wow.  You can buy like 20 donuts for 5 dollars.  The one bad thing i noticed is they didn't seem to have a lot of fresh food, it was mostly all ready meals and stuff you pop in the oven or microwave.  Speaking of which, i came across one product that i couldn't believe - Ready made scrambled egg.  You just put it in the microwave - i mean, how lazy can you get?!  i also discovered that they have seventeen different types of popcorn! i mean wooooow!  But yeah i get the feeling i will be spending quite a bit of time exploring Walmart hehe.

A few of the delicious treats available at Walmart :P

Other than that i'm just getting packed.  Everything is pretty stressful right now as i'm also needing to pack up everything i own and move out of my flat before i leave for Disney so there's a lot to do!  Sophie (my rabbit) is going away today to the lovely people that are going to be looking after her for me - its so sad :( but its best that she gets settled in a couple weeks before i go.

This week i also added two things onto my bucket list.  The first is to go parasailing over Bay Lake with Sammy Duvall's Water Sports Centre.  You get some great views of the Magic Kingdom from this trip such as this one:

Magic Kingdom from the view of someone parasailing.

Parasailing with the Contemporary in the background.

The other thing that was added to my list is a two day trip to Miami.  included in the trip is transportation from Orlando to Miami, a shopping trip, a trip to Everglades where you can have an airboat ride and the opportunity to hold an alligator, an overnight stay in a Radisson hotel, food, swimming with dolphins and time to explore Miami, then they take you back to Orlando.  it sounds amazing and i can't WAiT to do it!

That's all for now, will be spending most of the next two weeks packing and getting ready to go.  Leaving for Germany tomorrow and have to take my laptop to the Genius bar to get the i key fixed ( i am currently copy and pasting it every time D: ) so hopefully there were be loads of exciting icp chat on facebook when i get back on Friday!

Have a Magical Day!

xx

Dodging Bullets

Well i just dodged a bullet.

My visa appointment was last week and i figured that it would be a while before my passport was sent back because of all the bank holidays and everything, so didn't worry too much that it hadn't arrived yet.  

My phone has been dead for a couple of days as i left the charger at my mums, but i figured i would just listen out for them when they came as our buzzer in the flat is pretty loud.

Last night, after ordering dominos and wondering why it hadn't arrived, i learned that our buzzer is broken and has been for a couple of days.  So i signed onto the tracking website for the visa to see that, yes, they had already attempted delivery. Oh dear.

i called up to re-schedule delivery and they said the next available date for delivery is Wednesday, which would be fine if i weren't flying over to Germany to visit my dad on Tuesday. This realization hit me about ten minutes ago and i panicked wondering how on earth i was going to get to Germany without my passport.

BUT, luckily, last time i was in Germany, my Dad registered me to get one of the National identification cards (Aussweis) that they have in Europe as i'm half German.  When travelling within Europe, you can use these as a passport alternative and so i will be able to catch my flight after all!  

Thank god for that.

My Bucket List in Pictures

Okay so maybe this is a little sad, but with only 26 days to go, my excitement drove me to do this.
My Bucket list page can be seen at the top of this page in one of the tabs, but i just made 'My Bucket List in Pictures' woop. Obviously i don't know any of these people as they are all from the lovely town of googleimagia - but they served the purpose.

Anyways here it is! :)

Everything i plan to do - you can click on it to see it bigger =)

Have a Magical Day!

xx

Disney ICP Vlog 3 - US Embassy and London Meet

Embassy Appointment and London Meet-up.

Hellooooo,

it's been a while since my last post but not a lot of Disney stuff has happened lately until this week.
So on the 19th April i had my visa appointment at the US Embassy in London. i won't post a list of things you need as this has been pretty well covered by Suzie and various other bloggers. My appointment was at 11am and i was out of the embassy by 2:30, it was not too bad a wait and most of the people working there were pretty friendly and happy to help.

Also, don't be terrified about making mistakes on your application, yes - try to get it right but its not the end of the world if you make a small error. A friend of mine had his appointment on the same day - different job but the same kind of visa and he actually applied for the wrong type of visa entirely, put the wrong category and applied for B something instead of a J-1. They just told him to go to the internet cafe in Goulds Pharmacy (the place where you leave your bag) and change it and he came back half an hour later and continued with the appointment. So don't stress!

The next day was the Disney London Meet-up, it was a relatively small turnout but a really wonderful day! The weather was absolutely scorching, we sat in Regents park for a while and eventually went to Nando's for a really yummy lunch. Then frappe's in Starbucks and eventually a wander round Madame Tussauds (thank you to Julia who got us in for free!)

So thank you to everyone who came - it was so lovely to meet you and i'll be seeing you very soon in Florida!

Have a magical Day!

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Yeah... i suck.

So loading up the pics of the Food Challenge didn’t happen. So i’ll put them all up on one go in the next post. Sorry.. :/

i still have not booked my visa appointment yet as i am totally broke. But will hopefully be able to phone and book it early next week. Hope this will be alright. This is not going to be a long post as the keyboard on my laptop is currently broken and every time i want to type the letter ‘i’ i have to copy and paste it from somewhere else... not ideal. it’s a really long story which i won’t type now but maybe put in a vlog later. it may have to be vlogs for a while as the apple store said it would be £160 to fix :(. Not great as i have a 3000 word assignment due in a couple of days which has not been started... on Apple ironically lol.
Anyways there will be a vlog and several food pictures going up soon, once i have struggled through this assignment... urgh.

Have a magical day......?

Disney ICP Vlog 2

It's Finally Here!!

Okay, so my new camera cable has arrived! And i can start uploading the food pictures today :)  So Day 1 of my one week Disney Food Challenge I had a mickey shaped bbq chicken pizza and it was yyyyyummy! 

You can get these basic pizzas in Tesco and I just fried up some chicken in bbq sauce and then smothered it in the stuff.

Something a little more exciting than pizza...

I GOT MY DISNEY PACK TODAY! :D

It was smooshed through the letter box by the post man this morning.

Unfortunately I had already given in and read the pdf version of the pack a few weeks ago so it was not much of a surprise but its still great to have it and make it feel that much closer.  Here are some pics for those of you that haven’t got yours yet:

So now just have to book my visa appointment, you are meant to do it immediately but I am totally broke right now so will have to wait till i get paid on Thursday :/ .

Also, looking forward to the Manchester meet next weekend, can’t wait to meet you all!  Thanks to Sarah Ward for organizing it all.  

Also, I saw a feature on Bethan John’s blog which I think is a fantastic idea and that is her ICP Bucket List, so I have decided to do the same (sorry Beth).  A lot of the things on my list are probably similar to everyone else’s ‘To Do List’... so we can do them together :D

I’ll put a link to my list at the top of this page.

I can't believe it's only 64 days to go!  And it will go by so fast! Between meet ups, visa appointments and uni stuff the time will fly by.  Will update again tomorrow with Day 2 of the Disney Food Challenge =)

Have a Magical Day!

xxxx

Rabbit Chews Camera Cable - Food Pictures coming

So unfortunately, my camera cable has been chewed right through by my rabbit, Sophie and so I can't upload any pictures of the week food challenge that I did, but they are sitting on my camera and I'll put them up as soon as I get my new cable.  So this is really just an update on that to let you all know, I haven't forgotten and they are coming!

ICP Vlog 1

I give a quick review of 'Mousecatraz' and talk about my 'Disney Food Challenge' which I will be setting myself next week.

DisneyMania

So have just finished reading 'Mousecatraz', a book all about the Disney College Program.  You have got to read this book if you're going on the program, it's filled with hilarious stories and snippets of useful information.  I absolutely recommend buying it, you can get it pretty cheap from amazon and its' well worth the money.  I'm going to start a vlog soon to go along with this blog so i'll talk about it a bit more in that.

Next week I'm going to set myself a challenge to have at least one Disney themed meal every day for a week.  This is going to be super fun for me as my most favourite thing other than Disney has  got to be food.  If anyone has any ideas please comment as I'm needing inspiration.

However, I have realized that I need to learn some self discipline when it comes to food and exercise, otherwise i'm going to come back from America looking like I just escaped out of Seaworld's Shamu attraction.  So I am beginning a Disney Diet.  Yesterday I bought an exercise DVD (don't judge me) with a fat blob in the shape of a lady on the front and a brown thin one standing next to her.  My efforts begin today.  Of course this means I will have to surrender in my struggle to become a raging alcoholic (long story) but I'm sure I can just begin snorting pixie dust instead, there will be plenty of that in the Magic Kingdom.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Of course, this does not include my week of Disney foods so feel free to suggest whatever fatty, sugary ideas come to mind.

I have to admit I've been a bit Disney mad these last few days.  It seems to come in cycles where I'll be fine for a week or two and then suddenly I'll have a couple of days wehre i eat sleep and breathe Disney.  Even as I'm writing this I'm listening to a playlist of 147 songs they play in the parks that I downloaded, at this very moment it's 'Main Street Audio' from the Magic KIngdom, of which there are 16 tracks :P

Today I also re-watched the whole College Program Presentation.  I know we've all seen it before but its a good source of Disneyism for the day and got me EVEN more excited (if that's even possible) iIf you fancy watching it again and getting hyped up, you can find it here.

Have a magical day!

Jules xx

The Adventure Begins

Hello and welcome to my Disney Diary.

So it all started when I applied back in October 2010.  I had a phone interview and then a face to face interview yadeyadeyade, I'm sure you've heard all the details of this from the other blogs.   Most people started their blogs when they applied and I'm just starting mine now, with 91 days to go until I start.

So here's a brief catch up:

On the 1st December I received this...

There was a lot of screaming and jumping up and down, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Soo between now and then there has been a lot of chat on the facebook group and somebody designed a hoodie for the 2011 ICPers.  Here's mine:

In case you're wondering, the paws in the corner of the picture belong to my giant rabbit, Sophie.

I have also booked my flights with British Airways and will be arriving in Orlando at 15:25 local time.

 When I start the program I intend to go into as much detail as possible about it and tell everything I can... but until then its just a waiting game!

I will be filling this blog with fun Disney stuff between now and 24th May to give myself, and anyone who's reading our Disney hit.

Have a magical day! :D

Jules xx