Adventures in Chatham: The Flooded Kitchen

From left to right: Jenny, Lilly, Emily, me, Maggie, and Brittnee. This is right before we ate delicious food at Whispering Canyon Cafe.

The first couple of weeks have been wild but lots of fun! My roommates and I enjoyed watching TV and movies together, resort hopping, flooding our kitchen...

Yes that's right. Our kitchen flooded.

The second night here, the water line connected to our ice machine in the fridge broke off and poured water into our kitchen. After a broken air conditioner, leaking dishwasher, and (previously) broken ice machine, we were hysterical that this was happening to us. Since it was midnight, we called security to let them know our kitchen was flooding. Thanks to our laughter of disbelief, they didn't believe us so by the time they arrived to shut off the water our kitchen had standing water slowly seeping under the carpet in our living room.

Three hug fans, a water vac, and new Mickey carpet in the entire apartment later, our apartment seems to be normal (knock on wood). But it was a lovely bonding experience.

My roommates are amazing, and we're having so much fun playing in the parks together or just sitting in our living room talking about training and how much we don't feel like cooking. I really lucked out with these girls :)

So even though our two bedroom/two bathroom for six girls apartment tries to tear us apart, we've only gotten closer. And I wouldn't want to share this apartment with anyone else.

Also, if you're interested in my YouTube vlogs, check out my channel to see two new ones about Magic Kingdom! My Hollywood Studios video should be up soon too.

Check In and Casting!

Monday I officially moved to Disney World and find myself just one day away from becoming a cast member!

The updates I could give you could go on for hours, so, for now, I'm just going to talk about the Disney events I attended the past two days. More exciting adventures to follow (preview: Magic Kingdom, fireworks, a flooded kitchen).

Monday I drove into my new apartment complex, Chatham Square. All my roommates were placed together (yay!) but in a small, two bedroom six-person apartment (sad). Still, we adjusted pretty quickly until the crisis started (but that's another story...). Check in went so quickly and before I knew it I had a housing ID and a bed! We show that ID everywhere, so if you're doing the DCP, never forget it!

My roommates are wonderful and moving in went smoothly. I later explored Disney Springs with one roommate, Maggie, and one of her friends and her roommates. It was a good first night and I was really looking forward to finding out my job the next day.

Enter Tuesday: Casting! It's mostly paperwork but I waited (im)patiently for my job in the big atrium where Disney statues loomed large over us. So I will be in Quick Service Food and Beverage at the Wilderness Lodge in Roaring Fork! (So hit me up if you're around :)). I'm very excited, I love that resort and it's near Magic Kingdom without the crazy hours. I also got my schedule and come Friday afternoon I will be an official cast member. I have Saturday off which means- PARK TIME. Then Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I have brief training days before getting a more complete schedule.

After casting I came back to explore the apartment complex a bit more with Jenny and Emily and then our roommate adventures entered unanticipated territory.

Stay tuned...

Roommates, Apartments, and Classes

This week is wild in terms of Disney updates, and it's only Wednesday.

On Monday my roommates and I were relieved to find out we can all request to live with each other! Not everyone can "link," as it's called, with 5 other people, so we count ourselves as lucky. So, if everything goes according to plan, Emily, Maggie, Jenny, Lilly, and Brittnee will be my roommates! We met each other on one of the DCP Facebook groups and are all recent graduates (Emily just graduated from grad school!). I got to video chat with a few of them Monday night, and it was so fun to finally get to "see" each other instead of just chatting on Facebook.

The program that runs housing and classes is called DORMS. It took me through the process of registering my car and requesting my roommates and apartment. There are four different apartment complexes you can choose: The Commons, Chatham, Patterson, and Vista Way. Within each one there are 3 bedroom/6 person, 2 bedroom/6 person, and 4 bedroom/8 person options for my group of six. 

With those options, we ranked our apartment preferences. We want that in-house washer/dryer, so The Commons is our first choice. Second is Chatham, because it has a bus stop; third is Patterson, because it's the same as Chatham but no bus stop; and finally Vista Way because it's old and loud. We should know before check-in day which complex we get.

Then today the floodgates opened and class registration began. While some people use the classes at Disney to get credit for the program, I am taking one purely for fun. The type of class I picked, called an Exploration Series Seminar, has no homework or tests. All I have to do is show up, participate, and learn!

After half an hour, I finally got the system to let me register for Disney Heritage! This class is all about Disney history. I am so happy to get it, because it's one of the most popular choices and fills up quickly. The class starts in late September and ends mid-October. I can't wait!

If you're reading this and thinking about doing the Disney College Program, let me know if you have any questions! I'd be happy to do a post explaining any of the process so far, too (it's kind of confusing and I've done a LOT of research to prepare).

Until next time- have a magical day!

My First Video!

Although I'm absolutely terrified to share this, I made my first YouTube video! I really love watching other people's Disney College Programs and I thought maybe my friends and family might want to watch mine too. So I took a deep breath and made my first video.

This is really something that scares me, but maybe that's all the more reason to do it. I'm much better with words written down than spoken; maybe it's time to get better at speaking and putting myself in front of other people.

If my loyal blog followers could take a look and let me know what you think, it'd mean the world :)