Wow, just wow!!!

Here I am at 8am the morning after my check-in for the Walt Disney World College Program...I'm settled into my apartment, have met all of my roommates, been through casting, and attended my housing meeting. The funny thing is I still have a hard time believing any of this is real! I'm actually a Disney Cast Member! How did this even happen?!?

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm extremely excited right now! Yesterday was one of the most incredible days of my life! I'll give you the shortened version of what went on yesterday, because to tell the entire story would take a pretty long time.

First, I met two of my roommates on May 17th, the day before we checked in. We knocked around Downtown Disney and Boardwalk until the dinner that was set up by some people on one of the Facebook groups. In all honesty, the dinner was kind of a bust...less than a third of the people who RSVP'd for the event actually showed up, and they weren't able to seat us all at one table, so it was like little groups of 4 sitting all over the place. On a positive note however, we were able to pick up a 4th roommate for our apartment.

May 18th was check-in day for me, and let me tell you, it was incredibly busy! Me and my roommates met at the front gate of Vista way at 7am and waited until they let us in. I won't go too much into the actual process (gotta leave some surprises) but I will say that if you want to room with a particular group of people, make sure you all show up together because one person from the group will be responsible for negotiating the apartment for everyone. I was responsible for negotiating the apartment for myself and my 3 other housemates, and it was a very easy process. I was able to get us exactly what we wanted, a 3 bedroom apartment at Chatham Square. We were assigned 2 other housemates randomly, but that was what we wanted anyway. All in all it was a very easy process.

After finishing up at Vista Way we were able to go to our apartment for about 30 minutes before we had to catch a bus over to casting. At casting we took care of all of our paperwork and got fingerprinted for our background checks. The whole process is incredibly streamlined and it doesn't feel like it takes nearly as long at it actually does. The good news...when you walk out of casting you will OFFICIALLY be a Disney Cast Member! You will also find out your location, date for Traditions, and the date and time of your first day of training.

Once the casting visit was over, we again headed back to our apartment. We had about a 2 hour break before our housing meeting at The Commons. The meeting itself lasted about 2 hours, and I highly recommend walking over instead of taking the bus as The Commons is literally right around the corner.

You might have noticed that nowhere in all of that did I mention food or a lunch break...there's a very good reason for that. We were so busy all day that my roommates and I were not able to stop for food until after 5pm. We did eventually make it to Subway before heading off to do our grocery shopping. We finally finished up with everything at around 8pm, at which time we all pretty much collapsed around the TV!

I'll update this later on and add more to it because there's really a lot more to say, but I just wanted to get my first impressions down while the memories are still fresh. It's going to be a great experience and I can't wait to meet everyone and create some really great memories!!!