Life in the Disney College Program

So as some of you know by now I did was apart of the Disney College Program (DCP) in 2018 and LOVED IT. In today's blog post id like to share more of an overall experience of what living was like whilst in DCP. In my last Blog Post, I talked about work life, but today will be almost everything outside of that.

The first thing to note is that as an International person it is VERY expensive to get over to Disney.

Before I get started I am going to be brutally honest for those wanting to go and do the program, it is expensive and takes some time to even get to Disney, especially as an international person I talk about it in THIS blog post.  Is the cost worth it though? ABSOLUTELY! As a lover of all things Disney I personally think that this experience is worth it and unlike any other.

HOW EXPENSIVE?

I can only talk from an Australian point of view and it is more expensive coming from an international country rather than from another state.

The first thing to note is that Australia only has three cities that it does its interview in, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. So if you live in one of those cities fantastic, however, if you don't, you will need to make your way over to one, this means flights and possible accommodations depending on when your interview is during the day.

Secondly, when you get approved you will need to make a visa appointment and pay for the visa. In Australia, we only have one US Embrace (the only place to get the type of visa need - J1 -) this is located in Melbourne which means another flight and another hotel. Sadly you can't do both in 1 trip as Disney send you the paperwork for the Visa application.

Another Australian only fee is insurance. Because the American health care system is not the best in the world, Disney has mandatory health insurance by Lloyd of London, this cost approximately $2000 for the entire year (As of 2018 prices).

There is also a one time fee for housing that included the first week of Rent as well as an active fee for events that the housing complexes put on, this covered stuff like food, parties and serviced celebrations.

Lastly flights and accommodation for the USA. These flights can get pretty pricey and unless you are only planning on staying 6 months, I recommend a one-way ticket so the option is there to stay longer if you want to. flights can be up to 1800 if you don't book early enough. I booked my flights as soon my interview was over simply because I was just that confident in getting the job.

Acclimations is the other factor. Even though your start date might be the 16th of January, you are going to want to come a little earlier, even if it's only by a day or so. this means acclimation and transportation costs as well.

Finally is spending. you don't get paid until the second week. Payday is Sunday to Saturday and you get paid Thursday. Disney trying really hard to give you at least a little but of hours via Traditions and other classes the first few days, however, it won't be enough to cover everything you will need. So make sure to bring some extra money for spending as well as for household items and food,

Disney does not provide bedding and has limited kitchenware meaning you will have to provide your own. This can all be bought from Walmart, don't worry busses are provided! (we will get to those later!)

HOUSING

I won't go into to much detail about housing as I would like to do another post of the subject later one. But as of 2018, you have 4 housing complexes to live chose from. Chatham Square, The Commons, Patterson Court and Vista Way.

Each housing complex has its pros and cons that we will get to in a later blog post! however, for the sake of this post the needs to know are:

1) I lived with 7 other girls

2) I paid 116 a week for my house

3) I shared a room with 1 other person

So these are the needs to know until I go into more detail in another post!

DAYS OFF

So I would say I spent the majority of the time outside of work at a park or out and about with my friends. I adopted the term 'You can sleep when your dead" and that's pretty much how to approach most of my year. This is obviously not the healthiest approach but its the one I chose to live by. If I moved back I would manage my time a little differently than I did during my DCP, however, I truly feel I embraced that closest thing I would get to an authentic American college experience.

My Park days were defiantly my favourite and Disney does give you plenty of time to go to parks between work, I did get A LOT of time to play because of my location and days off do depend on where you work. I spend most of my time at either the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT as those are my two favourite parks. However, I did find lots of times to go to Hollywood and Animal Kingdom.

Some park days did include going to Universal Studios instead of Disney! These were on the days when my American friends had off as well so I had a lift! I tended to spend a lot of time at Universal during the month if September simply because of Halloween Horror Nights.  Overall I am really happy with how much time I spent in the parks. I managed to get on every ride multiple times. I did become a line snob and wouldn't wait more than 30 minutes for major rides. I had to make a conscious effort to go on rides that weren't my favourite as it was easy to simply go straight for the Haunted Mansion or Buzz Light year.

Another thing I did was do solo park days. There are days where I was the only person to have a day off and whilst I did stay home and relax for some of them, I went on a lot of visits to the parks on my own. It's really fun doing this because it means you can do single rider to all the rides that have them and you can make your own timetable and do 100 percent of what you want to do.  I usually would sleep in and go to parks in the late morning/early afternoon and stay till around closing time (this depended on what park I was in) if the park closed at 10 I would usually leave around 8 or 9 and be beack at my home around 10ish.

I found a lot of the time my friends and I, both on days off and just after work would go to a bar or a pub and get a drink. Applebees and Millers were a common choice for us and we would go for a drink or two before going home.

On days off where I was simply too tired to go to a park, I would stay at home in my Pjs and watch netflix or cook food and do laudry for the week. I found that I did laudnry late at night alot of the time becasue I was busy in the day time. My sloth days also included walking over to the local outlet mall and doing some shopping,  In terms of food shopping I found at the start of my program I tried really hard to buy fresh food to cook but by the half way mark I was really tired of catching the hour bus to walmart and back and having some of my food go bad ot having to stay in and cook the food before it went bad instead of going to a park. I found myself buying alot of instant foods later on, which was great of rmy budget and time but not so good on the waistline. if I had to do this part again I would try for a better balance of instant meals and freshly cooked foods as well as learn what food is good to make and then freeze for myself.

So thats some of what life is like, how much it costs and what I did on days off, there alot more to cover, like housing details, trasport, housing event however this blog post is long enough so I will leave it here for today! 

Thanks for Reading, See you next week!   

- Tasha

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