Terrible Paint Drawings Of My Time As A Cast Member

Kimberley, 24, Aussie. I was part of the Disney International College Program, 2017. I worked in merchandise at Carribean Beach, Epcot Futureworld, and Pandora World of Avatar. I lived in Vista Way & The Commons. When I wasn't working 14 hour shifts or riding Haunted Mansion, I pretended to be writing blogs.

[discribbles]

“Goodbye? Oh no, please. Can’t we just go back to page one and start all over again?”

Today my College Program officially ends. 

I have had the most incredible year of my life being surrounded by magic every single day, meeting the people who would become my best friends, and working for the mouse.  

I have posts I still wanted to make, like Christmas on Pandora, like Ryota and I demanding the other carries them to the bus stop to avoid a mouse, like the birth of my friendship with Moify Boif, and like the Banshee Chicken Dance. But I spent so much time trying to soak up every second of this ridiculous program that drawing and writing was sidelined for 3am iHop adventures and 14 hour shifts and last minute fast passes for Tower of Terror. I don’t regret a second of it. 

I was a Disney Cast Member. It’s part of who I am now. I will never forget how much I loved being a part of this madness.

So I’ll leave you with this; Do the Disney College Program if it calls to you. Take the time to know & love your fellow cast. Be good to each other. Get the watermelon margarita at Ale House. Split it with the person you don’t realise is going to become your favourite. Watch Happily Ever After with your friends and try to hold onto what the moment feels like. And if you’re ever in Pandora, find a banshee named Archibald the Third and tell him that Kimberley loves him. 

See ya real soon.   (One final edit, a note from Sarah)

[discribbles]

7 Ways to Distract Yourself From the Fact That Your College Program is Ending

1. Just full on deny it’s happening.

What program? I’m not on a program? It’s not ending? I LIVE HERE THIS IS MY HOME NOW I’M SETTING UP A TENT IN THE ROOKERY

(Pro tip: Make friends with people who also refuse to acknowledge that you’re leaving! Group mentality denial is the strongest sort of denial!)

2. Drink. 

Go take shots with your work friends when you finish your shift, because you can’t cry if the tequila dehydrates you enough.

(Please be advised that this particular tactic can backfire.)

3. Ignore responsibilities & problems back home. 

If you just refuse to acknowledge all the problems you’re gonna have in 3 weeks time when you go home then the problems don’t exist! Right? Right.  

4. Go watch the fireworks.

Pretend this is how much you’ve cried at Happily Ever After all year! You are having a perfectly normal reaction!!! No one look at me when Mufasa’s part starts to blend with "I Can Go the Distance” okay!!! I’M FINE!!! 

5. Half heartedly post things you don’t use on the College Program Trading Post page.

Then remove them as soon as people start offering to buy your things because they’re YOUR THINGS FROM WHEN YOU LIVED AT DISNEY AND THEY CAN’T HAVE THEM.

6. Go shopping.

Just because you can only take 1 suitcase home but you have enough crap to fill about 8 of them doesn’t mean you CAN’T buy more things. It just means you SHOULDN’T. And if your roommate is a BAD INFLUENCE like MINE IS then THIS HAPPENS. 

7. Straight up just refuse to pack.

Packing shows the world that you’ve accepted the end of your program. Be like me! Pour the entire contents of your life onto your shared bedroom floor to “begin packing” and then leave it there indefinitely.

I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that the idea of leaving my life here, and my home at Disney, isn’t something I want to face yet.

I have just over 2 weeks of my program left. 

2 weeks of living with Sarah.

2 weeks of adventures with my Pandora family. 

2 weeks of Rookery rotations and drum circles and being the Unwilling Mayor of Windtraders. 2 weeks left of being able to go to Magic Kingdom whenever I want. 2 more weeks of dancing badly in Move It Shake It. 2 weeks of bus D&M’s with Liv. 

I have 2 weeks left of being a Disney Cast Member.  

So I guess I better make them count. 

[discribbles]

I love working in merchandise at Disney. I get to spend most of my day talking to people and playing with bubble wands and sticking tape on other cast members in an ongoing ‘who can get more tape on the other person” game that Jeremy is definitely losing and I am definitely winning. 

Most locations you’re either registers or merchantaining. But one of the best parts about Pandora is that we get rotated between the Avatar Maker podium, registers, merchantaining, and...the Banshee Rookery. 

Banshees can only be adopted in Pandora. They take up an entire corner of the store and are essentially a tiny dragon-looking puppet that sits on your shoulder and you control the movements of. We bring travellers into the Rookery, give a demonstration of how to set the banshees up, explain how they work, and then help people choose their colours. (If you were curious to see what that actually looks like, my friend Jeremy and I are at 14:38 in this video doing a spiel)  

The best part about Rookery is the amount of rubbish I get to talk. My banshee, Archibald the 3rd, is trained to steal hats, nibble on fingers, to only bite Dads, and to do the chicken dance. 

The worst part about Rookery is that it is 1000 degrees in there and occasionally small children will try to pet my banshee and will pet my boob instead. Also once a child asked what the perch is for and I tried to say “It’s for your banshee to sit on” and accidentally said “it’s for your banshee to shit on” and the dad thought it was really funny but the grandmother did NOT. 

Anyway. My favourite question I get when I introduce Archibald the 3rd is “What happened to Archibald 1 & 2″ and the answer to THAT is “They fell in love and flew to the top of the floating mountains.” 

Banshees are both the love of my life and the bane of my existence. The rookery is going to be one of the things I miss most when I go back to Australia & real life. Whilst I groan when I pick up a Rookery assignment, there’s families every day who come in so excited to learn about the banshees and play with Archibald and adopt their own little guy that make it worth it. 

Some day in the next 40, I am going to have to start my spiel with “Welcome to the rookery travellers! My name is Kimberley, this little guy is Archibald the 3rd, and if I start crying halfway through this presentation, I’m sorry, it’s because you guys are my last banshee family ever.”  And it’s going to break my heart.  

[discribbles]

So we survived Hurricane Irma. Our 2 person hurricane party was a riot at first. The lights were on, we had strawberry vodka, we had cake, we made a ‘Kim & Chiqs Don’t Want To Die In This Hurricane” Spotify playlist, we were having a really good time surviving.

Around 9pm we went outside in our cast raincoats and messed around in the rain.

At 10pm we went back outside with our neighbours, put on the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and staged a sword fight.

Around 11pm we stuck our heads out into the hallway and realised just how strong the wind was. Our hallway was starting to flood and we physically could not walk across the open air hallway because the wind was so strong.

Around 12 o’clock our lights started to flicker. We put on White Chicks to pretend it wasn’t happening. The lightning outside periodically flooded the entire world in electric blue and green.

Around 1am we watched our lounge room windows bending in with the strength of the wind. I started checking the live weather map more than necessary, watching the eye moving towards our home.

Around 2am our neighbours went back to theirs so they could keep an eye on their leaking flat and the tree smashing against their lounge room windows. Around 3am the eye wall hit us and Chiqui and I sat alone in the dark in our lounge room watching the trees outside our window bend and creak, and debris spiral.

At 4am we watched half of the tree in front of our building snap off and barely miss the cars outside.  

At 7am, we crawled out of our flat after 2 hours of restless sleep to see the damage to our complex. Shutters were ripped off the buildings, trees were down, gutter pipes hung swinging in the wind.

We thought the hurricane was going to be a really fun excuse to get drunk and eat hurricane snacks, but that moment when you hear the wind howling and start hearing the snaps of branches and realise that actually we shouldn’t be sitting this close to the window just incase it shatters all over us is really, really scary.    

[discribbles]

🌟🎵 Reach out and find your Happily Ever After 🎵🌟

[discribbles]

“Kimberley, please take the horrible space monkey off your shoulder……fine you can have ONE PICTURE WITH THE SPACE MONKEY.” - my manager, after 5 minutes of me insisting Peter needed to be in the picture

[discribbles]

In which I have 9 locations in 4 weeks: Part One

This month has been a bit of a whirlwind. 

I’ve finished the first half of my program at Caribbean Beach. 

The end of my time there wasn’t the same as the start. For one thing, we had a costume change. 

I was not overly pleased about it. 

On the bright side, we really bonded over our new mandatory pineapple shirts.

In fact, Jasmina, Kayla and I bonded over a lot of things. Like late night Taco Bell runs, and Kings Cup, and relationship drama. And then they left me.  

And then I left Caribbean Beach for good.  

A few days later, I started at Epcot.

In fact, Sarah and I started at Epcot. 

I finished my training, across 7 shops, and eventually took my Earning My Ears ribbon off. 

For a blissful 3 weeks, Sarah, Kayla, and I worked at Epcot with excellent work hours and a bus that came every 15 minutes that was full of pretty German & Norwegian boys. 

And then my manager came in and asked to talk to me.  

To be continued 

[discribbles]

In which I have 9 locations in 4 weeks: Part Two

She started like this: “I don’t know if this is going to be good news or bad news…”  I thought she was going to tell me to move to another shop for the day or that I’d been force ER’d and was being sent home early. 

“You’re being transferred”  

I thought she was kidding. I thought it was a hugely elaborate ‘end of training’ prank. I had JUST been transferred. Just added everyone on Facebook. Gone to my first Futureworld IHOP after-work adventure the night before. I couldn’t be getting TRANSFERRED. AGAIN. 

And then she held up a training schedule with my name on the top.

I looked at the paper and, still thinking she was joking, said “Nice try, that’s the Pandora costume. They’re not taking CP’s.” 

“This isn’t a joke, I’m sorry. You’re being transferred to Pandora.”  

I burst into tears. Not because I was unhappy, but because I was overwhelmed, and confused, and so shocked that I could barely process it. I was being moved to Pandora. The freshly opened, absolutely chaotic, heavily themed, “next level immersion experience” that is the World of Avatar.   

Over the course of the next week I discovered that my transfer hadn’t been at random. I had served a higher-up in Pandora at work without realising, and they had pulled me from the depths of EPCOT to be one of the first two CP’s to ever work at Pandora. 

As of right now, I have been through DAKlimation (the Animal Kingdom orientation class), Passage To Pandora (a class dedicated to training you up to work in Pandora), and 7 full days of training. 

 I can recite a banshee pledge to you, explain how we mix your DNA with the Na’vi to create your very own avatar, and am slowly learning both Na’vi and Spanish (it’s tour group season).  

I’ve also met some of the most wonderful, hilarious, vibrant cast members I’ve ever worked with, and met some of the most difficult guests Disney has to offer. 

I feel so lucky to be able to work in Pandora as part of the opening team. I’m always going to be able to say that I was the first International College Program cast member to work in Windtraders. Ever. I am always going to be in the first group of CP’s ever chosen to work in Pandora. In years to come, when it’s starting to look outdated and worn, I’ll still be proud to say I was a part of the Pandora madness. 

[discribbles]

Big Lou the manatee was actually fine, but it didn’t stop my manager Becky and I from desperately trying to figure out how to find a net big enough to scoop a dead manatee out of the tank for a solid 5 minutes. 

[discribbles]

My Morocco photo has gone missing but here! We visited every country pavillion at Epcot and got a photo there! Ticking off the bucketlist ✔

[discribbles]

Working for Disney is really just getting paid to play dress ups

[discribbles]

Broken hearts & the Disney College Program

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you before you start this program: you’re going to fall in love. 

You’re going to fall in love with the parks, with your housemates, your work friends, Blaze pizza, cute boys on buses, with Happy Mondays, with strangers in bars, and sometimes, you’re going to fall in love with guests. This week I fell in love with a family. 

It was instantly like I’d known them my whole life. Seeing the kids became the highlight of my shifts. I’d hear a little “Kimberley!” called across the food court and would look up to see a blur of colour running towards me. 

My week was full of hugs, and laughter, and getting distracted by Lexi or Brody telling me about their day. Their parents were amazing too. I was head over heels for the whole family, and when their flight home was cancelled because of the weather, and they had to stay an extra 3 days, I was silently elated that I didn’t have to say goodbye yet. 

Unfortunately, today was the day I did have to say goodbye. Brody came in sleepy and sad to say goodbye, and gave me a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek and whispered that he’d miss me. Lexi gave me a Cogsworth Tsum Tsum and a Disney trading pin with Ariel & Flounder that says BFFs on it, and popped in and out all night, reassuring me she didn’t have to say goodbye yet. When we DID have to say goodbye, we hugged each other about 1000 times whilst I used half a tissue box trying to pull myself together.  

When you’re going into the College Program, you expect to meet people who make your life better. You expect it to be your friends, and your housemates, and your co-workers. And those people DO make a huge impact. But nothing could have prepared me to stand in the middle of the shop floor, crying and hugging those kids, and feeling my heart break.  

[discribbles]

Sometimes I forget I live in Florida and then I am abruptly reminded in the weirdest, most horrifying of ways 

[discribbles]

This is Jeremiah Reptar. He is our son now and we leave him small pieces of fruit on the ground so he can grow up big and strong and protect us from cockroaches.

Sarah does not approve of us feeding Jeremiah Reptar. She does not approve of Kayla and I wanting to keep him in general. We love him. We have no idea where he is anymore. We think he is living under the fridge. 

[discribbles]

When I was trying to explain my role at Disney to people back home, I found it easier to just say “It’s essentially just a retail job, but I’ll have to wear something ridiculous” Some days that’s true. But mostly, working Disney retail is a little bit more magical. 

Yesterday, I had some guests come into our shop who remembered me from the day before (one massive perk of working in the resorts: guests remember you, and they will come back and ask for you, and we’re lucky enough to be able to build real relationships with the people staying with us) 

This particular family came in, and remembering that it was the little girls birthday, I asked if the girls would like to visit my magical sticker drawer. 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve given a small child a sticker recently, but if you haven’t, the sheer joy kids get out of stickers has no equivalent. I have seen proposals where the couple hasn’t been as excited as a child is when you tell them you have an Elsa sticker for them. Anyway, I digress.  

So the girls come around to my sticker drawer, and we all say the magic words to make it open. My sticker drawer is a little depleted at the moment, and the birthday girl spots an old Daisy Duck print that’s stuck on the side and says she like that one please. 

Now, I don’t have any Daisy stickers at the moment. But, this is Disney, so rather than say “I’m sorry we’re all out of Daisy, would you like a Donald instead?” I manage to get the entire family lined up behind me, single file, waddling and quacking our way through the store to all the different registers, on the hunt for a Daisy sticker.  

If I’d ever tried to get a parent at my old job to follow me around the store, flapping their arms and quacking, I’d have been stared at blankly for 30 seconds before they walked out. At Disney, you get a hug from the parents to say thank you for “managing to turn a shopping trip for milk into something magical” and 2 little girls who tell you they love you as they flap and quack their way out of the store. 

[discribbles]

An introduction to living with Kayla

This was at 3pm ♥︎

[discribbles]

Whilst I felt real fear the first time a swarm of glitter covered teenage girls with matching hair accessories walked en masse into my shop, I full on love having all these cheer teams stay at our resort. 

Once you start chatting to them they’re the bubbliest, most curious people you’ll encounter all day. They’ll call you ma’am to be polite, and all they want to do is try on hats and buy crisps and ask about kangaroos. 

I get a lot of “Oh my gOD YOU GUYS SHE’S FROM AUSTRALIA!” and have had a couple “You are SO CUTE! We love you, can you take a selfie with us?”  

A bunch of them promised to come back and tell me how their competition goes, and one of them said she was going to try and find a spare matching bow for me because they had adopted me as part of their team.   Long live the cheerleaders.