Would You Like Magic with That?: Working at Walt Disney World Guest Relations Read Online Free PDF

That’s more interesting. Sometimes it’s simply dumb luck.
    Getting into the college program is relatively easily (especially if you’re fine with working custodial or quickservice). It’s the easiest way to get into Disney World, and I’d estimate about 75% of all cast members start with the College Program.
    If you’re already past the college stage of life, you can apply to work at Disney, just like any other job. There’s an application and you can fill it out online. Or, you can physically go to the casting building and fill out an application there. Before you do either one of these things, you need to be living in Florida. Disney gets thousands of applications each day, and they will not hire anyone who lives out of state. Also, it’s usually something like you get a call on Thursday and they ask if you can start Monday. If you say no, that’s it. That’s your one shot to get a job at Disney. They’re not going to hold a spot for you if you need two weeks to move.
    Another thing. Disney just isn’t creating jobs out of thin air. They’re a business. As much as they’d probably love to hire a hundred new workers every day, they can’t. They don’t have the budget for it. At each work location, there is a set number of full-time positions available, and a set number of part-time positions. Seasonals are supplementary, but they’ve got a quota as well. Even if you really want to work at Tower of Terror, if there’s not an open spot there, you don’t get to work at Tower of Terror, no matter how much you beg and plead.
    On top of that, there’s also a waiting list. If your one dream in life is to work at Tower of Terror, you have to put your name on the list indicating that you want to work there. More than likely, there are going to be people ahead of you on the list. So guess what? You’re going to wait a very long time for a spot at Tower of Terror. You could be waiting months, maybe even years, for the chance to work there.
    Being seasonal at DisneyQuest was fine, but I needed a real job with steady hours. I couldn’t take the risk of being capped. On one of my days off, I drove over to Casting to put my name on a few lists for part-time and full-time positions.
    The room where you put your name on one of these job lists is a tiny chamber just through the main entrance doors. There’s a desk and a waiting room and that’s about it. Often someone nice is sitting behind the desk, but sometimes it’s a mean cast member who hates their life and doesn’t want to deal with cast members trying to get their name bumped up on the list for Tower of Terror.
    When I went to Casting I needed to do two things. First, I had to indicate that I wanted part-time status. Then I had to indicate where I wanted to be made part time. There is an option to just take “first available”. But first available could be housekeeping at Art of Animation, and for me that would have been a hard pass. There’s a catch to doing it this way, and it’s that you have to take whatever job becomes available first. So if I had said, “I want to be made part time more than I want to have a say in where I work,” and then I had been offered Art of Animation housekeeping, I would have been forced to take it.
    Because — and get this — if you turn down an offered role at Disney, they will make you wait six months before you are put back onto a list for a new role. So it’s either take that housekeeping job, or stay in your role for at least six more months, and then have to go through the whole waiting process again.
    Needless to say, I went into Casting and decided to pick actual location instead of walking in and yelling, “I’ll take whatever!”
    I could have chosen to switch roles, but I wanted to stay with attractions. Disney calls choosing a new work location for a role “skill coding”, except that there is no skill involved, and there’s no coding whatsoever, so I have no idea where that term came from. But I