Well, the day we got into Orlando back in June, my dad and I drove through Independence to check it out. I took a picture with Tigger in front of one of the Falcon Square buildings, and come to find out, that is the building I ended up living in!!!
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| Tigger on my building sign the day before I moved in! |
Unfortunately our building is the furthest one away from all of the others, so it can be quite the hike to pick up mail or visit anyone else. I ended up driving to visit my friend on the complete other side of Falcon when he was here during the summer since it was such a walk and that way I wouldn't have to do it in the dark either. I haven't been to the pool at all, which is sad, but the weather is looking like it is turning back around so I might try and spend some time reading by the pool in coming weeks. We also always try and check our mail when doing errands. When it was nice I would go on post-work walks and get the mail (especially after my best friend down here went back to school and I suddenly had a ton more free time) but nowadays we check it less frequent since it isn't really convenient.
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| Pic of my room taken back in August |
Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent, I chose to live in Disney sponsored housing since it was very hard to find reasonable places that offered short term leases, especially ones that were furnished. My rule was that I was only going to live off site if I could find something that would be cheaper. I did get close to getting a vacation home, but it didn't end up working out. Disney housing is nice since rent is taken out of our paycheck, it is furnished, utilities are included, didn't have to worry about signing a lease with other people, etc. It does stink a little that if you look at how much we are paying for a 2 bedroom apartment between 4 people it is a lot, but it really complicated finding housing down here. The apartments are decently sized, and I never really feel like we are on top of each other. Different apartments have different layouts, too. I like the area where we live in a lot. It is really peaceful and doesn't have that touristy feel a lot of other areas with apartments do. While Animal Kingdom is furthest from our apartment, the area by Magic Kingdom is 5 minutes away. Everything seems like it is 20-30 min away from Falcon, but honestly, I feel like that is how it is around Orlando. I just don't think they had a very good civil engineer plan their road ways so things might look close on a map, but the accessibility seems really inefficient wherever you go in the Disney area.
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| Another view of our room. Including out closet, which you can walk into and is actually very spacey |
I ended up choosing 2 of my roommates before and we were able to list each other. We met through a Fall 2014 Animal Programs Facebook group and it ended up working nicely. I am kind of glad that I chose ahead of time since I knew who I would be living with, and we have similar interests, but at the same time I would have loved getting to know interns from other areas of the company. We did hang out with a few Imagineering interns a lot in the summer, but once they left for school/got another job, we were left to our Animal Programs selves again. I liked getting to meet Nick's roommates, too, who were all pretty much engineer/imagineer people since they were more math-y like me and were fun to talk to.
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| My desk |
We have had 2 other roommates in the course of our internship. The first was an Engineering intern who had been here since May and had lived with 3 Ed. Presenters but apparently they moved them to another apartment for the last 3 weeks of their internship (I was never told this would be a possibility since our internship is longer than all of the others, but apparently Amber was. I hope that we don't end up having to move. I might end up trying to fight it since I wasn't told upfront). Her internship was through August, but she ended up extending through December and moved out to a house with some friends in August (and she ended up being offered a full time position in late September/early October!!!). Our second roommate is still in college and is an Industrial Engineering Intern in the Safety division from August-December. She is from Ohio and is pretty awesome. Since our first roommate had done a previous internship and had been here, she had her own friends she hung out with and when she did hang out with us I was often hanging out with my friend Nick who was only here for the summer. Our second roommate was new and she hangs out with the other engineering people too, especially since none of us have traditional weekends and she goes home more often then the rest of us, but we still hang out with her quite a bit.
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| My bulliten board from back in August. (everyone in Falcon gets one) A few more DWCF buttons have been added since then |
Anyways, I am glad that I chose to live here this semester. It allowed me to meet some awesome roommates, be close to a ton of other interns (even if I haven't been able to meet many others besides my Animal Programs friends), got to hang out with Nick when he was here this summer, and overall, it has been a lot less stressful than living in another place would have been (one friend has had nothing but problems, and a few others ended up paying more than us per month even though initially it would have been less). If I get another internship for next spring, I am thinking of finding a vacation home to rent with a few other people if some of my Animal Programs friends end up staying around and are interested.
Also, I just realized I never took pics of the common areas of the apartment so I'll want to do that before I leave and will perhaps try to put them up here eventually (but no promises).
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