Celebrating our 240th Independence

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays of the year and of course is especially made better with a 3 day weekend! After a week of not sleeping very well I enjoyed some extra time of relaxation, but also had a great time celebrating in the parks!

Saturday 2nd

My roommate rented a room at the Hard Rock Hotel so we had a ball at Universal! I'd been inside to go to the Velvet lounge during Mardi Gras (Thank you Mardi Gras Universal app for free drinks! What what?!?!) The rooms were even more amazing and we could even see CityWalk and the parks from our room! We had planned to spend the afternoon at the pool but when we first checked in it was pouring rain so we headed to CityWalk to go to one of the best places ever: Red Oven Pizza! It is seriously soooo good. Instead of heading back to the pool we decided to just hang out at the parks. We saw so of the cars cycling at the Hulk so hopefully it means that it will be back up and smoother than ever! I even got to watch part of the 100 years of movies nighttime show that I've never seen before. I'll definitely have to go back and see the whole thing. Before heading in for a relatively early night in we headed back to CityWalk to grab a bite to eat at Hot Dog Hall of Fame (where I of course got the Detroit option!)

Sunday 3rd 

We had such a great night sleep. Those beds at Hard Rock are COMFY! Today is the day that the holiday celebrations really began. Disney knows how to do fireworks so of course they do special ones for the holiday where they come hand and hand at both EPCOT and MK. This might seem to be a torn decision on what to attend, but luckily Magic Kingdom perimeter ones are on the 3rd and 4th, so I of course wanted to get the best of both worlds. My roommates and I met up with my roommate Sam's friends from out of town right before the fireworks at Magic Kingdom, which were amazing. I do have to say the best spot to see them is in the Hub. Afterwards we decided to go show our visitors Animal Kingdom at night. We were only there for about an hour, but we got a ton done including dinosaur twice, Everest, and a great safari where we saw the Hyenas!!!! I was pretty much jumping up and down because I've been waiting forever to see them! After a great night, Sam and her friends went back to MK for extra magic hours until 3am, but Corey, Scott, and I headed over to the new Applebees for some half price apps.

Monday 4th

Finally was the actual holiday! I celebrated by the all american decisions to go to Starbucks for their frappuccino deal and Five Guys for a great American cheeseburger. Then Corey, Scott, and I met up with Sam and her friends again for an evening of fun at EPCOT. We were lucky enough to be able to go on Test Track and the new Soarin', which I do think it is an improvement over the old one. Then we made our way around the world showcase before playing some Heads Up waiting for the fireworks. 

Overall, while we definitely know that summer has hit us with some crazy heat and humidity, it was a fantastic weekend with a good balance of relaxation, friends, parks, and celebrations. I have to say if you are ever in town for the Independence Day fireworks they are totally worth the crowds to watch! Like I said, Disney knows how to do fireworks. :) After such a great weekend, it was definitely hard to get up to go to work on Tuesday! lol

PDD (Post Disney Depression) and some Post-Disney Reflections

My time at Disney was- dare I say it-magical. I met so many friends. Had my first real relationship. Gained a lot of good experience, professional and otherwise. I got to freakin' live at the most magical place on earth for an entire year. It was amazing to not live with feet of snow and spend an hour or two at a park whenever I wanted. College wasn't always amazing for me, and Disney wasn't without some bumps here or there, but I truly was able to find myself and I was the happiest I had been in a long time.

That being said,  the first two weeks home I was really depressed. I was missing the warmth (it's been a cold summer in Michigan. When I first got home there were very few days above 80, but it has been a bit warmer the last week or so.) I was missing my cubicle at Maingate. I missed logging into SIMBA and seeing the weekly reports being updated. I missed modifying my Starbucks/DLR 60th forecasts. I missed my apartment at Falcon Square. I missed my friends. I missed (most) of the roommates I had had during my year in Florida (all 8 of them). I missed DAK. I missed the rides. I missed the resorts. I missed hearing the Sandhill Cranes calls. I missed running around Independence. I missed so many things. 

I had applied for a few positions and hadn't gotten most of the positions. When I found out that I hadn't gotten the one I was most hopeful for (and would have kept me at Maingate Merchandise) I cried. I cried a lot. I honestly felt like my dreams had been crushed. During the weeks since the bad news, I've actually had a few more interviews, including what would be a dream job for me. I found out I didn't get one position, but there is still one I am waiting to hear back on. I think I will still be really disappointed if I don't get the position, but I am beginning to be okay with staying in Michigan. If I don't get this position I might cry, but I have come to adopt the mentality that a few of my old Presenter friends who left Disney have said: Disney isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So if I don't get the position, right now I am going to hold of on applying to more Disney positions and look for some jobs around Metro Detroit. Then once I pay off loans (and maybe get sick of being at home) I can always go back with the added experience. 

I think all ex-Disney CMs should have that mentality: Disney isn't going anywhere. It's going to be there for the foreseeable future, whether or not it is just for a visit or if it is there to stay. 

That being said, fingers crossed for some good news in the next week or two. :)

My Apartment and Roommates at Falcon Square

So back in June I never made a housing post, so I figured it would be better late than never, especially since acceptances for the next wave of internships are rolling out so people (including myself) might be thinking of where they might be living in January if they get the exciting news of an offer.

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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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).