How is it that the Fall 2018 Program has already allowed me to make friendships that will last a lifetime? Aside from the basics of meeting people on the Facebook page and picking roommates for the second time around, I also made new friends in some very unexpected places. Of course meeting your new roommates online is great! I’ll be doing another post shortly on them (because they already rock)! But I had no idea I would be making new in-person friendships prior to my arrival date.
It all started a couple months ago before applications even dropped. My major’s internship coordinator decided that I should be the one to contact if anyone else was interested in applying for the program due to my prior experience. She would forward emails to me from the prospective applicants who had an interest in all things Disney. Of course I was more than willing to help and would usually offer to get coffee or lunch with them and go over what the program was like. Most of the time people didn’t respond or meeting for lunch on campus just never worked out due to our busy class schedules.
Then one day I got a response email from a sophomore named Victoria. She explained her love for Disney and her interest in the program. With my obvious excitement, we decided to meet for lunch at our campus dining hall. As soon as we met I could tell right away her love for Disney ran deep and believed she would be one of the perfect applicants for the program. After some reassurance that she will make it through the phone interview (applications had already dropped and our phone interviews were already scheduled) and adding in all the exciting details of the program, she was ready to go!
Now fast forward a few days to when I was walking through my academic building. My major has a suite where we can go and work on homework or chat with fellow hospitality students. In there I found found Lexi, a junior who explained to me that after her phone interview being postponed, she finally talked with a recruiter. I didn’t know Lexi too well at the time, but I had heard from others about her love for Disney and her interest in the program. She was nervous it didn’t go well but I reassured her that I thought my first phone interview went awful too and then I got my acceptance letter! With that in mind, Victoria, Lexi, and I then waited the agonizing month before acceptances started to role out.
I already shared my acceptance story to the blog, but just to give a slight background to understand the timeline a little better, I was accepted on the first day which was a Friday. Lexi then got her acceptance on the following Monday! She was accepted for Watercraft and I was more than thrilled to sit down with her and start gushing about how amazing the program truly is! I didn’t want to go into too much detail prior to acceptances just in case the awful NLIC wave hit hard, but now that I knew she was in there was nothing holding me back from talking about all things Disney!
The next evening (Tuesday), Lexi and I were at an event for our major when I received a text that Victoria had been accepted too! She was accepted for Merchandising like me! Can you believe it? Two Victorias, in hospitality, from the tiny Endicott College, IN MERCHANDISING. I swear if we get the same location then someone’s messing with us. ANYWAYS, this was when I started to get excited! People from my school were finally going to be on the program at the same time I was! It was almost too exciting!
After sitting down for lunch with Victoria and explaining the program in more detail like I did with Lexi, I was in shock that there were others, like me, with a deep love for Disney at my college that I had never even met until now! As if by magic, Lexi came walking in at the perfect time to introduce her to Victoria and thus the Endicott Cast Member’s were established.
From there I suggested a group text just to answer any questions the two of them may have as well as gushing about Disney things until the program started. Like any new friends at first the conversation was a little spotty, but after a few days and sharing a few Pinterest ideas, we talked almost hourly. We then decided to have a Disney movie night and we ended up talking and listening to Disney music for about six hours! Once it hit midnight and our carriages were about to turn back into pumpkins, we decided to call it a night. That might have been one of the best nights I’ve had on this campus. It was so low-key yet so fun!
From that night on we planned weekly trips for coffee, going out to dinner, going to the movies, or just board games and Mickey waffle nights! Over just the past two months we have created a squad friendship that will definitely be carried down to Florida. Knowing we will be starting out the program will friends we can rely on is a great feeling. Plus getting to talk Disney daily and let out our excitement over the upcoming program is a MUST. We already have plans for summer and even plans for while were in Disney!
If it wasn’t for my internship coordinator we might never have met, even on the program. What Disney doesn’t realize is it doesn’t just create connections in their program, it creates them beforehand too. I want to personally reach out and thank Disney for the friendships it has helped me make and for all the future ones to come! I also want to give a special shoutout to Lexi and Victoria because we are going to make the best squad of Endicott Cast Members Disney has ever seen! Can’t wait for another coffee trip soon!
PSA: Follow Lexi’s Disney Instagrams: @lexidcpfood & @finelinesbylexi
Toria's Tales 