Check in Day - Housing

August 15th has finally arrived!

My roommates and I planned to meet at 6 A.M to stand in line waiting for check in to officially start at 9 A.M. After getting to know each other really well over the summer, we hoped to stay together in a two bedroom apartment. When we arrived the line wasn't very long but there were still quite a lot of people a head of us. Christina, Colleen, and I had already met in person and were so happy to finally meet Kacie. The time passed rather quickly as we talked, laughed, took pictures, and got to know ourselves better. Matt, Christina's friend from home, is also doing the program and joined our little group in line. It feels as if I've known these girls for years and I could not be happier!

Around 7:45 the line began to move past the security gate and into the apartment complex. I was expecting to start moving at 8:00 so this was a pleasant surprise. We made our way down to the welcome center pavilion full of excitement. After waiting impatiently for a few minutes, the line began to move through the que. We gave our name to a cast member who wrote it on a miniature Disney name-tag sticker.

 









Then, we saw a series of sings with Disney characters telling us "your journey begins here" leading up to podiums where we gave our name and verified personal information with cast members. We had an opportunity to take a picture next to a beautiful welcome banner before moving on to the next station.

After waiting in line some more, we were given our Disney College Program Guides, or "Disney Bible" as we like to call them and my friends plus five others gathered around a table with a cast member who briefly went over the housing rules with us and handed out a checklist to record anything wrong with our apartment. Then, we took the top sheet of the form we had to sign to a cast member at a table who filed it.

"Bibles" in hand, we made our way into the next huge tent only to wait in line some more. Flipping through the guide we realized that some Disney character birthdays were listed, including Mickey and Minnie on November 18th. Finally it was my group's turn to go up to one of the housing assigners spread out along the perimeter of the tent. We entered our names and she asked us our apartment preference. Two bedroom in Vista, preferably on the third floor. At that request the person that was working with us had to check and see and I was afraid we wouldn't get what we wanted. Thankfully, there was a 3rd floor available in building 27. Seriously, we were so thrilled for getting exactly what we were hoping for.

Next up we received our apartment keys, got our pictures taken and received our housing IDs, filled out car information for my roommates who brought their cars, received our Casting time (11 AM), and lastly had a quick round table meeting with a cast member who went over the schedule for the next few days.

We finished everything at 9 A.M ! We completed so much in so little time. Immediately we went in search of our apartment and started unloading the cars.

At 10:45 we headed to the bus stop for Casting.

To be continued. . .