Sunnys Days Of Disney: Gringotts

Showing posts with label Gringotts. Show all posts

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Before I start this blog post, I want to preface it with the fact that I went in as a hard core, lifelong Disney fan. Disney is my end goal. Outside of Harry Potter, The Minions, and Transformers, I don't know a lot about Universal. I have a feeling I went in with some prejudice. Add in a couple of inappropriate comments made by my facilitator and... well, I'll let you decide.

My class was originally slated to start at 3:30, at which point they started calling us into the classroom by rows starting in the front. We walked to the back oft the building, where we picked up our name tag(s), some paperwork, and dropped off our payroll information. Then we headed into the classroom where we sat for another 30 minutes before finally getting started [waiting for the last people to trickle in, maybe?]. After that we filled out our W-4. If you've never filled one out before, I recommend you fill out the practice one they send home. They cannot tell you how many deductions to take, only explain how it works. That is for any employer you'll ever have, so it's good to practice.

Once that was out of the way, we started. We watched a lot of clips of Universal movies, bits and pieces of monster movies, clips explaining how they discovered some of the old greats, etc. Universal prides itself on it's roots in monster movies, which I am not particularly a fan of, and they were really pushing Halloween Horror Nights, which I've never been to. It was still cool to watch, and I'll be excited to see.

Right off the bat our female facilitator caught one of my nerves. "We're genuinely happy here, not drink the kool aid happy like that other place." Multiple times throughout the night she made remarks about Disney employees drinking the kool aid. And so I have come across my first major difference between Universal and Disney.

Disney looks at Universal as: "Oh yeah, they're there, it's okay. They aren't stealing our guests, they're sharing them. Feel free to talk to guests about Universal. Wear a Harry Potter backpack into work. We don't care." And that's the end of that. No more discussion, no more taking them into account [at least not on a level I've seen]

Then you have Universal. "Oh yeah, haha, they're there, Disney isn't a bad word haha. Feel free to recognize Disney princesses when they come in haha." I feel totally comfortable telling my coworkers and managers at Disney that I also work at Universal. The reverse could not be said that day. There was this constant mention of Disney is a slightly negative way throughout the entire class that made me uncomfortable. That being said, I did not feel that way at my day 2 orientation, and so I'm thinking it was just my facilitators.

They provided lunch [or dinner] for day 1 orientation. There wasn't anything provided for people with food allergies, but we were told that we were more than welcome to purchase our own food. Food in the grill is available at cost, which is nice, but I decided to stick with the lunch I had brought and the chips they provided since I don't know how much care they take with food allergies yet.

We also talked a lot about the Universal Way and Universal's mission statement. We talked about the 10/5 rule, which is pretty much applicable across the hospitality industry. The 10/5 rule just means you acknowledge guests at 10ft and greet them at 5. We talked about how it's everyone's job to help keep the park clean, and how everyone needs to check their personal life at the door. A lot of this stuff is something you would encounter at any job that deals with customers or guests. Theme parks tend to take it more seriously than stores and hotels, especially these two theme parks.

We also talked about Universal's current marketing theme, which is [Happiness] is Universal. I hadn't seen their commercials or billboards, but I've started to notice one or two since then. Overall, besides the small hiccup of this constant subtle dissing of Disney, I enjoyed my first day of orientation. One of my old coworkers from Disney is actually going to be working at Gringotts with me, and we ended up in the same class, which was nice. I'm excited to get started on my on the job training, but first more orientations!

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Surprise? I guess not really if you follow my Instagram or Facebook, but I never talked about it here? So...

At the beginning of July I went in and interviewed at Universal Studios Orlando. Interviews are held in the Human Resources building, one stop light down from the directions your GPS is going to take you. It's also where you're going to end up parking for the rest of forever if you get hired for USO (as opposed to City Walk or Islands of Adventure). Park in Applicant parking, following the very small signs pretty far down. Inside you check in with security, go through a metal detector, and have your bag run through an x-ray machine. You fill out a form, and wait for forever to be called. It's nice because they play movies while you wait, but it literally feels like it takes forever.

Eventually I got called in, and interviewed with a lovely woman whose name I forget. She asked my a lot of questions about my leadership and management experience. They were all pretty basic questions aimed at finding out how you handle different situations. She asked a couple of questions that had similar enough stories that I had to come up with different stories. In the end, she let me know that she felt comfortable hiring me, but she wanted to wait until closer to the end of my CP so I wouldn't have conflicting schedules. So I scheduled another interview for a week before the end of my program and went on my merry way.

Fast forward three weeks and I'm back in the same place. A new interviewer, Candi, who let me know I would have to go through the whole interview process again. Two questions in, she changed her mind and said I was obviously a perfect fit, and she was going to find a place for me - would I like to work in Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

At this point, I started to get excited. As in, I was actually bouncing up and down in my chair excited. Before I could get too excited though, she let me know that I would have to be able to answer some trivia questions to move forward in WWoHP. How would I rate my knowledge of Harry Potter on a scale of 1-5? I said 4, just in case she came up with some crazy obscure question, and she pulled out a quiz with questions categorized into 5 groups based on how hard they were. I flew through the number 4 questions without hesitating, and so she asked me to do the 5 questions. In the end there was only 1 question I wasn't able to answer, but once she told me I remembered and was able to recall facts surrounding the event. So I moved on and found out my role. Drum roll please!

Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts!

So I am going to be wearing this absolutely hideous security guard looking costume, but I don't care, because I am going to be working in Diagon Alley! My heart can hardly stand it. Butterbeer, here I come!