Help With Making A Career Out of WDW

[Horizons1]

Hi. I graduated from college a year ago with a bachelors. I love WDW and I love theme parks. I would love to make a career out of working at WDW and work my way up to the top.

Anyways, I've worked at WDW before in a PI. I was in the horticulture program for a summer. It was a wonderful experience and I loved it. It was a dream come true to get to work backstage at Disney. I've kept in touch with my manager from when I worked there two years ago. Since I left Disney, I've graduated college and found a job that's nothing more than a job. I want to go work for Disney, like I said. But I don't know where to begin. I had hoped my manager would be able to help me find some form of employment there when I graduated from college, but that is not the case.

I'm starting to look for a new job now because I'm very unhappy in my current one. I've come to realize that it's probably now or never for Disney. The positions I'm finding online I'm either not qualified for, even with a bachelors, or they're underpaid.

I tried to get into the theme park management PI before I graduated college but I screwed up and missed out on it. My question is, what do I do? I want to get back to Disney. I want to work my way up to run WDW. But is that even possible? Any help will be really appreciated. I need all the help I can get with this right now.

 

[KatMaria]

It is very do-able but you have to go into the right areas to do so. If you can get an internship then that would be the best way to go, they can extend you, although from my friends experiences you can have a few months of not working and waiting for another internship to open up if they like you enough ( although they usually try to find you a position). Park Ops is harder management to get into, my friend is on his third internship for management and just keeps getting extended and moved around until they find him a position. Merchandise and Resorts seem to be the best way to move up or so i have heard, I did merchandise for 4 months and I know someone who was there for four months and got relief coordinator. I got a promotion to front desk and from what I have been told it is easy to move around and up in hotels. Hope that helped. Feel free to PM also.

 

[KeithVH]

First off, delete this post. Once this gets indexed, won't be that hard to find you're badmouthing the management chain. Communities and social sites ARE trolled, at least in a cursory manner, in many large companies at some point.

It would also help to know what your knowledge, skills, and abilities are. Employment history? And what do you consider an acceptable wage for what type of work?

 

[Horizons1]

I just removed some things. Hopefully that will be ok.

I graduated with a bachelors in geography. I had wanted to do work with Geographic Information Systems for land development and such.

Obviously, I'm well versed with Office, and GIS. Working at Disney and my current job has allowed me to gain much insight into providing exemplary customer service.

Employment ranges from a copy shop to a youth drug prevention teacher, to a PI Horticutluralist at WDW, to my current job.

With my college degree I feel that I should be able to make above $8.75 an hour. But as I've come to find out once you get out of college and into the real world that doesn't seem to be a reality.

 

[KeithVH]

I would agree with you that, with at least a basic civil engineer skillset, you should be worth more. The question is how many openings Disney will have for that type of role. I do know they have them. But I also know Disney trends on the lower side of the payscale for many jobs. CI/GIS jobs should start at least at 15-20/hour.

One option would be to take anything at Disney to get your foot in the door and jockey for laterals into engineering. Another possibility is to find a job in the Orlando area where you can polish your skills and add others, maybe in a city/state government role (which will probably pay more) and, being local, have a better chance to move into Disney as you add experience. Especially if you can get exposure to big data and the area of Business Intelligence. Combine that with GIS would make you very attractive to have more than one skill area.

But part of the problem is location. Orlando median salary is ~49K. In contrast, where I live, it's ~75K. These are irrespective of vocation. The jobs in Florida just pay less in general. Plus the fact that a LOT of people want to work for the Mouse gives Disney the chance to pick and choose and offer limited salaries.

Do NOT lose hope. if you are not familiar with it, look up and watch Randy Pausch deliver the Last Lecture. Watch this whenever you doubt yourself and your future. Not to sound smarmy, but the "keep moving forward" idea does work here. I wish you the best of luck in this endeavour.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Have you considered looking into working for the Reedy Creek Improvement District?

 

[Horizons1]

No, I haven't actually. That's a novel idea right there.