Even miracles take a little time.

- Cinderella

So, yes each of these blog posts is going to start off with a quote from a film or person related to Disney, isn't that lovely?

Anyway, we have PROGRESS! :O

So since my first post two 'official' things have been sorted out. Firstly STB Australia (the in country contact for the program, in case I haven't mentioned it) got my (and I assume the other kiwis') police check form sorted out. It's a lot shorter and by the looks of it we don't have to pay anything for it (MWHAHAHAHHA Take that aussies). Of course, there's a funny paragraph on the form that may or may not apply for the program, regarding revealing information before a certain date, which you're not legally required to do in New Zealand BUT there can be an exception for Visa purposes, which is what I THINK its for. Left a note on the STB facebook page to ask and... well I'll get to that in a second.

The second, far more exciting piece of news is that we have an official starting date! You might have noticed (but I doubt it) that I lost ten days on my count down, mostly cause I was estimating it based on what they said at the presentation (mid-late january) Turns out start date is the 7th!

!!!!!!!!

I mean, sure its only ten or so days more than what I was expecting but its just that much closer, especially with the prep I'll have to do after Christmas. I kind of want to go before new years (how cool would it be to go to New York for New Years?) but so far all the other kiwis I might end up traveling with are looking at traveling after. My program ends 4th January 2013, but most likely I'll be working for New Years then.

I've actually already had a new years in disney! I think it was about four years ago now (man I feel old...) but we were in Epcot that day and we were lucky enough to get given these passes that let us use fast pass on all the rides without getting a ticket. Best day to get it, the park was SO PACKED. Unfortunately, the actual midnight moment wasn't so great. My sister got all upset about something that I forget about (I think she didn't get a toy or something) and ran off. She would have been about 12 at the time and she RAN OFF TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT IN A PARK WITH 100,000 PEOPLE IN IT. Idiot. Anyway, I ran after her and finally found her but then we couldn't find our parents and it was kind of sad and a little scary, she was crying and I was pissed off at her... so yeah, not the greatest moment. (We eventually found our parents again, they were waiting by the park gates under spaceship earth... but they weren't happy with her either and they didn't know I'd found her and I was only 16 then myself so they were pretty worried. Poor Karen had a very grumpy family... I say 'poor Karen' even though she really deserved it)

The cool thing about new years was that we actually sort of had it twice, cause the parks do practises the days before new years eve, so I think around the 29th we went to the Magic Kingdom celebration, which was a lot less stressful but I remember being quite tired that day. Or maybe I was just sore.

Anyhoo, way off track, aren't I?

I'm gonna have a little gripe now, and its about STB. They take AGES to respond to anything you do, like your questions and confirmation that they've recieved stuff. I can sort of understand why, there's like 200 people to deal with at any time and stuff is constantly happening but its still kind of frustrating not to hear back for several days on basic things, like getting the right police check sorted. I'm also kind of worried because the closer it gets to the program, we start interacting with the disney online system and it sounds like there are heaps of issues around that. What I don't want to happen is miss a due date or a payment or some other form and then not get to go for whatever reason. I know that's rather unlikely but there's so much to do!

Also annoying that they've sent me a police check that I can't actually go and get processed until August. It would be so like me to forget *sigh*

Thanks for reading! I don't think there's much more to sort out for a while so might not be too much posting, but you never know!

XXX
Chris