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Showing posts from April, 2014

Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - Accommodation Options

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Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - Accommodation Options Photo: Sofia Nilsen NEW : Want more detail? Download my book about my 16 months spent living and working at Disneyland Paris now on  Amazon . Get the full inside scoop on my time as a Disneyland Paris Cast Member. So, you have your job offer and now it's time to get accommodation. During your interview you will be asked whether you require accommodation, I said yes. If you answer yes there are a few types of accommodation that may be offered to you depending on your contract. If you have a CDD (fixed-term contract) you will be offered accommodation either in a Disney residence (Les Pleiades) or in partner accommodation. No matter which you are put in several matters apply: your accommodation price is fixed and includes all bills (excluding internet and phone), a fully furnished apartment and one roommate. The price at the moment is about 310 euros per month. If you are put into Les Pleiades, these are studio

Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - The Talent Pool, The Confirmation & The Details

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Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - The Talent Pool, The Confirmation & The Details NEW : Want more detail? Download my book about my 16 months spent living and working at Disneyland Paris now on  Amazon . Get the full inside scoop on my time as a Disneyland Paris Cast Member. This post details the process of being put in the talent pool, being offered a contract and some of the details of that contract. To read about the interview and application process for Disneyland Paris make sure to take a look  this other post . We'd been told it would be up to a 10-day wait until we found out and I had resigned myself to thinking that if it were anything like last time I worked for Disney we would only find out on the tenth day whether we had made it. You imagine my surprise then when less than 48 hours after my interview, whilst immersed in the world of uni waiting for a bus, I refreshed my emails to find a glorious email telling me I had been put into the talent pool.

Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - The Beginning (Applications Process and Interview)

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Working at Disneyland Paris 2014 - The Beginning (Applications Process and Interview) NEW : Download my book about 16 months spent living and working at Disneyland Paris now on  Amazon . This all seems like déjà vu, but I will in fact be going back to work at Disneyland Paris! The last time I worked there, in 2011, I had a great time and after working at Walt Disney World last summer I knew that I wanted to work in a business that was customer-facing and there's hardly anything more guest-oriented than working at Europe's most visited tourist destination. It's time to once again be a Cast Member for the third time in just as many years. This is a big move however because it is permanent - this isn't a short-term contract but a full-time job offer. Before we delve into the details though let's take a look back at how I got to this point. The Application Process: After applying several times online and not hearing anything within the 3 weeks I was told I'd

August MS425 Portable Bluetooth Speaker Review

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August MS425 Portable Bluetooth Speaker Review The kind ladies and gentlemen at August have hooked me up with a portable bluetooth speaker (the MS425 ) for review - here's what I found. As I unboxed the product my first impression was that this definitely isn't a premium product as the box definitely leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair this item is priced as a budget buy, it's RRP is just £25 and you'll pay less than £20 online. In fact if you use coupon code "EASTEREG" on Amazon UK you'll get 25% off. Undeterred by the packaging, I delved inside and took heed of the warning to play it at low volume for the first 30 minutes to train the membrane. A bit unusual, but if it improves performance in the long run then I'm all for it. Once the packaging was opened I was actually quite surprised by how well made the product felt and that it was solidly heavy but still at a portable weight. The product came partially charged so it was simply a

Venice 2014 Trip Report - Day 1

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Venice 2014 Trip Report - Day 1 This trip to Venice doesn't start off in the UK as most of my trips do. Instead this one started off in Italy from Genoa (a.k.a Genova in Italian and French). I got there by taking part in a charity hitchhike , so Genoa is the starting point for this trip.  After getting ready, we got our first quick glimpse of Genoa but it wasn't to last as we had a mere 15 minutes to get to the train station and get tickets.  As we rounded the corner just outside our hotel we saw this really cool ship! A bit of speed walking, speed ticket-purchasing and full on running later we were on our train. This was indirect Trenitalia train to Venice via Milan, with tickets at about 50e it was a bit pricey, but then again it is a 400km journey (and about 5 hours in total with a stopover). The train was very busy which was the first we'd seen it like this so that was a bit strange, but I guess we were going to Milan. The trains didn't have the ever-vi

Venice 2014 Trip Report - Day 2 and 3

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Venice 2014 Trip Report - Day 2 and 3 If you missed Day 1, make sure to check out that post here . Here are day 2 and day 3 of our Venice adventure. Day 2: Today it was time for a well deserved lie in and then time for lunch. My lunch consisted of a hamburger and a cafe latte to go from a cafe (Interesting combination I know…and yes a hamburger, don't judge). The main goal of today was to just walk around the city and also tick a few things off our to-do list. Throughout the day we got our boarding cards printed which involved finding somewhere that had a printer - this involved more looking up and down backstreets until we came to an Internet cafe, but it meant we went to places we probably wouldn't have visited before. You can't really tire of the Venetian atmosphere As well as this, we needed to get tickets for the boat tomorrow to the airport, these were 15 euros one way which is a bit pricey. Annoyingly the place to get the boat from was not signposted at

Jailbreak 2014 - Part 2

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Jailbreak 2014 - Part 2 This year I participated in a charity hitchhike, called Jailbreak, with my housemate Rosanna. You join us here in part 2 of the adventure. So far along the journey we'd manged to get a free train ride to Manchester Airport from Leeds, failed at getting flights, got a train back to Manchester Picadilly, failed at getting a coach, got another coach to London, got a hotel, fundraised almost £100 in just a few hours AND  booked flights to Nice, France. To read about all of that, take a look at Part 1 . Now...back to the action.  So, we booked our flight for 7:40am, which meant getting up at 3:45am. It was now already 3am and by the time I got to sleep I had only had about  half an hour of actual rest. So Tuesday 1st April we got up at 3:45, got ready, checked out and walked to Victoria, arriving at 4:35am. Here we charmed our way onto the Gatwick Express for free, which was a necessity as we were going to play the whole game by the rules. At Gatw

Jailbreak 2014 - Part 1

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Jailbreak 2014 - Part 1 This year, my housemate Rosanna and I took part in a charity hitch hike challenge called Leeds RAG Jailbreak. The idea was that we had 36 hours to get as far away from Leeds (in England) as possible. The catch was that we weren't allowed to spend any money on transport at all: that meant hitch hiking, trying to get free public transport and relying on donated tickets for our whole journey.  The aim of the Jailbreak was also to raise money for charity; it's well known that events are the best way to fundraise and collectively we raised about £600 for Marie Curie Cancer Care in the process.  It was Monday, 31st March 2014 at 9am and we gathered on the Parkinson steps at Leeds University ready to go. Our plan was quite optimistic: to get down to Leeds train station, get on a train from East Coast (as we had heard that they were helpful in previous years) and arrive in London a couple of hours later. In London we would spend all day fundraising in