April Fools' Interview at Chez Gerard

Hello! Well, I'm back from London, off to work in a little while, and still very tired! Buuut, I had my interview, so now to tell the story: if you're sitting comfortably, then I'll begin!

Day One ~ Travel and TGIs

So I got the train to Victoria, got there at 1pm, promptly got lost and spent half an hour looking for the hotel! Then when I checked in, I found out that I was on the third floor and there was no lift... thanks for that Wellington!
My next discovery was that none of the lights in my room worked! So back down the stairs I went to Reception, who sent someone up. He couldn't fix it, so they gave me a floor-standing uplighter instead!
On the subject of the Wellington, all I can say is that its only pretending to be a hotel - I would say it was actually a reasonably nasty youth hostel, worse than the one I stayed in for my last f2f! So note to self (and you!) don't stay there unless you need to!!

Anyway I set off from the hotel at 3pm to do some touristy stuff and my first port of call was Kings Cross to find Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter. I found it, and here's proof!


Then I went to have a look at Buckingham Palace, before heading back to the wonder that is the Wellington. Spent a couple of hours doing interview question prep, before heading down to the Reception at 6pm to meet the others so we could head off to TGIs.
Well, I met Arron, Adam and Steph and we were actually the first people to arrive at TGIs! We were finally seated by 8pm or something silly like that, but it gave us chance to chat. I was starving by that point, but unfortunately, the eyes were bigger than the belly, cos by the time I'd had a starter of skins with cheese and bacon, I was not only really full, but totally knackered and so left most of my bacon burger :-(
But of course it was great to meet a lot of the others who were to be at the interviews the next day: Michelle (who I already knew from October), Jade, Mimi and all the others from the wdwip forums.

Gosh was I tired when we finally got back to the Wellington and I think I was in bed, by half ten or something.

Day Two ~ Interview!

So, I was up at 6.45am - a veritable lie-in compared to last time - and met the others in Reception to check out etc at 8am. We tubed it to Waterloo and then set off to try and find Chez Gerard. Needless to say, we went the wrong way at first until a friendly passerby offered us directions and set us on the right track.
Thankfully we didn't get mixed up in any violence aimed at business people, who rather sensibly had dressed down for work that day, due to all of the G20 etc protests planned. We on the other hand, looked uber smart, if I say so myself! :-D

Apart from Kate, us 4 were the first to arrive, but were soon joined by many others. Eventually I reckon we had near on 50 people there! We were taken to the far end of the restaurant to a little conference room and just chatted until the people from Yummy Jobs (Nick and Jenny) and the Disney recruiters (Roger! and Sarah) arrived.
After that, general hilarity followed as Roger had innumerable problems with the projector for the presentation. Whilst the men fixed it, Sarah kept us occupied with questions etc and had all of the alumni tell us about their programmes.
Thankfully the technical difficulties meant that we didn't get too much of Valerie (don't get me wrong, you can't fault her enthusiasm, but she does get to you afer a while!), but it did mean there were no trivia questions and therefore, no prizes :-( I love the presentation though and just being with actual Disney recruiters is awesome! After a shorter version of the presentation, the times for interview were given out - I was scheduled for 3.20pm with Michelle M (who, like me, was Wait Listed from October and so we knew each other!)

To pass the time, a big group of us headed next door to Pizza Express to indulge. What with people coming and going, our group was there for over two hours!! Eventually around 2.30pm I headed off with Kate, Steph and Arron for a walk over Waterloo Bridge where the view was amazing, the weather lovely and we saw (very briefly) Graheme Norton walking his dogs! He ignored us, so we don't like him!!
Despite rumours that the interviews were running an hour late, I got back to Chez Gerard at 3pm, had my paperwork checked by Jenny and went in for my interview with Sarah all within half an hour so hardly late at all!

As for the actual f2f... its all abit of a blur. Michelle and I got off to a good start by interacting well together and laughing as we went in. We'd said exactly the same thing at exactly the same time to Nick and all fell about laughing!
I think we got asked:
0 What unique cultural experience would you share with guests?
0 Why do you want to work for Disney?
0 What is your work experience in relation to Merchandise (my 1st choice)?
0 Can you tell me about a time where you faced a difficult negative situation and turned it in to a positive one?
0 Tell me about your previous travel experiences.
0 Do you have any FnB experience?

There was also a lot of ad lib chat so I got to talk about a lot of other stuff too and then it was over, we were with Sarah longer than our counterparts were with Roger, so that's a good sign I guess! Michelle was a great partner to have for the interview, cos although she's going for FnB, we bounced off each other really well.

Sooo, after that, I waited for Steph to finish and we met Arron at Waterloo. We headed back to the hotel, changed and then hung out for a bit before I left to catch the train home.
Both the tube back to Waterloo and the train to Hastings were packed cos it was rush hour, but thankfully I still didn't see any hint of protest or violence, which was very very good. Also I was sooo knackered by that point, I couldn't of cared less so long as I got to sit down!

So, its all over now and the WAIT has begun! My laptop battery is about to die so I'm finishing off very quickly. I have to really catch up with all of the dissertation stuff I should've been doing so far, so its nose to the grindstone from now on! I'm off to work now anyway, so I may come back and edit this, I'm not sure, but the basics are there!

Shout out to Kim from Canada, who's on the Waiting List for the CRP. Hang in there!!

EDIT: 3rd April
So, I gave in and edited this post just a teeny bit. Work is over for the week, so I'm chillaxing before dissertating again this evening. I'll blog again in 2 weeks and not before! So if I do tell me off. Of course if I hear from Disney before then with good news, or any news, that doesn't apply!! :-D
Ciao x

SECOND EDIT: 8th April
This is not a new post, so you can't tell me off, but I just thought I'd mark the 'One Week Since Interview' Point! It's also two months tomorrow until Michelle heads off for UK FnB and that is crazy exciting too!
Right, bye for another week. Hopefuly I'll be back with news!
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN