Some students on campus are bucking traditional internships in exchange for embracing their love of Disney through its college program.
For UW senior Joey Dabringer who participated in the program last spring, working for Disney offered him more than intrinsic rewards.
“Going into it I was really looking forward to meeting new people, trying something new that not many people have done and moving cross-country and starting anew and seeing how a company works,” he said.
In the program, nearly 4,000 students from various places typically work in guest services, attractions, entertainment and operational roles for a semester at Walt Disney World and Disney Land Resorts. For the duration of the program, participating students have the option to live in Disney-sponsored housing as well as participate in classes for credit.
According to Disney spokesperson Lindsay Broadhurst, the college program typically helped prepare students for professional internships with Disney. However, in recent years its role has changed, with such experience no longer necessary to gain those internships, although it does help the application, she said.
Dabringer said he applied for two of these professional internships centered on safety and health and applicable to his majors in biology and global health.
While he said he enjoyed his experience at Disney, Dabringer said making arrangements with the university proved to be a nuisance.
“Disney wanted a lot of information about what forms they would be signing and what their terms are, and the university wanted more information on what they were going to have me do, so there was a lot of back and forth,” he said.
Shelbi Craig, a UW sophomore who participated in the program in the fall, also expressed her irritation with the technicalities involved in staying enrolled at UW while working at Disney.
“In order to still be enrolled at the university, I had to take an online class. Otherwise I would have had to re-enroll,” she said. “I know for other colleges Disney offers some classes for credit, but Madison wouldn’t accept those credits, so I had to take one through Madison to still be enrolled here.”
Dabringer, who enrolled in course through the College of Letters and Science at UW during his time at Disney, said the coursework was not challenging for him or his other UW friends in the program.
“I had to read some excerpts from a book and blog about my experiences every week,” he said. “The final project was a two or three page paper. I just did it last minute. One of my friends that did it decided not to do any of the work until the day before it was all due and then still ended up getting an A on it.”
Even though Dabringer enjoyed the perks of the park, he didn’t expect the heavy workload, he said.
He was working from 40-60 hours a week, he said.
“I wish I would have known how many hours I was going to put in,” Dabringer said.
