I have been offered a permanent (cast) position at Disney. April 7th marks my first day as a Disney cast member. Up until this point I have been a leased worker.

I have been working for Disney Internet Group as a leased worker since January of 2007. This has been a great experience for me and has introduced me into the world of a relaxed work environment. The people I work with are fantastic, and the work is very rewarding. We all work hard and play harder. Everyone here is extremely intelligent as well as quite amusing.

I couldn’t begin to sit back and reflect on all the great moments here, the inside jokes that seem to persist for months at a time. The Nerf gun raids on other teams. Turning our entire floor into a miniature golf course, with teams creating their own themed holes.

My current role is as a Web Developer on the Walt Disney World booking engine. Which is the 800lb gorilla here at the office. It has been very rewarding to watch the site grow and see my ideas come to life on such a large scale. Being presented with problems, or ideas and being given the opportunity to run with it. To use my own creativity to solve the problem. Disney places a lot of faith in their developers and that we have a say in what is released into our site. There have been numerous times I have pushed back on features or changes that I didn’t feel were in the best interest of the site, and they were withdrawn. It really gives us a sense of pride and ownership of our product.

One of the greatest experiences to me is still hanging out at the parks with other developers having drinks and socializing with guests in the park. It’s really rewarding to talk to people who have booked on your site, and are having a fantastic time on their vacation. There is a bit of amusement on our part sitting back and thinking, these people don’t even realize that they’re having a conversation with several of the people who built the site they used to book their vacation.

I have shared many laughs and many late nights with other developers here and love every minute of it. This is a great opportunity for me and I look forward to my time to come with the company.