I saw this is an older thread but I thought what the heck may as well
throw my 2 cents in as a former employee of the rat in Orlando. So I worked for Disney straight out of college when I graduated and got to interact with a lot of the tech interns. In my opinion I would not do this internship. The interns really just sat around and observed everything they did not really get a chance to do much of anything. Another thing I noticed is that you were pretty much guaranteed an internship there if you were a petite hispanic girl. The individual there who did all the intern hiring at the time had a thing for petite hispanic girls, and I don’t mean this in a racist way, I’m Mexican While there the interns really had little positive things to say about their experience and wished they had taken other opportunities. The thing with Disney is if you are a person who has an opinion and you don't just go with the flow you will fail there. They don't look for people who are thinkers; they look for people who are yes mam yes sir people. As far as networking, there is very little opportunity. Most of the people who work there are lifers for one reason or another. As far as the full time gig there as it was mentioned before you will work your ass off and the pay there for the production personal has gone down as years have gone on. I actually have made more money with every gig I have taken in my post Disney career, some of the companies I have worked for have been in the same league as Disney and some have been smaller, my
point being they low ball their production staff. The atmosphere is also super clique, so if your not that type of person then you wont get far. Another thing to think about is if you do work for them you pretty much need to move out of Florida once your done with them. Its pretty well known in Florida the lack of quality people that they have working for them so you almost blacklist yourself from most of the other opportunities you would have in the state. I would say when I was there, there were probably around 600
stage hands who were on property working in entertainment, out of them I would say 100 of them were capable of leaving there and continuing to work professionally. Keep in mind to Orlando is very expensive to live in so if you work there you will either have to live way outside the city, like I did, or have 3 or 4 room mates. You also have to keep in mind that they also hire a lot of full sail grads, mostly from the recording arts dept, so again that’s another negative thing you have to consider, unfortunately full sail doesn't have a very good rep in the industry. If I were you I would look at touring or working on a cruise ship right out of college, you will have a far more opportunities for networking and you will have more chances for the experience you are looking for to get yourself ahead. Especially if you want to get ALOT of hands on experience with a Grand MA or a Hog, get a lot of experience fixing moving lights, understanding how a lighting
network works via
Ethernet and with
AMX systems and getting experience with 3
phase power systems. When Disney got rid of Disney Event Groups %80 of all the big concerts, trade shows and events went to PSAV. That’s another thing to, a big reason I left is because they were getting rid of production jobs. A little
bit after I got there they got rid of their event show team and right before I left they shut down the main warehouse and liquidated all those jobs. So really they dumbed down alot of jobs to just working at a
stage and paging a curtain all day. I know at SETC a lot of Cruise ship companies and tours go there to look for people. I would look to go there in the spring and putting yourself out there. So like I said that’s my two cents and I don’t mean to sound negative about the whole thing but that my experience of working for them in Orlando for two years.