You got into the Disney College Program (DCP) and you’re super pumped to move to Florida! Congratulations! Now you get to plan and fantasize about everything for the months until you actually get there.
The first thing you should do, if you haven’t already, is join the Facebook Group for your college program term. Just go onto Facebook and search “Disney College Program Fall/Fall Advantage 2021” (or whichever term you will be doing the program) and join the group with the most members in it. The Facebook group is a great place for candidates to share resources throughout the application process, planning, and even throughout the program.
After people start being accepted to the program, one of the big focuses of the Facebook group is finding roommates to link up with for the program. In this blog post, I am going to share my experiences finding roommates and also discuss my opinions on “going random” or not linking up with any roommates prior to arriving. I have another blog post about how to best find roommates to link up with in the Facebook group as well.
On the Facebook group, people will start posting their “roommate surveys” which is basically just a bunch of quick facts about yourself and what you’re looking for in a roommate. If you are one of the first waves of acceptances to the program, I would wait until most people have been accepted before posting your roommate survey. I recommend waiting because people don’t care about finding a roommate until they know they have been accepted to the program, and you want people to care about reading your roommate survey.
However, I would start reading other people’s surveys from the beginning and reaching out to chat with people that you think you would live well with. Remember that you are not just looking for friends, but you are looking for someone you can live with. And even someone you think you connect well with online, may not be someone you click with super well in person. My sister linked up with 3 other ladies for her program, and the person she thought would be her favorite roommate ended up being her least favorite. You really never know! See my tips for living with roommates on your DCP.
The other thing to consider is that you can just let Disney decide who you’ll live with. We call this “going random”.
Going Random
There are many reasons that people choose to go random for their roommates. There are a lot of people doing the DCP that are not on the Facebook Group, so you won’t be able to see their version of a roommate survey and connect with them prior to moving to Florida, and they could be a great fit for you to live with. If you don’t feel like you connect really well with anyone you’ve met on the Facebook Group, going random could be really good for you. When you go random, you don’t need to coordinate housing complex preferences with anyone else (see my Guide to Housing Complexes). When you link up with people only one set of housing preferences gets entered into the system for the entire group. Even if you connect well with people, if they want different complexes than you then maybe it wouldn’t be good to link up with them. You can always be friends outside of your respective apartments.
Often times, Disney Housing will put limits on how many people you can link up with. There can be up to 8 people in an apartment, and sometimes you’ll be able to link up with 7 other people. But other times you’ll be limited to linking up with 3 other people, or even just one other person. There’s no way to know how many you’ll be able to link up with. So even if you find your dream group of roommates, keep in mind that you might get split up and end up with random roommates anyway.
Now for My Experiences
My First Program
For my first program, I found 5 other girls that I wanted to live with, making us a group of 6. One of them ended up changing their arrival date shortly before we registered for Housing, so 5 of us linked up and we got one random roommate. You can only link up with people who have the same arrival date as you. During the program, I was closest with the girl I shared a room with (who I had linked up with). One of the other girls I had linked up with became one of my best friends even now, and we continue to visit each other often and stay in touch. She is definitely one of my very best friends. And our random roommate ended up working at my same location during that program and I attended her wedding about a year after we had first met. We also stay in touch through social media and continue to support each other. Actually, I have no bad blood with any of my roommates from this program, and I am really glad that I lived with them for my first program.
My Second Program
For my second program, I formed a group of 6 girls total that I wanted to live with. Then we found out shortly before housing registration that we would only be able to link with one person. One of my roommates from my first program (the one I am still best friends with now) was also doing another DCP and we chose to link up with each other since we knew we could live together well generally, despite not having shared an actual bedroom before. We ended up in an 8-person apartment, where all 8 of us moved in on the same day. Each bedroom had a pair of girls living in it that had linked up. I definitely was not as close with these roommates throughout the program, except for my roommate who I am obviously very close with. In part, I think it was because we preferred to do different things with our free time, and also there was some tension in our apartment. But overall, we were able to live well enough with each other and I think we all ended up enjoying our programs.
I hope this post has helped you in deciding what you want to do when it comes to roommates for your DCP. Comment below with what you decided to do! Or if you’ve already done your DCP, tell me some fun stories about your roommates!