I applied online and received a response the next day asking me to come in on a Saturday. There was no dress code so I dressed smart casual and that seemed to be the thought process for everyone. I got there fifteen minutes early and spoke to one of the cast members who pointed me towards a manager. When I told the manager I was here she basically told me to go around the store and familiarize myself with the merchandise and layout. I told her that something had things missing from it and she told me to leave it because it didn't matter which I thought was a little weird. It's their merchandise and it was at the top of the pile and had obviously been tampered with but she didn't care. When the other girls who came to interview got there, they were told the same thing and soon we all ended up standing together waiting. Soon after we were called in to the back of the store or 'Backstage' as they like to call it for the interview. There were five of us. The manager apologized for the interview being so short notice. We were asked to get into pairs and introduce the person next to us. Since I was the odd one, I was with another manager who was present. It was stuff like, what's your name, who's your favorite Disney character etc. Afterwards we were given a budget and told to pick some items for a parent looking to spend £50 for their child. I was partnered with this girl who was very pushy and extremely bossy. She would hardly let me get my point across and whenever I said something she would shut it down. We were a pair and the other girls were a three. A critique the other team got was that they didn't have a theme going on. We did a Toy Story theme and they did a Beauty and the Beast theme with a Minnie Mouse lunchbox. Also they didn't know that the Minnie Mouse wax expandable. That was important. You have to know your product. After this, we were all given a different product and we had to sell it to the manager. I was given a Woody from the toy box series. I don't think I did too bad in this part but I feel as though being humorous and having a personality means nothing. Now remember what I said about knowing the product? This girl was given a set of monster trucks with characters from Cars 3 (APB and Cruz Ramirez). She referred to them as Mr Yellow Car and Mr Police Car. I was screaming internally (Cars is a favorite of mine) because Cruz is a woman. I looked at the manager and I saw his face change. After she was done, he asked her what the cars' names were and if they were both boys. She said she didn't know and I was dying on the inside because the names of the cars were on the front of the box. I felt really bad for her. When we were done with that exercise, we were given availability sheets and were told about the contract lengths and that we could pick up overtime if we needed to. After this was done we were told that we would get a phone call to say we got the job and an email to say we hadn't. I didn't receive either of those. The experience would have been better but they pretty much praised the girl who spoke over all of us and as I was leaving I heard them call her back in and she walked out a couple of minutes later and the manager said that she could 'tell her boyfriend'. I also found out from my friend who currently works for Disney that they checked his Facebook profile to find me after he recognized my name on the interview list. I am fairly sure that this hurt my chances and the thing is, we aren't even that close. He was just on the same course in the year above me at university. His personality is difficult to deal with so I feel like they judged me beforeI was even in the door.

Easy! Everyone was so friendly. Applied online and was called for an in person interview within the week. Appreciated that it felt like they weren’t wasting my time by dragging on the provess