The College of Applied Science and Technology’s “A Day in the Life of a CAST Alum” series is designed to shed some light on how CAST alumni spend their days. As with many careers, our alumni will tell you that every day is different, but this series aims to provide a peek into an alum’s world.
As a technical support analyst, Mike Bogle ’02 is a member of the level 1 support team for the parks and resorts division of the Walt Disney Co. His team handles all cast member and guest facing systems at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. This also includes digital properties, such as Disney Parks apps and websites worldwide.
It is a 24–7 operation, and this schedule is representative of a typical day that he would have at the start of the week (high priority issues can arise throughout the day and shift things around). His main focus on the team is with the theme parks, specifically park operations, FastPass+, PhotoPass, ticketing, and the devices used by the operations teams to assist our Guests.
8 a.m.—Arrive at the office and check in with our business partners inside the parks and at our reservation centers for any issues that may have a significant cast or guest impact when they open. This covers everything from the FastPass+ system and ticketing systems in the parks to our payment and booking systems at the reservation centers used by the cast members or guests. Also spend time catching up on emails and any incidents or requests that I may have been working on previously.
9 a.m.—Work on database requests from our Disneyland and Walt Disney World accommodation partners for any upcoming package or resort promotions and offerings. This can be anything from removing/adding package offerings, to changing hotel names and details and flight/car rental offering changes that may impact current package offerings.
12 p.m.—Weekly “Fishing Lesson” where someone from a team we partner with or an expert on our own team does a deep dive in to an application that we support, offering advice, tips and tricks, and any updates that would impact how we support them and issues facing the cast members that use them.
1 p.m.—Weekly meeting between two of the studios within our team that partner together on incidents and processes most frequently. Changes and issues for knowledge-based articles used by the whole team for the applications we support are discussed here on a weekly basis.
2:30 p.m.—Weekly meeting with the operations support team for the four parks to discuss any updates or changes that could impact both of our teams. The meeting is sometimes conducted virtually or sometimes on location at one of the Florida theme parks if there is something that needs to be seen at a particular location.
3 p.m.—Work on any lower priority incidents that may have come to our team over the course of the past day. This will involve any of the 150-plus internal systems that we support worldwide and can cover a variety of issues that either guests or cast members may be facing at our parks, resorts, or digitally on our parks-related sites and apps.
4:30 p.m.—Recap of previous high priority incidents to review performance and go over any potential opportunities to improve the team’s response to a specific incident. We also identify any potential gaps that may exist in a process and fill any gaps that may be present.
5 p.m.—head home for the evening to hang out with my wife, our cat and two dogs!
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