Shannon’s dream job in children’s telly hotel
AN EDGE HILL graduate has secured her dream job – which involves, feeding sharks, sniffing dinosaur poo and working alongside Postman Pat. Shannon Stroud, who studied performance at Edge Hill University, secured her dream job working at the CBeebies Land Hotel in Staffordshire, where she now resides. She began her position at the hotel on July 7, when it opened to the public for the very first time. Some of her daily duties include dancing with giant unicorns, playing games with sharks, and rescuing pelicans. Shannon, 21, grew up watching, and always dreamed of being on, children’s TV. In order to secure the job, she beat tough competition from all over the country to be one of a small group of performers who deliver the entertainment at Britain’s newest hotel, designed exclusively for kids. The CBeebies Land Hotel is a 76-roomed themed hotel, which offers 14 hours of daily live entertainment.
She plays up to eight different roles/characters every day and has mastered more than 150 pages of script for the job.
Shannon said: “It’s challenging because the children coming to watch know CBeebies inside out and the characters are almost like best friends. Some kids could be like ‘but that character wouldn’t do that’.
“The hotel looks amazing – it’s like stepping into the CBeebies world.”
Shannon previously worked a season at in CBeebies Land, which is inside Alton Towers theme park.
She added: “I worked in the entertainment team at CBeebies Land before auditioning for the hotel in January.
“I always thought I’d just be a dancer, but working at Alton Towers Resort has been really exciting, especially this year as I get to work with characters I remember from when I was little, like Postman Pat.”
Shannon has credited landing her dream role to the skills she learned at university, and while living in Merseyside.