Food and Wine?!

Well, it's official... I'm working Epcot's Food and Wine Festival.

Yesterday, when I was checking my schedule I noticed that I wasn't scheduled for seating, but rather "F&W"... Food and Wine. I was slightly confused and shocked. The manager in charge of Food and Wine had supposedly contacted everyone who was going to be moved into the Food and Wine Festival, and he never spoke to me. I thought it might be an error, but when I went into work today the posted schedule agreed... I'm in Food and Wine for sure.

Now, working Food and Wine is not necessarily a bad thing, but the problem is, I was scheduled to spiel tomorrow. Today I spoke with the area manager, and was pretty much given the impression that it was pointless to spiel since the menu is changing, and that I would have to re-spiel in the middle of October anyway. So I've crossed my name off of the list. Now, I'm worried that if I spiel later and they send people into tipped positions according to their spiel date I won't get into service until the new year, which could cut into the number of Candlelight shows I can do, not to mention seriously decrease my paychecks. It's not that I came to Disney for to make a ton of money, but hey, if I can make it, why wouldn't I want to?! I'm going to try to get a solid answer out of the managers with how they are dealing with F&W and people moving into food running and service. Hopefully from there I'll know what I should do.

The other sad thing is because of F&W all my time off requests have been denied. This includes days off for my mom's vacation (which I'm not *too* worried about arranging between F&W workers) and my back to back in November, which was supposed to be when I was going home. This I'm not so sure how I can fix, but I'm going to have to talk to my manager about it. I was really looking forward to coming home at the beginning of November, visiting the Hamilton area and seeing everyone again!

Still, I have to look on the positive side... F&W actually seems like it will be fun. The people who did it last year had a blast, and this year, the "chosen group" really is an awesome group of people: Ty, Amanda, Eric, Kristen, Meaghan, Ashley, Julia, and me. Plus, we will make slightly more than podium pay, and have more hours... while wearing the lumberjack costume (which I prefer to the restaurant one). As a bonus, I heard we even get a coupon book for discounts at the many (ie: over 100) booths in the food and wine festival.

I have training for Food and Wine on Sunday and Wednesday of next week so I'll find out more about what I'll be doing, and what working F&W will be like then.

PS: Candlelight rehearsal #3 (tonight) was awesome. Despite F&W drama, singing always makes me happy, and Candlelight makes me even happier.