4 days of training

So the past 4 days kinder went like this...

Sunday 21st - discovery day
it was my first official working day as i didn't go to traditions the day prior, Felice and i had to be at EPCOT cast services by 10.30am, were we meet some other seasonal cast members arriving to work at the food and wine festival as well as the 8 other Australians that are currently working for Disney, so there's 10 of us in total, all girls!

The Aussies spent the morning doing computer related activities, about serving food even though none of us were going to. Then we meet up with half of the discovery day group, watched a few videos, a presentation or to on the Disney basics, had a short tour of cast services and in the afternoon we had a tour around EPCOT, a very long, hot detailed tour. it was interesting though as we found out alot about the food and wine festival, the kiosks and whats different this year. We also got our first glimpse at the Melbourne pavilion,located in between Germany and the outpost, all we could see was huge construction walls and some steal bars poking out from over the top, nothing to get excited about but hey there was still a few days left before opening...

Monday 22ND - Australia Welcome Day!
all 10 of us Australians meet at the front of the cast services building at 9.30am, "frank" from Disney came and escorted us (the long way) to west side innovations were we went up a staircase and into a cool boardroom that i never new was there, it had couches and computers, really fancy actually, then off on the side it had a more official looking board room with 10 places all set out with books and paper and lollies and sharpies! (we were pretty excited about the sharpies) Here we meet Andrew and Leigh, to Americans who work for tourism Victoria and were the people in charge of pretty much everything though out the festival. i think we were all pretty hesitant to learn about parts of Australia off two American however they were great and they know ALOT, but i suppose it is there jobs!

we spent most of the morning getting to know one another, then about our roles as cultural ambassadors, the basic messages that need to be conveyed, sponsors, participants, events, media etc. etc. this was all followed by an amazing buffet lunch, coffee, cokes and desert! and then an afternoon of details, about the wines, Victoria itself and the 5 main regains we needed to focus on, all that kind of stuff.

at around 3pm we packed up our stuff, took a heap of chocolates for the road and head up to the world showcase to get a backstage look at our pavilion with Leigh and Andrew, we also got free Disney ponchos on the way over as it was raining. when we arrived there was still numerous builders working and a whole heap needed to be done, but all the same it had changed from what we all saw the day before, but it was starting to look really good. we all finished work after that and headed back to cast services to get the bus, all in shock of how good the day was, what we were going to be doing and hoping that we were going to get a buffet lunch the next day!

Tuesday 23rd - F&W specific training
another 9.30 day meeting at cast services, were Frank once again escorted the 10 of us to the east side of future world this time, to another hidden small board room, not as cool as Mondays but good all the same. this time the room was all set up with numerous placings of glassed and pens and paper, there was alto of wine at the front of the room and a whole heap of Disney bags to the side. we soon found out that inside those Disney bags that had our names on it were our new Melbourne uniforms! we all rushed to the bathroom to try them on, and i think the consensus was that we all liked them, after hearing about them the day before, there made up of dark blue shorts with the Melbourne logo on the front of one leg and back of another, a black belt, white fitted polo top with the same logo and a "fendora" had, hard to explain but i shall post a picture at some stage. anyway mine fit and the massive plus was that we DIDNT have to tuck our shirts into a shorts! take that Disney!

the rest of the day was spent tasting wines if you were over 21, or in my case, sniffing wines as we wern't allowed to put them in our mouth and spit it out, we got to get a good nose full of the smell, then pour it into a bucket, it was a very sad afternoon ans i had the smell of red wine stuck up my nose for the rest of the afternoon! we also had another buffet lunch, this time it had food that we were actually going to be selling at the Melbourne pavilion, we got to try the prawns and the barramundi, both really really good. we also had a few guest from the different represented winery's talk to us and just before we left we had a test (that we had been reminded about for the past day and a half, also about the fact that prizes were going to be involved) pretty much the easiest test ever as it just comprised of questions about Melbourne, tourism and others along those lines.

Before clocking out we were taken down to the food and wine welcome center just to look around before heading back to get the bus.

Wednesday 24Th - F&W Global day
This by far was the worst training day. it started at 8am and was a long and drawn out day of listening to presentations from Disney management about the Disney basics, the food and wine festival and everything we needed to know about it all. They even escorted us to lunch, who knows why as I'm pretty sure we were all adults in the room. Then in the afternoon we had to listen/watch a computer presentation on alcohol laws etc. pretty much the American version of Australia's responsible service of alcohol, which should only take about half an hour if you were doing it by yourself, however as we had numerous people in the room who were much older then us, it took over 2 hours because of all the REALLY dumb questions being asked, then we had to do a test on all the information, THEN go over all the answers, they finally let us leave (1.5 hours after when we were meant to clock out)

and that my friends pretty much concludes my 4 days of food and wine training