ArielRae
DIS Veteran (NJ)
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2007
- Messages
- 7,157
20hrs on the road, first tent camping experience, and a trip to the ER all will be covered in this trip report.
Please know when you read this my thoughts wonder and my sentence and paragraphs aren’t correct please forgive.
So every year DH and I have gone to WDW and have stayed at Pop Century had a 4 day base ticket with the free dining plan. Well this year is different. DH was saying how we weren’t going to do Disney this year cause of the cost but after some talking we decided that we could do Disney this year but we would have to change things up. So this year we decided we would try tent camping at Fort Wilderness get a 1 day w/ waterpark and the quick service dining plan. (I have never been camping in my life compared to DH who is an Eagle Scout) I was really worried how bad this trip would be having to sleep outside in a tent. Little did I know that wouldn’t be the thing that put a damper on this trip. We had our trip planned to be May 11th-19th 2012 this would be one without DS(2) who would be staying with grandma and grandpa for the week which he enjoyed more then he would have in Disney. This was our trip to celebrate our 13th anniversary. So a child free week for us. Yeah!
Friday May 11th (packing day)
DH worked today and I was in charge of getting everything packed into the car and making sure the house was clean I hate coming home to a messy house after vacation. DS was in daycare so I had plenty of time to get everything tetris into the car. The trunk just closed after we had everything in. After my mother was done work she came and picked up DS. This wasn’t anything out of the norm for him as he spends almost every weekend with them so when she came to get him he ran out the door ready to go. I had to slow him down enough to get our hugs and kisses as we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. I remember the first time we left him for a few days to go to universal when he was a year old and I was a mess that first night away from him. This time wasn’t that bad but I ended up feeling miserable for another reason. (we’ll get to that later)
Saturday May 12th (Travel day)
We got up at 1:00am and out the door by 2:00am. DH likes to leave early so we can be thru Washington DC before traffic gets bad. So with only about 3hrs of sleep for me and 5hr for DH we headed out on the road. We had a 20hr drive ahead of us before we got to Disney. Though we had little sleep we were excited and ready to go. We packed plenty of snacks and drinks for the trip so we didn’t have to stop for anything other than the bathroom and meal breaks. We stopped and ate lunch at Fatz in North Carolina (first time eating there, was good) and around that time I started to not feel so great. My throat was starting to hurt. I had a sore throat a couple weeks earlier so I didn’t think anything of it. So we traveled on. When we do this drive we don’t have any hotel plans set when we drive down we just grab one of the hotel coupon books at a rest stop and check them thru trip advisor before we head to them. Well I was really feeling miserable by the time we hit Jacksonville around 7pm. We’ve stopped here before so we tried to get into one of the hotels with their coupon. No go all those coupon rooms were gone and it would cost us a lot more to stay there so we moved onto the next hotel down. Luckily they still had openings. By the time we got our rooms I was feeling so miserable all I could do was a quick check for bed bugs and then crashed into the bed. You know when you get sick and your whole body feels weak and tired, yea I had that. Not fun. We had been driving for 16hrs at that point and with me feeling sick it was too much. We have done this same drive before and I never felt like this.
Sunday May 13th (On to Disney)
This morning I felt a little better but my throat still hurt so I figured that I might have another sore throat (I could live with that they don’t last long for me) and that I might not have drank enough water on the trip down and that was why I had felt so bad. So we continued the last few hours to Fort Wilderness. We finally made it to the Fort at 10:00am and checked in. They have a cute little check in area and found the CMs a lot friendlier then at Pop century.
Our tent site wasn’t ready so we opted to get a text when it was. We had plans to go to the character warehouse at the premium outlets so we headed there while we waited. I love that you can get Disney Park merchandise so cheap. This time I wasn’t able to find anything I wanted and what I did they didn’t have in my size. Oh well that’s why it is an outlet store. While there we shared a Chinese food meal for lunch. Wanted to save our dining credits for later. After lunch we head back to the Fort as our site was ready but asked DH to make a stop at a Walgreens so I could get some meds. I grabbed some chewable airborne (get my immunsystem up) that stuff is horrible but I took it and some chloriseptic spray. So after our stop we went to our home for the week. We got site 1508 about 4 spots from the comfort station.
Video of the site
Not a bad spot but felt like a long walk when you had to go to the restroom in the middle of night.
Comfort station 1500 loop video
DH set the tent up and told me just to take care of everything else. He only asked for my help to hold the center of the tent up on the inside as he was afraid a pole might break because our tent was so big. We had a 10 x 17 tent which worked out perfectly for us and we never got any rain.
Once our home was all set up and our string lights were on their timers we headed out to DTD. DH wanted to get all our shopping out of the way. I was still feeling miserable and weak so I had to take several rest breaks while walking around. Disney’s merchandise has really slipped I didn’t buy much this year. Most of it was Fort Wilderness merchandise for our cars and some shirts. We had dinner at WPE where we split the spaghetti and meatballs. I love eating here but with my throat hurting I really didn’t enjoy it much. For dessert we got the yogurt which ended up taking 20min for us to get even after going up and asking for it. Finally Cesar came by with two yogurts for us and apologized for the wait and said that they were really shorthanded. So now we had an extra yogurt which I loved since it felt so good on my acing throat. After our shopping trip in DTD we headed back for the night to get rested up for tomorrow. Waterpark Day!
Monday May 14th (Waterpark Day)
Our first night in the tent was actually a pleasant one. I ended up sleeping in more than I would have had we stayed at Pop century. Which was good cause I needed my energy for today. The comfort station is really nice. I do wish they had a clock and a more comfortable toilet seat. They have all these nice seats in the parks yet we get the most uncomfortable ones at the Fort.
We didn’t make rope drop for Blizzard Beach like we always have in the past but it was a cloudy day so it wasn’t crowed in the park. We did our normal rides. The family raft ride was closed but I did finally do Summit Plummet. For years I kept saying I was going to do it. So finally I did and boy if you have flabby thighs like me (I lost a lot of weight) be warned. It feels like someone is smacking on your thighs cause the water and you are moving so fast. I now can say I did it but don’t plan on doing it again, hurt too much. We finished at the waterpark right after lunch and went back to the tent to get cleaned up. After we were all clean I wanted to go relax so we went to the wilderness lodge to plop down in the nice living area upstairs in the air conditioning. After a while I still wasn’t feeling so hot so off to the restroom. After washing my hands I noticed I had little red spots on my fingers. Great now I have poison ivy from tying my shoe laces I thought. I told DH that I was not feeling better and now this. I asked to go to the Doctors. We went down to the Wilderness Lodge’s Concierge desk to find out our medical options. They pulled out this huge binder and showed us three options. First was what looked like a doctor that would come to you. Second was like an urgent care facility and the last was Celebration Hospital. Now I heard that Celebration Hospital wouldn’t take insurance so we called and they said they would bill any insurance we gave them. DH also called our insurance to make sure we would be covered. After our phone calls off we went to the ER. We arrived at the ER ay 6:00pm. Wished I had dinner before we left cause we didn’t get to leave until 10:00pm. They did some blood work and took a swab of my throat. I told the doctor that since I had spot on my hands and now some on my feet which I noticed while waiting. That DS daycare had some instances with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease but DS didn’t get it.
Link to info on Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HandFootMouthDisease/
The doctor said that he doubts that is what I have cause it is a childs disease and it is rare that adults get it but we’ll have to wait for the blood work. So after waiting the hours in the ER the doctor comes back and tells me. Yep you guessed it I got it. Of course DS doesn’t get it but by bringing him to and from the daycare I get it. Guess I am truly a child at heart. There is nothing they can do for me. I can just keep taking pain relievers and the cholorseptic spray. So finally done at the ER and now know what it is I have which made me feel better we stop at Wendy’s for dinner and back to the tent for the night.
Tuesday May 15th (Change in plans)
Today we had planned on doing Typhoon lagoon but since I was still not feeling well we decided to switch our free day to today and go watch the new Avengers movie at the AMC in DTD. we had a gift card to use up. We got to be seated in the new theater they serve food tho we never did order anything. We did love the extra space it gives you. Especially the bar under the table you can put your feet on.
Oh we loved the movie by the way. After we used our $15 coupon to Planet Hollywood to get two desserts and some water. We ended up only owning $1.06 after the coupon so we gave the server a $5. Not a bad snack price especially since I got more Ice cream for my throat. After snack we walked to the Marketplace to look around and stopped to eat lunch/dinner at Pollo Campero. I have been wanting to try this place but always ended up eating at WPE. I got the grilled chicken with yellow rice and pinto beans. Oh it was so good, So going back! I also got a chocolate vanilla donut from baby cakes for dessert. It wasn’t bad but not great.
Wednesday May 16th (Magic Kingdom Day)
We were up a little earlier today so we could make it to rope drop at the magic kingdom today. I was finally starting to feel better. My hands were clearing up and my throat stop hurting. Thankfully my hands never blistered and I kept my coughs to myself. Washed my hands constantly too. Didn’t want to get any little ones sick. Once we were ready we headed to the CR for breakfast and then walked over to the MK. I was surprised how empty the park was even tho it rained most of the day still I haven’t seen the park so empty. We had no problems getting on to the rides we wanted. We even got to take a midday break. DH lost a contact so we had to go back to the tent to get his glasses and took that time to relax. We never took the time to do that before. We were going to be up late that night watching wishes.
We had the Dessert party booked. We had a time of 9:20 for the dessert party but we arrived at 9:00 and there was already a line. We tried booking this party pretty late and they had no more openings for two so we book for three and they had openings. We added our DS(2) who is considered free so we could get in. Seriously Disney if you have open tables you should let us book them. We saw plenty of empty tables when we were there that I’m sure would have been filled if they let more couples book. The party and desserts were just alright in my opinion. We will not be booking this again but we were happy we did this night as it rained the entire time wishes was going on so we got to stay dry and enjoy the fireworks. I did move to the railing while DH stayed at the table and napped. It was late for us.
Here is a picture from our table. You can see the parade going on too.
It was still raining on the way out luckily we didn’t have to stand waiting for the boat to take us back to the Fort. Guess the rain really thinned the crowd. We had a backup plan to walk over to the contemporary and catch the boat to the Fort from there had the crowds been bad.
Thursday May 17th (DisneyQuest)
We had planned on today being our free day but since we moved things around this day changed. DH and I decided we didn’t want to do Typhoon Lagoon so our only option was DisneyQuest. We haven’t done this in years because the last time we went it was really run down and didn’t interest us. Well we gave it another chance and our opinion still hasn’t changed. We did a couple things there and left after 2hrs. we went back to Pollo Camporo for lunch as I had to have that Grilled chicken with rice and beans again. After lunch we walked around the Marketplace seeing if there were any last souvenirs we wanted. Our last stop was Goofy’s candy kitchen where we used the last of our snack credits up to make some rice crispy mickey ears to take home with us. My mother had a requested one before we left so I made sure hers got made even recorded a video of it being made and sent it to her.
Video of mickey treat being made.
Friday May18th (Departure Day)
It is always sad the day you have to leave. I especially was sad cause of how miserable I felt this trip. I so need a vacation do over. Packing everything back into the car went well. Was afraid that everything wouldn’t fit back into the car. We had breakfast at Trails End. We never ate here for breakfast but have done dinner plenty of times. It was a really great breakfast an even better that it wasn’t as expensive as other Disney buffet breakfasts.
Trails end buffet video
The drive home was interesting. We found a hotel in the rest stop coupon book called the Peach Tree inn and looked it up on trip advisor. Everything was rated great by people’s reviews. Well when we got there the room was nasty with roaches. So you can guess we didn’t stay there. Sure going to write a not so good review there. After that we found one that said it was a brand new hotel The Comfort suites in Florence, NC but cost more to stay. At that point we didn’t care and paid for that stay. It was a fabulous hotel and the breakfast they offer you is definitely worth the price to stay. We are adding this hotel to our definite must stays again.
Well that’s my report. Sorry it isn’t as interesting as other reports or as detailed and that I didn’t take more pictures like I wanted to but feeling to miserable I didn’t think of picture take much. I wanted to make a video of this trip but that didn’t turn out. Hope this report was at least informative.
Some random pics from the trip
Buzz Lightyear
Self-serve dole whip at the poly
Please know when you read this my thoughts wonder and my sentence and paragraphs aren’t correct please forgive.
So every year DH and I have gone to WDW and have stayed at Pop Century had a 4 day base ticket with the free dining plan. Well this year is different. DH was saying how we weren’t going to do Disney this year cause of the cost but after some talking we decided that we could do Disney this year but we would have to change things up. So this year we decided we would try tent camping at Fort Wilderness get a 1 day w/ waterpark and the quick service dining plan. (I have never been camping in my life compared to DH who is an Eagle Scout) I was really worried how bad this trip would be having to sleep outside in a tent. Little did I know that wouldn’t be the thing that put a damper on this trip. We had our trip planned to be May 11th-19th 2012 this would be one without DS(2) who would be staying with grandma and grandpa for the week which he enjoyed more then he would have in Disney. This was our trip to celebrate our 13th anniversary. So a child free week for us. Yeah!
Friday May 11th (packing day)
DH worked today and I was in charge of getting everything packed into the car and making sure the house was clean I hate coming home to a messy house after vacation. DS was in daycare so I had plenty of time to get everything tetris into the car. The trunk just closed after we had everything in. After my mother was done work she came and picked up DS. This wasn’t anything out of the norm for him as he spends almost every weekend with them so when she came to get him he ran out the door ready to go. I had to slow him down enough to get our hugs and kisses as we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. I remember the first time we left him for a few days to go to universal when he was a year old and I was a mess that first night away from him. This time wasn’t that bad but I ended up feeling miserable for another reason. (we’ll get to that later)
Saturday May 12th (Travel day)
We got up at 1:00am and out the door by 2:00am. DH likes to leave early so we can be thru Washington DC before traffic gets bad. So with only about 3hrs of sleep for me and 5hr for DH we headed out on the road. We had a 20hr drive ahead of us before we got to Disney. Though we had little sleep we were excited and ready to go. We packed plenty of snacks and drinks for the trip so we didn’t have to stop for anything other than the bathroom and meal breaks. We stopped and ate lunch at Fatz in North Carolina (first time eating there, was good) and around that time I started to not feel so great. My throat was starting to hurt. I had a sore throat a couple weeks earlier so I didn’t think anything of it. So we traveled on. When we do this drive we don’t have any hotel plans set when we drive down we just grab one of the hotel coupon books at a rest stop and check them thru trip advisor before we head to them. Well I was really feeling miserable by the time we hit Jacksonville around 7pm. We’ve stopped here before so we tried to get into one of the hotels with their coupon. No go all those coupon rooms were gone and it would cost us a lot more to stay there so we moved onto the next hotel down. Luckily they still had openings. By the time we got our rooms I was feeling so miserable all I could do was a quick check for bed bugs and then crashed into the bed. You know when you get sick and your whole body feels weak and tired, yea I had that. Not fun. We had been driving for 16hrs at that point and with me feeling sick it was too much. We have done this same drive before and I never felt like this.
Sunday May 13th (On to Disney)
This morning I felt a little better but my throat still hurt so I figured that I might have another sore throat (I could live with that they don’t last long for me) and that I might not have drank enough water on the trip down and that was why I had felt so bad. So we continued the last few hours to Fort Wilderness. We finally made it to the Fort at 10:00am and checked in. They have a cute little check in area and found the CMs a lot friendlier then at Pop century.
Our tent site wasn’t ready so we opted to get a text when it was. We had plans to go to the character warehouse at the premium outlets so we headed there while we waited. I love that you can get Disney Park merchandise so cheap. This time I wasn’t able to find anything I wanted and what I did they didn’t have in my size. Oh well that’s why it is an outlet store. While there we shared a Chinese food meal for lunch. Wanted to save our dining credits for later. After lunch we head back to the Fort as our site was ready but asked DH to make a stop at a Walgreens so I could get some meds. I grabbed some chewable airborne (get my immunsystem up) that stuff is horrible but I took it and some chloriseptic spray. So after our stop we went to our home for the week. We got site 1508 about 4 spots from the comfort station.
Video of the site
Not a bad spot but felt like a long walk when you had to go to the restroom in the middle of night.
Comfort station 1500 loop video
DH set the tent up and told me just to take care of everything else. He only asked for my help to hold the center of the tent up on the inside as he was afraid a pole might break because our tent was so big. We had a 10 x 17 tent which worked out perfectly for us and we never got any rain.
Once our home was all set up and our string lights were on their timers we headed out to DTD. DH wanted to get all our shopping out of the way. I was still feeling miserable and weak so I had to take several rest breaks while walking around. Disney’s merchandise has really slipped I didn’t buy much this year. Most of it was Fort Wilderness merchandise for our cars and some shirts. We had dinner at WPE where we split the spaghetti and meatballs. I love eating here but with my throat hurting I really didn’t enjoy it much. For dessert we got the yogurt which ended up taking 20min for us to get even after going up and asking for it. Finally Cesar came by with two yogurts for us and apologized for the wait and said that they were really shorthanded. So now we had an extra yogurt which I loved since it felt so good on my acing throat. After our shopping trip in DTD we headed back for the night to get rested up for tomorrow. Waterpark Day!
Monday May 14th (Waterpark Day)
Our first night in the tent was actually a pleasant one. I ended up sleeping in more than I would have had we stayed at Pop century. Which was good cause I needed my energy for today. The comfort station is really nice. I do wish they had a clock and a more comfortable toilet seat. They have all these nice seats in the parks yet we get the most uncomfortable ones at the Fort.
We didn’t make rope drop for Blizzard Beach like we always have in the past but it was a cloudy day so it wasn’t crowed in the park. We did our normal rides. The family raft ride was closed but I did finally do Summit Plummet. For years I kept saying I was going to do it. So finally I did and boy if you have flabby thighs like me (I lost a lot of weight) be warned. It feels like someone is smacking on your thighs cause the water and you are moving so fast. I now can say I did it but don’t plan on doing it again, hurt too much. We finished at the waterpark right after lunch and went back to the tent to get cleaned up. After we were all clean I wanted to go relax so we went to the wilderness lodge to plop down in the nice living area upstairs in the air conditioning. After a while I still wasn’t feeling so hot so off to the restroom. After washing my hands I noticed I had little red spots on my fingers. Great now I have poison ivy from tying my shoe laces I thought. I told DH that I was not feeling better and now this. I asked to go to the Doctors. We went down to the Wilderness Lodge’s Concierge desk to find out our medical options. They pulled out this huge binder and showed us three options. First was what looked like a doctor that would come to you. Second was like an urgent care facility and the last was Celebration Hospital. Now I heard that Celebration Hospital wouldn’t take insurance so we called and they said they would bill any insurance we gave them. DH also called our insurance to make sure we would be covered. After our phone calls off we went to the ER. We arrived at the ER ay 6:00pm. Wished I had dinner before we left cause we didn’t get to leave until 10:00pm. They did some blood work and took a swab of my throat. I told the doctor that since I had spot on my hands and now some on my feet which I noticed while waiting. That DS daycare had some instances with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease but DS didn’t get it.
Link to info on Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HandFootMouthDisease/
The doctor said that he doubts that is what I have cause it is a childs disease and it is rare that adults get it but we’ll have to wait for the blood work. So after waiting the hours in the ER the doctor comes back and tells me. Yep you guessed it I got it. Of course DS doesn’t get it but by bringing him to and from the daycare I get it. Guess I am truly a child at heart. There is nothing they can do for me. I can just keep taking pain relievers and the cholorseptic spray. So finally done at the ER and now know what it is I have which made me feel better we stop at Wendy’s for dinner and back to the tent for the night.
Tuesday May 15th (Change in plans)
Today we had planned on doing Typhoon lagoon but since I was still not feeling well we decided to switch our free day to today and go watch the new Avengers movie at the AMC in DTD. we had a gift card to use up.
We got to be seated in the new theater they serve food tho we never did order anything. We did love the extra space it gives you. Especially the bar under the table you can put your feet on.
Oh we loved the movie by the way. After we used our $15 coupon to Planet Hollywood to get two desserts and some water. We ended up only owning $1.06 after the coupon so we gave the server a $5. Not a bad snack price especially since I got more Ice cream for my throat. After snack we walked to the Marketplace to look around and stopped to eat lunch/dinner at Pollo Campero. I have been wanting to try this place but always ended up eating at WPE. I got the grilled chicken with yellow rice and pinto beans. Oh it was so good, So going back! I also got a chocolate vanilla donut from baby cakes for dessert. It wasn’t bad but not great.
Wednesday May 16th (Magic Kingdom Day)
We were up a little earlier today so we could make it to rope drop at the magic kingdom today. I was finally starting to feel better. My hands were clearing up and my throat stop hurting. Thankfully my hands never blistered and I kept my coughs to myself. Washed my hands constantly too. Didn’t want to get any little ones sick. Once we were ready we headed to the CR for breakfast and then walked over to the MK. I was surprised how empty the park was even tho it rained most of the day still I haven’t seen the park so empty. We had no problems getting on to the rides we wanted. We even got to take a midday break. DH lost a contact so we had to go back to the tent to get his glasses and took that time to relax. We never took the time to do that before. We were going to be up late that night watching wishes.
We had the Dessert party booked. We had a time of 9:20 for the dessert party but we arrived at 9:00 and there was already a line. We tried booking this party pretty late and they had no more openings for two so we book for three and they had openings. We added our DS(2) who is considered free so we could get in. Seriously Disney if you have open tables you should let us book them. We saw plenty of empty tables when we were there that I’m sure would have been filled if they let more couples book. The party and desserts were just alright in my opinion. We will not be booking this again but we were happy we did this night as it rained the entire time wishes was going on so we got to stay dry and enjoy the fireworks. I did move to the railing while DH stayed at the table and napped. It was late for us.
Here is a picture from our table. You can see the parade going on too.
It was still raining on the way out luckily we didn’t have to stand waiting for the boat to take us back to the Fort. Guess the rain really thinned the crowd. We had a backup plan to walk over to the contemporary and catch the boat to the Fort from there had the crowds been bad.
Thursday May 17th (DisneyQuest)
We had planned on today being our free day but since we moved things around this day changed. DH and I decided we didn’t want to do Typhoon Lagoon so our only option was DisneyQuest. We haven’t done this in years because the last time we went it was really run down and didn’t interest us. Well we gave it another chance and our opinion still hasn’t changed. We did a couple things there and left after 2hrs. we went back to Pollo Camporo for lunch as I had to have that Grilled chicken with rice and beans again. After lunch we walked around the Marketplace seeing if there were any last souvenirs we wanted. Our last stop was Goofy’s candy kitchen where we used the last of our snack credits up to make some rice crispy mickey ears to take home with us. My mother had a requested one before we left so I made sure hers got made even recorded a video of it being made and sent it to her.
Video of mickey treat being made.
Friday May18th (Departure Day)
It is always sad the day you have to leave. I especially was sad cause of how miserable I felt this trip. I so need a vacation do over. Packing everything back into the car went well. Was afraid that everything wouldn’t fit back into the car. We had breakfast at Trails End. We never ate here for breakfast but have done dinner plenty of times. It was a really great breakfast an even better that it wasn’t as expensive as other Disney buffet breakfasts.
Trails end buffet video
The drive home was interesting. We found a hotel in the rest stop coupon book called the Peach Tree inn and looked it up on trip advisor. Everything was rated great by people’s reviews. Well when we got there the room was nasty with roaches. So you can guess we didn’t stay there. Sure going to write a not so good review there. After that we found one that said it was a brand new hotel The Comfort suites in Florence, NC but cost more to stay. At that point we didn’t care and paid for that stay. It was a fabulous hotel and the breakfast they offer you is definitely worth the price to stay. We are adding this hotel to our definite must stays again.
Well that’s my report. Sorry it isn’t as interesting as other reports or as detailed and that I didn’t take more pictures like I wanted to but feeling to miserable I didn’t think of picture take much. I wanted to make a video of this trip but that didn’t turn out. Hope this report was at least informative.
Some random pics from the trip
Buzz Lightyear
Self-serve dole whip at the poly
