Attendance at Fort Wilderness

[Colson39]

I believe there will be a slowdown at the Fort, and through out Disney as others have mentioned. Now, overall, the Fort has been breaking records in attendance the last few years, so this could just turn into a hiccup (depending on what happens with gas prices by next summer).

I think Disney is going to hate this period they might be entering, where they were pulling in record numbers, and decided to re-invest into the Fort, only to see the numbers drop because of fast rising gas prices. I would not be surprised to see cutbacks at the Fort by next summer.

Now if gas prices level out, people get used to them, you'll see a increase back in attendance. Of course, unless the worst case scenario happens in which they just continue to rise, in which case we have much bigger problems to deal with...lol.

It would have been nice if the attendance could keep up at this time when they are obvioulsy redoing the Fort to set it up for the next 20 years probably. This isn't the time when you want them shelving anything, because chances are it just will never make it in.

 

[tungpo1]

I'll be there July 1 through the 6th see yall there!!!!

 

[auntie]

I think we're only begining to see what effects the price of gas will have on camping and in particular RV'ing. Not to mention it's effects on tourism. I was to our seasonal site this past weekend, and even we had been re-thinking whether it was worth it, with the price of gas. Yep..we paid $4.10 to fill up for the trip. Fortunately we have a 6 cyl. car, in addition to our tow vehicle. So that pushed us over toward still maintaining our site, although there will more planning for longer stays. Not those quick ..up to the camp on Fri, and back home Sunday afternoon. Which was the main reason we had the site to begin with. I will tell you I saw ALOT more seasonal sites than I expected see. I think there were folks with their rigs in storage, who decided to put them on site, instead of tow. Kind of surprised me actually.

As far as FW...I think as the price of gas gets to be over $4.00 in the rest of the country is when we will see if it has any effect on the Fort. I'm thinking at this point, it's a bit too early to tell. Those who made reservations for right now, made them while gas was still lower. Might be to close to their scheduled vacations to make any other arrangements..even if they wanted to. With the summer months coming up, and the gas prices looking like there gonna hit $5.00...there will be an effect on the Fort. I don't think foreign travel has the same effect on the Fort as it does with the rest of the resorts.

Makes me glad we will be using Tina's RV...even with the cost of flying, it would be less than towing our own RV down...and I still get to stay in FW. I think Tina might be getting quite a bit more interest in her 5th wheel rental this summer.

 

[ntsammy5]

I think we're only begining to see what effects the price of gas will have on camping and in particular RV'ing. Not to mention and it's effects on tourism.

Yeah, that's the truth. I'm not even sure we've begun to see it yet, but we will soon. It's over $4.00 here now too. We're going through your neck of the woods (the campground that is) this weekend, so I'll honk on the way by. If you hear a horn honking it was me!

 

[kimluvswdw]

We were there 2 weeks ago ann I bet there was not 10 people on the whole loop. We rode around on the golf cart several days and were very surprised at the lack of people there. It was so dark and almost spooky at night.

 

[Shannone1]

I think FW(and other campgrounds near big attractions) will see a drop in the number of campers this summer and even later on into the fall. People are going to cancel their plans and camp closer to home. I think as a result of that, the campgrounds here in Michigan are going to fill up faster and you will see more seasonals in the campgrounds.

As of right now, we are still planning on keeping our FW plans for Christmas. But if gas is $5 by then we will probably cancel and do something closer to home. We spent $1200 in gas going to FL back in April when it was only $3.65 a gallon on average !! We just can't afford much more. We are also planning a 7000 mile rv trip out west next summer and if it comes down to only being able to do one trip...we are going to pick out west before my then 15 yr old dd is too old/busy to be able to go with us !!

 

[29bhs]

We were there this past week. Weekdays there was a handful in 500 loop.,but they pile in on friday afternoon, and all leave sunday am,,,.DOOM BUGGY

 

[Us3]

I think we'll keep our trips to FW as planned....but of course we are not towing as far as some of you.

Thank goodness we live within a few miles of a large lake, so we have several camprounds within 10 miles of us. This helps us get our "weekend camping fix" very close to home w/o towing so far.

We had planned on exploring more of the east coast this summer....but I think we'll cut back on that for now. We're going to get our money's worth on those ap's and keep going south on 75 for our long trips!

 

[ftwildernessguy]

I remember camping the October after 9/11. It was an absolute ghost town. Hopefully things won't get that bad again. Disney may have to adjust things a bit in order to keep the campground near capacity, as it has been in the past. Perhaps lower fees, if necessary. FW is the one resort Disney can't rely on foreign visitors to keep it going.

 

[UKCatinGA]

We left the Fort this am. It's pretty empty. It has been that way the whole time we were there except for the weekend.

Martha

 

[des1954]

I remember camping the October after 9/11. It was an absolute ghost town. Hopefully things won't get that bad again. Disney may have to adjust things a bit in order to keep the campground near capacity, as it has been in the past. Perhaps lower fees, if necessary. FW is the one resort Disney can't rely on foreign visitors to keep it going.

We were at FtW 9/13/01 to 9/16/01. Not only was FtW empty due to the events of 9/11, but a tropical storm came thru that weekend. On 9/14, we were evacuated to POR-Side and came back to FtW the morning of 9/15 at around 10a when they had the debris cleaned out. I'm guessing that there were all of 75-100 campers at FtW that weekend. MK & Epcot were ghost towns!! In all the years I've gone to WDW, I never saw it like that!!

I know people thought we were crazy for heading to FtW that weekend, but the way we looked at it was... if WDW were targeted for a strike, what better place to leave this earth from??? Plus - instant creamation and internment at FtW for free??? Just doesn't get any better than that!

 

[ftwildernessguy]

We were at FtW 9/13/01 to 9/16/01. Not only was FtW empty due to the events of 9/11, but a tropical storm came thru that weekend. On 9/14, we were evacuated to POR-Side and came back to FtW the morning of 9/15 at around 10a when they had the debris cleaned out. I'm guessing that there were all of 75-100 campers at FtW that weekend. MK & Epcot were ghost towns!! In all the years I've gone to WDW, I never saw it like that!!

I know people thought we were crazy for heading to FtW that weekend, but the way we looked at it was... if WDW were targeted for a strike, what better place to leave this earth from??? Plus - instant creamation and internment at FtW for free??? Just doesn't get any better than that!

I gotta look through my photo archives from that trip. I have a picture I took down Main Street at 3pm and there was about 5 people in the shot.

 

[des1954]

I gotta look through my photo archives from that trip. I have a picture I took down Main Street at 3pm and there was about 5 people in the shot.

Yeah... it was very eerie!! I expected to see all the little people escape from Small World and go invade the Pirates of the Carribbean!!

 

[ntsammy5]

It wasn't crowded that December either! I have a few pictures I'll post later.

 

[Tigger1966]

I wonder if the weekly attendance will increase once school is out?

 

[Anne's Family]

We've got a 2 week stint scheduled at FtW in early August. I've caluculated our gas at $4 for budgeting but will have to raise that a bit I'm sure. It's still around $3.71 here in Dallas.

That said, 4 flights for us would be over $1000 and gas with the popup will be around $600. Plus, if we flew, we'd probably only be able to do 5 or 6 nights at a value insted of the 14 at the Fort. It may all even out, but we'll have much more fun than being in a hotel.

 

[shocker]

We were planning a tent trip in Aug with a 2500 RT drive. At $4/gal would run us about $500 plus hotels along the way. I just booked us $59 one way airfare so we'll now be flying (staying the same number of nights). I'll probably have to ship some gear down and won't have a car to do the other Orlando items in our plans. But, we are still going.

 

[auntie]

We've got a 2 week stint scheduled at FtW in early August. I've caluculated our gas at $4 for budgeting but will have to raise that a bit I'm sure. It's still around $3.71 here in Dallas.

That said, 4 flights for us would be over $1000 and gas with the popup will be around $600. Plus, if we flew, we'd probably only be able to do 5 or 6 nights at a value insted of the 14 at the Fort. It may all even out, but we'll have much more fun than being in a hotel.

We paid $4.10 on Long Island on Friday...and it's only going up. At the rate it's been going it could be $5.00 by fourth of July. Everyweek it's been almost 10 cents more. I can't imagine that increases this quickly won't start effecting alot of summer plans.


________________

 

[LONE-STAR]

I had been figuring around $4.40 a gal for diesel on our next trip but now I am thinking it will be more like $5.00 a gal. Which will change us from $880 to $1000 Round trip. In 2003 it cost us $330 in diesel round trip. Wow that makes my wallet hurt.

 

[auntie]

That is an incredible difference in just a few years. I never thought I'd be seeing $5.00 for gas.
My daughter has friends that are choosing between eating and putting gas in the car at college. She had one friend that had to drop a class because the way it was scheduled, he couldn't afford the gas to get back and forth to class. Now, that's kind of sad.