Just back & more clearing

[TomM]

We left FW Saturday morning to return home. . . now another year until we get to return...hopefully.
I visited with a CM at FW and he said the plan was to remove most all of the non native foilage in FW, they intend to leave the palmettos though.
Still water standing in spaces in the 1900 loop but no mosquitos. They put pellets in the water to kill the larva.
A great trip, just going through the post Disney vacation blues.

 

[ftwildernessguy]

Were you in the 1900 loop? We were there (site 1922) from 17-27 October.

 

[Skyw]

Are they clearing the sites out because of fire threat?

 

[4disneyfans]

We were in Loop 2000 from Oct.24-28 and were told that this vine like plant is taking over and would eventually kill the native plants if it is not cleared out. They said they have known for several years that it needed to be done but just now taking the steps to do it. Said also that soon they would begin planting more vegatation to replace all the cleared out trees etc. We walked over to one area and sure enough it had "potato like" things growing on the vine. The weather was wonderful why we were there! Rain one early morning and drizzle that same day but other than that it was wonderful.

 

[des1954]

Are they clearing the sites out because of fire threat?

Partly - but the non-native vegetation has really gotten out of hand, and a lot of trees that were damaged in the 2004 hurricanes just have to come down as they are posing threats to the guests. Once the "clearing scars" have healed, and they re-plant trees in better locations, FtW will be prettier than ever!

 

[ftwildernessguy]

It's actually encouraging to see Disney spend this amount of money with no direct return on the investment. It shows that they are committed to the campground and interested in keeping it up and going.

 

[TomM]

FtWilderness guy, We were in 1905 from Oct 17-27 also. It would have been good to meet you. Maybe next year, wish it wasn't so long but at least it is something to look forward to.

 

[Tri-circle-D]

It's actually encouraging to see Disney spend this amount of money with no direct return on the investment. It shows that they are committed to the campground and interested in keeping it up and going.

Yes, I agree with you ftwildernessguy.

I don't like the loss of privacy, and in some cases, shade, but in the long run this will be an improvement to the camp ground. For a long time, it looked like the campground was being neglected, but there has been some significant work done in the past couple of years (e.g. comfort station renovations), and that bodes well for the future of the Fort.

These air potato vines have been a real problem for years, and this is the first time that I can remember such an effort to remedy the issue.

TCD

 

[LarryJ]

It's actually encouraging to see Disney spend this amount of money with no direct return on the investment. It shows that they are committed to the campground and interested in keeping it up and going.

Like Tri-Circle-D, I only have one data point starting in 2000 and when we were there in 2005 and actually thought overall the change was for the better. They just had too many of those sky reaching pines and think they are replacing some of the trees with more reasonable trees like the Orange and Grapefruit. Yes there is some loss of privacy, but clearing out a lot of the underbrush is IMHO welcome. The potato vines have always been a major issue across from the tennis courts and across from group camping, but haven't noticed it being that big of an issue in the camping loops, but I might have missed something there. I'm really looking forward to getting my second data point this Dec/Jan and especially comparing it to what we say from our 1600 site back in 2005.

Larry

 

[Colson39]

I agree with the above statements, I think it bodes well for the Fort that they are taking active steps to keep the Fort up to date. It really was getting overrun, and while there was a bunch of alarmed threads when this first happened, it's nice to see that Disney once again did exactly what it should have done.

Also nice to hear that they will be replanting, I told y'all just wait and it will all come back

 

[Conan the Librarian]

Just hope that Kudzu doesn't get down there. THEN you would have a problem.