My first Trip Report - Nov. 10th -14th

[WannaBeImagineer]

Well after much delay I’ve decided I’d finally get around to posting my trip report.

This wasn’t my first trip to the Fort, honestly not sure how many times I’ve been, I do know my first trip was when I was 2 years old, 27 years ago but I can’t remember that trip for some reason. This was the girl’s (aka my girlfriend's) first trip to the Fort and first time ever camping! To prepare her I had her read KatieKomo’s great TR! Thanks for the help KatieKomo!

Anyway the girl is a school teacher and she had two hurricane days off November 11th and 12th so we decided to take a long weekend to introduce her to camping and the wonderful world of the Fort! Ok enough back story, lets get started….

We live in Naples, FL about three hours south of DisneyWorld, so the plan was to leave as soon as she got out of school on Wednesday, get to the Fort in time to setup camp and see the Electric Pageant on the beach. I slipped out of work early and headed home to pack up the truck. As soon as she was there we headed out, we were on the road by 4pm which was great! We made a quick stop in Labelle at my favorite chicken joint Popeyes, can you believe they don’t have one in Naples?!? It was delicious as always!

We arrived at Walt Disney World right on time. Here’s a picture of the loaded truck in front of check in, I strapped in everything pretty good so I can fly down the road and not worry about anything, lol.

When we checked in there was no wait, probably because it was a little after 7pm. I had prepared a list of all the partial sites, listing which ones were inside and outside and if we liked them or not, Thanks Shanman for all the info on your maps! Oh and I also faxed in a request 5 days ahead of time as everyone suggests, I requested the 1500 loop. As expected though we did not get the 1500 loop, but we got an outside site in the 2000, so we were happy and drove on in.

Out of curiosity though I drove through the 1500 loop, which just so happen to have 3 or 4 empty sites? What the fort? So I called and asked for one, after some back and forth I was informed that they were having a group in that loop so they were all saved, I didn’t buy it but whatever. So on to 2000, when we got there our site was very open and next to a site that was very bright and looked to be a huge group so we drove past and found one that looked nice and quiet and backed up to the canal, so I called again (I was starting to feel like a pain but oh well), it turned out to be no problem, they moved us to site 2024! The Site was great, lots of cover and room behind the site, we loved it! We quickly setup camp, fixed a drink and took the scenic route through group campsite to the beach, I showed her around some and we ended up watching the water pageant on the beach, not a bad way to start the trip.
The next morning we finished setting up camp and decorating, we also made some breakfast:

Can you tell I’m from Louisiana and a bit of an LSU fan?

Then we went for a run, the girl is a runner, I’m not…but I did it anyway…we ran from the 2000 loop to the outpost to pick up our cart. That counts right? Haha Once we got the cart I drove her all over the Fort.

TCD I agree with you 100% I’m not a fan of the 600 loop expansion, I made sure to point it out to the girl, I even showed her your favorite site, but I forgot to snap a picture.

We even rented a canoe! I have to be honest I was surprised how non friendly the lady at the bike barn was? She asked how long I wanted it I said a half hour and asked if they were strict about the time, because from past expericne I knew they weren’t. Well guess who was! She said with only a half hour she would send me on a shorter route. Well guess who didn’t listen, lol. As soon as I got in the canoe I went the opposite route she said to and made the full loop like I wanted. The canal between 1400 and 500 was a little green:

We saw this little guy on the main canal on the east side of the Fort:

Then we looped and looked at decorations and different sites:

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Ok here's some more decorations and sites:

Not sure who's this is but cool bear:

More Fort sites:

I want to make a bench like this:

haha here's the "canal" by the 2000 loop:

And here's back at our site:

Ok coming up in the next post we roast some dogs then head to Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party!

 

[jjbescher]

Very good so far. You got my attention!

 

[SplashMo]

Very Nice Pics!!!

 

[Tri-circle-D]

Great job, WBI!

So, did you bring the canoe back late? If so, what happened?

Great job on the gator photo. I always look for gators, and have only seen one once.

Good job on pushing for the site you wanted.

Based on my last two visits, I am getting a bit concerned that the old fax method may no longer be working. No big deal, because it worked out fine for me, but my requests have not been met on my last two visits.

TCD

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Very good so far. You got my attention!

Very Nice Pics!!!

Thank you!

Great job, WBI!

So, did you bring the canoe back late? If so, what happened?

Great job on the gator photo. I always look for gators, and have only seen one once.

Good job on pushing for the site you wanted.

Based on my last two visits, I am getting a bit concerned that the old fax method may no longer be working. No big deal, because it worked out fine for me, but my requests have not been met on my last two visits.

TCD

Thanks!

No we got the canoe back on time so we didn't have to worry about it, I knew we would have plenty of time to do the whole loop, not sure what she was thinking, maybe I'm just a good paddler...

I was surprised how close we got to the gator, we drifted right by him maybe 5 feet away. I tried to back up though for another picture and he slipped in the water. Its funny I'm from Louisiana and now live in South Florida so I've always been around gators but I still like spotting them!

 

[Lil' Lisa]

.

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Yay! I'm in!

Please tell me that you don't refer to your girlfriend as "the girl" on a daily basis... If you do, please tell me that she refers to you as "the boy".

Thanks for following along!

Nope don't worry I don't call her "the girl" it kind of just happend when I was typing this so i decided to go with it. I'm guessing she probably wouldn't like it if I called her that in public, she might call me something worse than "the boy" lol...

 

[SC DAD of 2]

Excellent, excellent, glad you had such a good time. More please.

 

[nelle]

Umm...Is there something missing on the red golf cart?? That might make it a little hard to drive

Great trip report so far!

 

[caveat lector]

Great Job so far! The pictures are excellent.

Although, I'm really looking forward to you refreshing your memory and posting that TR from when you were 2. It would be interesting to see the Fort through the eyes of a 2 year old.

 

[Lil' Lisa]

.

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Excellent, excellent, glad you had such a good time. More please.

Thanks we had a great time!

Umm...Is there something missing on the red golf cart?? That might make it a little hard to drive

Great trip report so far!

Haha, I saw that I guess they have a removable steering wheel so no one will steal it, pretty slick.

Thanks for following along.

Great Job so far! The pictures are excellent.

Although, I'm really looking forward to you refreshing your memory and posting that TR from when you were 2. It would be interesting to see the Fort through the eyes of a 2 year old.

Thanks! I'll see what I can do about remembering that first trip!

Phew! That's good. I was worried that you might suddenly find yourself single.

Thanks for the concern, lol and you are probably right!

Ok time for the next post...

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Ok when I left off I was about to throw some hot dogs on the grill:

After a quick lunch we got cleaned up and drove over to Downtown Disney to do a little Christmas Shopping.

Here’s some pictures on the way back in:

Then around 3:30 we took off for Magic Kingdom. Not sure if everyone knows this but if you have a Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party Ticket, it allows you to get into MK at 4pm. So we got to be in the park from 4pm to midnight for only the price of the party ticket, pretty good deal as far as Disney goes.

YES we are wearing matching shirts, but hey its DisneyWorld if you can’t do things like that there where can you?

It did seem a little early to celebrate Christmas…44 days early to be exact.

But the good news was since it was so early and it was on a Thursday, it wasn’t that crowded, most rides were walk ons!

And we didn’t have to fight for cookies!

We did have to wait to see the big cheese…

This is my favorite time of year at Disney and the castle lights are one of the reasons. Beautiful:

Some Parade pictures:

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

I’m going to try and wrap up the parade pictures and the rest of Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party in this post

Required fireworks pictures:

Then we headed over to Tomorrow Land for the Totally Tomorrow Land Christmas Party (or something like that). It was a strange comical kind of show with Stitch making an appearance.

Honestly I got distracted by some people in the audience. A group of 4 or 5 college age girls go there early and stood right in the middle, well everyone moved in around them and sat on the ground. A couple girls were wearing skirts so they didn’t’ want to sit. Grumpy older people were yelling at them telling them to sit, but they didn’t pay any attention to that, as it got worse one girl started telling them no and some back and forth ensued. Next thing you know one older man got up and got into one girl’s face and it looked like some non-Disney words were exchanged. It was pretty funny when the girl put him back in his place and told him to go sit down. The girl was furious and I watched as she found a head cast member, and told the story. Security arrived and they watched the man throughout the show afterwards they went over to him. I don’t’ know what he said or what happened because of it but man’o’man some people need to relax

Then we went to Mickey’s PhilharMagic, I love this show! No one argued here!

Then the party was over at midnight, I think we ate our money’s worth of cookies all in all we had a great time and can’t wait to do it again!

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Is anybody out there? Is anyone reading along still, did I lose you with the Magic Kingdom pictures??? Well I'm this post is at the Fort so get ready:

On to Friday, this was going to be our Fort Day, our only plans for the day was the 7:30 Hoop-de-doo Revue!

So we got up early as usual, well later than normal probably 7am. I somehow got motivated and we went for a run to the Wilderness Lodge, where we toured around then ran back to the Fort.

Oh and I just remembered at the beginning of our run we noticed three official type of people looking around near the golf cart parking lot by the settlement bus stop. They were mostly looking around by a large transformer there. I thought about walking over to talk but I didn't sorry I know I should have. Anyway I know they were Imagineers because of my good detective skills (it was written on their SUV) and two of them looked real young, as in younger than me so they could have been interns. Thats all I know.

So when we got back from our run we fixed us some coffee, I think we might have spilled a little kahula in it too and we went looping to see if we could spot the imagineers again, but no luck, here's some pictures though:

During the looping I suggested we go look for the old swamp trail. A few years ago I was able to find a section of the old board walk, not on the lake but in the woods more. Since then though TCD has done some looking and wading around and found no trace of the old boardwalk.

Here I am crossing the canal by the old log cabin.

I guess these were put in to stop people from going back there? But notice the trail that goes right through them.

Look at all the potato vines? The should clean this up it would make a beautiful trail again!

We found this baby armadillo along the way.

The girl wasn’t liking the brush so I ran forward a little ways but honestly wasn’t dressed to be clearing trails so we turned back. I did realize that all my ducking and diving through the brush caused me to get covered in little cockle burs. Real nice!

Here’s a pictures of me pulling cockleburs off my hooded sweatshirt

Then we drove over to the Meadow Trading Post:

This is when we met Bill (I think that’s his name) he told us the story about the checkers board which I already posted about:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2607774

And then he disappeared, really cause I tried to find him again but no luck.

Then we decided to get cleaned up and do some resort hopping. Here we are on our way to the Contemporary.

Required pictures from the boat:, River Country, Wilderness Lodge, Contemporary.

FYI I’m getting good at taking self pictures, I have that timer figured out!

Here’s the wreath they put up on the end of the Contemporary, its huge!

I think this is my limit for this post…

 

[caveat lector]

Is anybody out there? Is anyone reading along still, did I lose you with the Magic Kingdom pictures???

Definitely still here and diggin' your TR. My favorites are the pics of the seasonal MVMCP signage. Although, a close second is the scary green water in the canal.

 

[Tri-circle-D]

I'm still with you, too.

Good job on getting the required photos.

And even better job on getting the photo of the big Contemporary wreath.

Bad job on not eavesdropping on the imagineers.

But, you're young.

You will learn.

Looking forward to more of your great photos!

TCD

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Thanks for continuing to follow along everyone!

Continuing on here’s the Gingerbread House inside the Grand Floridian; it was still being put up this day.

We then took the monorail back to the contemporary and then the boat back to the Fort.

I’m not sure why but I liked this:

Another picture of a log bench, one day I’m going to make one of these:

Here’s some random shots from around the Fort:

And now back at our site:

 

[WannaBeImagineer]

Definitely still here and diggin' your TR. My favorites are the pics of the seasonal MVMCP signage. Although, a close second is the scary green water in the canal.

Thanks! I'll keep the pictures coming, I think I had around 400 pictures from this trip but I narrowed it down to around 200 for this trip report. I follow the TCD style of quantitiy over quality.

I'm still with you, too.

Good job on getting the required photos.

And even better job on getting the photo of the big Contemporary wreath.

Bad job on not eavesdropping on the imagineers.

But, you're young.

You will learn.

Looking forward to more of your great photos!

TCD

Thanks TCD!

haha you are right though I still have a lot to learn when it comes to getting info at the Fort.

Hopefully you picked up some info for me since I was slacking.

WBI