bama_ed
It's kind of fun to do the impossible-Walt Disney
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2004
- Messages
- 13,524
Folks,
Lots of questions have come up lately about the Exercise Trail (ET) that parallels Wilderness Way between the Fort's Settlement Bus Depot and Wilderness Lodge. Like many of you, I've enjoyed the trail tremendously in the past and am anxious to do so again. A sidewalk has been built in front of the new Tri-Circle-D Ranch barn along the new road extension to connect to the existing WW and ET location. But I am thinking that it may be a while before we can ever use it again (but I believe we will be able to).
I was looking in a pinned thread on the DIS Rumors and News board that features the tweeted images from Bioreconstruct
Bioreconstruct's Twitter Link
and saw a picture posted there from August 16, 2020. It showed a view of the Reflections construction site and I noticed the ET portion at the bottom of the photo was wide and brown (dirt). Here is the picture:
I put a yellow oval around the part I'm referring to:
That's the road Frontier Way (that comes in from the Tent loop 2000 coming in from the bottom right corner to WW).
It looked torn up and wide with the old ET pavement removed. Then I referred to Google Earth photos from March 2020 which showed that portion of the ET and all of the ET down to WL looking the same: wide, brown, and in a ground construction phase. I put another yellow oval on the same spot below:
It looks like the whole ET had been torn up. So I went back into all the various Reflections drawings and found again/remembered that the ET, which already had a few utilities running beneath it, were going to have MORE utilities placed under it for Reflections which meant tearing out the old ET, doing the utility work, and then repaving a new ET sometime in the future.
Here is the drawing with the end of the ET down at WL as an example of the portion to be torn up (the whole ET was torn up actually):
Timberline Drive is the entrance road into WL. WW intersects it between the entrance gate and the main building on the right.
Here is the same location in a different drawing showing a new repaved and landscaped (with swales no less) once construction/utility work is completed:
For anyone interested, here is a typical cross-section for the newly proposed ET in terms of pavement layers:
And here is a cross-section of the proposed ET with the old+new utilities and also the old ET with the original utilities underneath.
Disney would not want guest traffic to be crossing Frontier Way (which is the Construction Access Road to Reflections) while construction was still underway at Reflections. And Disney may not have finished utility work along the ET yet so won't be repaving it soon. They may not do so until Reflections' buildout is complete. If Reflections goes into semi-permanent hold status, maybe they will pave the new ET so guests can use the corridor in the mean time. Or maybe they won't.
Bottom line is the current plans do call for the Exercise Trail between the Fort and Wilderness Lodge to be replaced and operating in the future. But if they follow through on those plans and when that might be is anybody's guess.
Bama Ed
Lots of questions have come up lately about the Exercise Trail (ET) that parallels Wilderness Way between the Fort's Settlement Bus Depot and Wilderness Lodge. Like many of you, I've enjoyed the trail tremendously in the past and am anxious to do so again. A sidewalk has been built in front of the new Tri-Circle-D Ranch barn along the new road extension to connect to the existing WW and ET location. But I am thinking that it may be a while before we can ever use it again (but I believe we will be able to).
I was looking in a pinned thread on the DIS Rumors and News board that features the tweeted images from Bioreconstruct
Bioreconstruct's Twitter Link
and saw a picture posted there from August 16, 2020. It showed a view of the Reflections construction site and I noticed the ET portion at the bottom of the photo was wide and brown (dirt). Here is the picture:
I put a yellow oval around the part I'm referring to:
That's the road Frontier Way (that comes in from the Tent loop 2000 coming in from the bottom right corner to WW).
It looked torn up and wide with the old ET pavement removed. Then I referred to Google Earth photos from March 2020 which showed that portion of the ET and all of the ET down to WL looking the same: wide, brown, and in a ground construction phase. I put another yellow oval on the same spot below:
It looks like the whole ET had been torn up. So I went back into all the various Reflections drawings and found again/remembered that the ET, which already had a few utilities running beneath it, were going to have MORE utilities placed under it for Reflections which meant tearing out the old ET, doing the utility work, and then repaving a new ET sometime in the future.
Here is the drawing with the end of the ET down at WL as an example of the portion to be torn up (the whole ET was torn up actually):
Timberline Drive is the entrance road into WL. WW intersects it between the entrance gate and the main building on the right.
Here is the same location in a different drawing showing a new repaved and landscaped (with swales no less) once construction/utility work is completed:
For anyone interested, here is a typical cross-section for the newly proposed ET in terms of pavement layers:
And here is a cross-section of the proposed ET with the old+new utilities and also the old ET with the original utilities underneath.
Disney would not want guest traffic to be crossing Frontier Way (which is the Construction Access Road to Reflections) while construction was still underway at Reflections. And Disney may not have finished utility work along the ET yet so won't be repaving it soon. They may not do so until Reflections' buildout is complete. If Reflections goes into semi-permanent hold status, maybe they will pave the new ET so guests can use the corridor in the mean time. Or maybe they won't.
Bottom line is the current plans do call for the Exercise Trail between the Fort and Wilderness Lodge to be replaced and operating in the future. But if they follow through on those plans and when that might be is anybody's guess.
Bama Ed
Last edited:
If it occurs.
