rtguy007 74 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Ok going to start off the trip report while I still remember things. Have a bad habit of forgetting everything. We were packed up and headed out of central Ohio at 8am on Friday morning. Surprised we actually made it out at exactly 8am and not an hour later which is what normally happens. Here we are hooked up and ready to go. Got about an hour in and everyone had to hit the rest room so we pulled into a roadside rest right north of Cincinnati. This was the last place I grabbed a pic on Friday. After that it was a long drive to the Fort. Left 8am Friday morning and pulled into the Fort at 5:11am Saturday morning. I don't think I will ever drive it straight through again. Getting to old for that crap. Anywho the guard let us in and sent us over to the overflow lot. Apparently you can't checkin for the day until exactly 6:02am according to the desk lady at the outpost. Knowing that I went for a little stroll until that time hit. During my stroll had something interesting happen and I thought it was really odd. There was a deer up by the front entrance. As I was walking by it walked up to me, sniffed my arm, licked my arm, then took off. Only time I have ever had a deer get that close to me was in brown county Indiana and we had a bag of chips that we were feeding them as part of a nature program at a local park there. Told my wife this and she thought I was a little sleep deprived until she actually saw the deer the next night. After the deer lick and walk, it was time to check in. At 6:08am we checked in and of course our site was not ready. We headed back over to the camper in overflow and got a little sleep. When we got up we had still not received out text saying the site was ready so we jumped on the bus and took a quick ride around. During the bus ride I saw the maintenance guys doing some work on the settlement awning. Hard to tell but they were beating one of the logs back into place here. They were also putting in some marker post About the time I got to the settlement my mom showed up with my oldest and my nephew (they drove separately). We broke the news to my son that we were not at the smokies and we were at Disney. He was excited and ready to start having fun. Unfortunately no site yet so we just hung out until around 12. Around 12 we got our text that our site was ready. Got our first request.....1310. I was jumping for joy as I wanted to try that site for a while. My bubble was burst pretty quick when we got back and couldn't get into the site (our rig is very long and that site is tight to get into). Went back up front and asked if we could move to 1325 as it was available and we all liked it. After a phone call and a few minutes we were on our way to 1325. We got setup and this is where I will leave off for now. BayLake Campers and Avatab.... Steve 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
mouseketab.....Carol 1,261 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Cool!, can't wait to read more! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Great start to your TR. I'm looking forward to more too! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Tri-Circle-D 2,059 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 1325. Nice site. Easy access to the Trading Post and pool. Is there any fencing along the canal between the 1300 loop and pool? That deer lick story is strange. What a welcome to the Fort! TCD Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Travisma 1,317 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 The "friendly" deer was lulling you into a false sense of security. Him and his buddies were plotting to tear up your site that night! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 9, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 33 minutes ago, Tri-Circle-D said: 1325. Nice site. Easy access to the Trading Post and pool. Is there any fencing along the canal between the 1300 loop and pool? That deer lick story is strange. What a welcome to the Fort! TCD No fencing along the canal by 1300. Just a few signs. The only fence I have seen by the canals so far was by the meadows. 13 minutes ago, Travisma said: The "friendly" deer was lulling you into a false sense of security. Him and his buddies were plotting to tear up your site that night! I was thinking he was luring me into the woods where the squirrels were going to eat me alive and feed the rest to the gators. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Helmsey......Todd 134 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 I'm in! That is a lot of driving to go strait through! Glad you guys made it safe and got setup. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cortezcapt (Derek) 156 Posted August 9, 2016 Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 I'm in Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 9, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 9, 2016 Gotta finish up day one...... So after checking in and getting setup, I had 2 things to attend to. First was the tickets. Some of you may remember late last week my ticket problem with my account. I was hoping there wouldn't be a continuation of that issue and surprisingly there wasn't. I actually got a little pirate booty (my version of pixie dust) with the tickets. My youngest is currently 3 but when I made the reservations almost 2 years ago we put 2 in there for her since we were supposed to do this trip way back when. Well sure enough Disney didn't update the age as the years went by. Because of that they couldn't sell me a ticket for her because her customized magic band was bound to our reservation which says she is 2. The only way to fix it was to cancel the reservation and rebook it (which was a mess of gift cards). So the nice lady up front said not to worry about it....she is free. I couldn't believe it and later the same day I went and checked at another resort and they told me the same thing. So we went with it. Figured if Disney couldn't fix it why should I try and pay them more money and waste more of my time. So we scored her tickets for free which saved us around $350. Once that was done it was time to meet the ecv rental people up front to get my moms ecv (she has 2 bad knees and can't walk). I called them for an arrival time and they were just around the corner. They dropped off her ecv and we were ready to call it a night. At least that is what we thought. The kids got hungry. One of my all time favorites is Chuys which is off property. We decided to run over there since it is only 10 minutes from the fort. We pretty much walked in minus a short stop for a pic of the kids. Mine are the 2 on the outside and my nephew is in the middle. If you have never been to Chuys you have to try it. I get the big as yo face burrito and it is always good. When we were done we decided to call it a night. It was an early one since we had such a long drive. More to come later tonight...... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Northerngirl--Lori 5 Posted August 10, 2016 Report Share Posted August 10, 2016 Looking forward to hearing all about your trip! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Littleolwoman.aka.Kristie 119 Posted August 11, 2016 Report Share Posted August 11, 2016 Along for the story. Mercy what a drive. We drove straight through back in September and swore up and down never to do it again. The kids were awesome but mom and dad were spent. Beautiful children btw. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 12, 2016 Slacking on this report. Been a crazy 2 days and am having issues again with my phone and pics so I will need to post pics later. Anyway....Sunday brought us a trip into the MK. We wanted to get on big thunder before it closed on monday for maintenance. We hit the park just a little after rope drop and got 2 rides in on big thunder and a ride in on splash mountain in about 30 minutes. There was virtually no wait for both of them until around 10am. We couldn't figure that out. Shortly after that the wife showed up and we took the little one on her very first ride at Disney.....the Barnstormer. She had a blast and was laughing the whole time. Wish they had cameras on that ride to capture it. Since she did well on that our next ride was the speedway. She was less than impressed here. She still had fun but not like the barnstormer. After the speedway we had some time to kill before our FP for space mountain. We headed back to the mine train and there was a 70 minute wait. We decided to grab something to eat at the starlight cafe and return after that to wait for the mine train. Have not been in the starlight in years and forgot how outrageous the park for prices were. Regardless we needed to eat so we went ahead and ate there. The kids liked listening to the music and it was not to crowded. By the time we were done things were starting to pickup. Up until this point everything had been going smoothly until we returned to the mine train.....and it was down. Figured that we had time to ride it later so we moved on to Buzz. Over at Buzz we all had a blast. I out scored the group with an all time high of 103600. My son scored 26500 and it was his second time on it ever. Seemed like we both did better than last time we were here. Don't remember what mom or my nephew scored. We moved on to our Space Mountain FP at this point. First time my son was tall enough to ride. He got a great first ride to.....in the front. I wasn't sure if he was screaming in fear or about to crap himself. If you could of heard he sounds he was making you would have been rolling on the floor. It was hilarious. When we got off and took his picture we noticed his hair was all pushed back. It was great. He liked it so much he wanted to do it again (we didn't get to on Monday). We started to head back over to pirates with a detour to the mine train......and it was down....again. I was hoping to get my daughter on it since she was tall enough but it wasn't working out for Monday. Over to pirates..... Long story short with pirates......her new favorite phrase is Arrrrggghhh!!!! After pirates we were all pretty tired and ended up leaving around 3:30. Back to the camper for a short nap and then went back to Chuys. After Chuys we stopped at the Walmart on 27. Never again will I go into that Walmart. I think the Walmart we went by in Mexico on our honeymoon had better service and friendlier people and there were people living in huts out front of it. Never seen a slower group of cashiers and everyone, including the customers, were rude. Will not make that mistake again. That about wraps up Sunday. Coming up next.....Monday and Disney Springs. What we liked and didn't like. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Littleolwoman.aka.Kristie 119 Posted August 12, 2016 Report Share Posted August 12, 2016 Lol my husband says the same thing about that Wal-mart. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 13, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 Monday was a relax and get caught up on sleep day......that didn't happen. My mom and nephew were getting board and I wanted to see the Disney Springs since we were last here prior to the renovations. We ended up heading over around 10:30 because the ecv we rented decided to stop charging. After looking at the charger you could see where the output side of the chargers wires were starting to fray and come out of the charger. If you wiggled it the charger would kick on and start charging. After a few minutes it would shut back off. Around 11am I wheeled the ecv from one end of Disney Springs to the other (since it was all the way dead) to meet the ecv guy to swap it out. That went surprisingly smooth considering it was pouring outside. After the swap we spent a good deal of time in the coke store. I love coke and will probably have the nurse feed it to me through my IV when I am on my death bed (that and sweet tea). I picked up some flip flops and a shirt and we grabbed a few things for the new kitchen at the house. As we walked around the coke store we decided we needed to eat so over the the rainforest we went. What happened to Rainforest Cafe? As the years have passed we have seen a decline in the service, selection of food, quality of food, and the prices have skyrocketed. While we all enjoyed what we had the service was lousy and our waitress never refilled our drinks. To make it worse they include the tip on parties 6 and over and this didn't sit well since our service really sucked. We ate, paid, and left as quickly as possible which was about 1.5 hours after we sat down. From here we hit a few of our favorite stores around World of Disney and called it a day. We headed back and the kids went with my mom to the pool over by the cabins and the wife and I took a nap. Overall I like what they did with Disney Springs. We enjoyed the stores that were there and the selection of food. It is a little sad to see Pleasure Island gone but that is only because I never really made it over before it was removed. Up next...Ohana breakfast and another day of relaxation. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547 Posted August 13, 2016 Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 We've never eaten at Rainforest Cafe. Always thought it would be neat to try, but after your comments I think we'll keep passing on it! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Momof6....aka Marty 769 Posted August 13, 2016 Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 Late, but in! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
momof3kids-Yvonne 594 Posted August 13, 2016 Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 I'm in too. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 13, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 2 hours ago, CCIntrigue...aka Gwen said: We've never eaten at Rainforest Cafe. Always thought it would be neat to try, but after your comments I think we'll keep passing on it! To me it is sad. For the kids it is neat with all the stuff going on in there. When we first went there about 10 years ago the menu was excellent with a great selection and the volcano could serve 6 to 8 people easy. Now the menu is maybe a page long and all our favorites are gone. The volcano now feeds about 3 possibly 4 if you stretch it and the price went up. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Travisma 1,317 Posted August 13, 2016 Report Share Posted August 13, 2016 We went there on 7/3. They tried to seat 8 of us at a table that might've fit 5 with 3 of then being kids. Two of the chairs had nasty spills from the previous patrons. We asked to get another table that was empty, and they wouldn't move us. They told us we could wait 45 minutes for a larger table. My wife, a daughter and myself left so others could have enough room. I had glanced at the menu while we we waiting and I wasn't sorry that we left, about $15 for a burger. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LONE-STAR 370 Posted August 14, 2016 Report Share Posted August 14, 2016 Chuy's is great. We have been eating at them for over 20 years. But when they were a smaller chain the food was a little better. We never plan to eat there when we are in Florida but we always do. We have a Chuys about 35 minutes from our house. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 14, 2016 13 hours ago, LONE-STAR said: Chuy's is great. We have been eating at them for over 20 years. But when they were a smaller chain the food was a little better. We never plan to eat there when we are in Florida but we always do. We have a Chuys about 35 minutes from our house. They finally put one in Columbus. I ha e been to about 10 different Chuys over the years and by far the best was the one in San Antonio. I have noticed that the salsa is different at every one of them but the food taste the same otherwise. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
rtguy007 74 Posted August 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted August 19, 2016 I am not doing well keeping on the trip report. Going to try and get back on track here.... So Tuesday was another relaxation day. We had bfast over at Ohana which is one of my favorites. The potatoes were really good compared to normal. Would love to know what they were seasoned with. We were shown our table right before a parade and we didn't finish up until after another parade. The kids were loving the double parade. We had 3 full plate refills and I feel we got our moneys worth this time. After the second parade the kids got to meet the characters. Of course their favorite was....... Once we paid and left, the kids wanted to ride some rides. Since this was a relax day we rode the free rides.....the monorail and boat. After that we hung out at the fort. The family took a nap so I took a bike ride which was when I spent some time tracking down what they were doing with the fiber cable. Later in the afternoon we took off to the small pool for a few hours. It is quieter than the meadows pool and easy with the 2 little ones who are still learning to swim. Once we wore the kids back out we hit up the outlet mall over on I drive. We picked up some custom magic bands at the Disney outlet. My daughter got an Ariel, son got a Nemo/Dory, wife got a Grumpy, and I got a Haunted Mansion. All 4 out the door was about $40 after tax. Didn't feel like I got bent over for some MB bling. Also picked up a few stocking holders for Xmas. While there the wife spent a little bit of time in Gap and she was upset the Dooney store was closed for inventory. We caught up with her and decided to leave since it was getting dark and we were hungry. We drove back down I drive towards the Fort and hit up a Dennys. Man it was good for a Dennys and it didn't break the bank. Once back at the fort we put the TV outside on the side of the camper and did something I wanted to do this trip. We sat outside drinking some adult beverages and watched Tomorrowland. I know it was not well received when released but I liked it. Movie was over around midnight and we had a trip to the MK on Wednesday so we hit the sack for the long day we were expecting on Wednesday. Up next.....a long day at the MK. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Littleolwoman.aka.Kristie 119 Posted August 19, 2016 Report Share Posted August 19, 2016 Sounds like a pretty great day. I have yet to go to the outlet store, I think I will schedule that in for our next trip. Our family really enjoyed Tomorrow Land as well, watchinges it outside with adult beverages, awesome! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Momof6....aka Marty 769 Posted August 19, 2016 Report Share Posted August 19, 2016 Sounds like a great day. I also always mean to get to the outlet store, but have not been yet. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Tri-Circle-D 2,059 Posted August 19, 2016 Report Share Posted August 19, 2016 Great update! It's a good reminder that you can have a fun day at Disney World without setting foot in a park. I'm glad that you got those custom Magic Bands at the outlet, and didn't have to pay full retail for them. When I first heard about custom Magic Bands I thought it was dumb, but they sure are popular, and Disney is making some major money on these. If you don't mind, please elaborate on how you watched Tomorrowland- I think I saw an earlier post from you that you were able to stream it over the Fort's Wi-Fi. Since the Wi-Fi is a relatively new development at the Fort, I'd like to hear what equipment you used and how it worked. I pay for a Netflix subscription that I might like to use at the Fort. I know I could use a Wi-Fi enabled Blu-ray player or a Smart TV to stream, but I know there are other options out there too. Looking forward to hearing about your long day at the MK. TCD Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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