rtguy007

Yep they converted the 2 lost FP's to all day. We are using the second one now to see Nemo. My DD is so excited. My oldest was happy to see figment. All is good now that we are away from the grumps.

I didnt snap a picture but it looks like they are doing parking lot work up by the outpost. There are signs everywhere saying the lots will be closed from May 9th - 13th for work. If I remember correctly it is for striping. Will try and take another look tonight when we are up there to confirm. They are already blocking off rows to get the stuff out of overflow.
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Ahh didnt think of that bus from the MK. Thanks for the tip. The kids are still happy from Chef Mickeys which is more important to me than getting to Epcot. It is all of the other people that are complaining that are making it bad. Guess I am more frustrated with that than anything.
 

Yep they converted the 2 lost FP's to all day. We are using the second one now to see Nemo. My DD is so excited. My oldest was happy to see figment. All is good now that we are away from the grumps.

I was typing that as you replied. Did it before and added a day to some tickets but not all. Gave us access to setup those fast passes for everyone and the few that went in the extra days just stood in the lines when they were short. It worked out well.

I am going to apologize in advance. It got really windy today so you are going to hear that in the video. I also found out how crappy the microphone on my phone really is. When I am in the camper you can hear the generators but for some reason they are almost non existent in the video. Before I go into the camper I have both of the champion 2000w's running on max (non economy mode). This will force the generators to run at full load. When I come back out I turned off the economy mode and let them adjust themselves based off of the load. You can hear the difference between idle and full load there. That is how most inverter generators work that have the eco/econ switch on them.
Here is the link to the video. I have it unlisted so you have to use this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS61q--HEAg
In the real world you would want to move the generators a little further away from the TT than what I have them. You don't want any of the exhaust getting into the camper in any form. I just put them by the front so you would see how loud they would be inside. That is hard to tell in the video. I can tell you from experience that the AC when running will drown out the generators completely on the inside.
Our method when using the generators, we put the fridge and hot water on propane (they almost always are anyway because it works better that way). We DISABLE the progressive industries surge protector (it can trip off if the ground protection hiccups). Depending on the temp outside and our battery charge we may shut off the main feed to the batteries so the converter isn't charging them while we are using the AC (it puts a lot of extra load on the generators). We can run the stereo, AC on high, all 3 TV's, satellite (when we had it), water pump, and all lights inside and out, and the outside mini fridge (120v) while running on the generator when in parallel. If we need either microwave (we have an outside kitchen and one inside the camper) we will shut the AC and possibly the outside fridge off (just depends on elevation and temp with the generators).
If you do end up purchasing a generator the best piece of advice I can give you is to never shut it off using the switch. Turn the gas off and let it die on its own. If you use the generator on occasion vs all the time this is the best method to shut off the generator. If you use the switch and let the gas sit in it the carb will clog up and it will be harder to start or wont start at all. Also make sure the gas you have in the generator is fresh otherwise it will run poorly at full load. Don't fall victim to the "dead generator" syndrome on a seldom used generator. These 2 basic things will keep them running as if they were new.
On a side note, as soon as I packed up the generators it started snowing (Yay and Boo at the same time). We now have a light dusting of snow on the ground. That explains the drop from 78* yesterday to 37* today.
Hope all of this wasn't overwhelming and you got value out of it.

Nacole,
Probably should have worded the wattage thing a little differently. Most generators have a wattage rating which is what they sell you. For the champions I have they are 2000w per the sales material. That is the peak load. You should look at the running wattage load which will be lower. For my champions I believe it is 1700watts. If you parallel them you get a running wattage of 3400w and not 4000w. It is a little tricky but always look at your running watts and not the peak number on the unit. Only company I knew that advertised by running watts was generac but that could have changed since I last looked about 5 years ago.
For battery depletion, you can get any generator and just plug the camper into it if you are within load of the generators running watts with what you have turned on in the camper. The converter in the camper will charge the battery. We found that it is not as efficient as other chargers when boondocking so I also carry a noco gs15000 which charges the batteries quicker and in a way that keeps the batteries more conditioned than the converters charger.
We have done a lot of boondocking with our current and previous TT. Both the Coleman and Dometic AC units required at least 3200w at peak to start the AC without stalling ot tripping the breaker on the inverter generator. When running they only use about 1800w a piece. We have been able to run the AC and all 12v stuff with no issues on the dual champion 2000w gen sets in parallel. However if we want to use the microwave we normally have to turn off the AC.
On a side note, elevation and temp messes with how much your generator really pushes out. It will produce less at higher elevations and temps. This is also impacted by your AC needing more power at higher temps as well. Get the most amount of generator you can afford while being able to move it. My sister has the 3200w champion inverter and it powers pretty much the same as ours. Problem is it weighs a lot more. You must have 2 people to lift it safely. With a parallel setup one person can move them easily. If you stick with the inverter generators don't worry about noise either dual or parallel. At full load they are almost unnoticable inside the camper and at 50ft away you hear others talking more than the generators.
The last thing to look at, a lot of state parks and national parks require a generator with a spark arrestor. While most inverter generators have this the cheaper non inverter units don't have them in many cases. To tell look at the muffler output on the generator. If there is a screen or some kind of protective plate so that you can't shove something into the muffler, it has a spark arrestor. If it doesn't, check the sales material to see if they state it is federal park/epa certified/includes spark arrestor. If you don't have it the rangers will make you stop using it. I have seen this happen a lot with the loud non inverters in some parks. The rangers do pay attention to it.
Hope my novel helps you out.

It's amazing how time flies. Been trying to finish up my report but life keeps getting in the way.   Anyway we started out Wednesday semi early. Missed rope drop at MK which I wanted the kids to see. No big deal though. When we got in the park we had to get the traditional castle photo.     Once the photo was done we went over to the barnstormer. We had a fast pass for it. Riley was so excited. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of her on it but she had a blast and wanted to do it again which we did since the wait was only 5 minutes.   After that chip and dale made an appearance so we got some more pics. Riley wanted nothing to do with them and she wouldn't go near them.     Once we got our pics over to dumbo we went. There was surprisingly no wait so we didn't get to play in the new queue which I was looking forward to seeing this time around. Dumbo was.....well dumbo. Kids enjoyed it but it was short.   Next up we hit small world to use our FP. Riley was in awe and Logan just looked and said ehh. I think he is starting to outgrow a few things there. Just 2 years ago he loved small world. At least he cheesed it up for a picture.       After the relaxing boat ride we made our way to the speedway. I know this is an older ride but for the love of god Disney....please do some work to the cars. They are like driving drunk when you are not only sober but also have kids in the car. The kids thought it was funny but the enjoyment wore off quick as everyone had to keep stopping because they couldn't steer which lead to a lot of bumping.   After sobering up from the speedway we head over towards buzz for some shooting action. I did pretty good but not my all time best.     My wife didn't do as good and was around 75000 and my son got a whopping 1200. My nephew was around 55000 if I remember right.   From here we headed back to the fort once we realized how long the lines were getting. Once back we grabbed a sandwich at the site and took a nap. It was hot at this point so the nap really helped to replenish some energy. After we got up back over to the MK we went for a long night. And long night it was. Hit the gate at about 4pm and first thing we did....eat.   Pecos Bill here we come. I like the new taco burger. It was great. The kids meals were decent sized but a little pricey. The wife got the salad because she wanted to eat something healthier. Overall not bad for our first visit since the menu change.   Stuffed and lethargic we decided to walk off some of the food and hit up the people mover. I really can't believe they almost took out the people mover. It is one of the best rides there. The kids wanted to keep riding it and since there was no wait we rode it 3 times without getting out of the car.   Once done we went down for some dancing with the Incredibles. Let's just say that Logan hates to dance in public. Riley had a good time. Mommy had a great time here as well. First time we actually did the dance party and we will probably do it again.   At this point mommy decided she had enough of the crowds (they were not bad) and decided to call it a day. She took Riley back to the camper. Logan and I met up with my mom and nephew who stayed in the park when we were napping.   The line for space mountain was not bad at 20min wait so we hit it again. Logan cant get enough of this ride now that he is big enough to ride it.   Since it was getting late the crowds started to line up for the electric light parade and fireworks. Wish we would have stayed to watch the parade a little more than we did as we found out the next morning it was going to be killed off again. It's a shame as the light parade is a Disney icon and should be kept.   While the crowds were over for the parade and fireworks we hit pirates and splash mountain....twice. We were really shocked at how the crowds thinned out. Normally we would have headed back over to the fort at this point but.....IT WAS EXTRA MAGIC HOURS NIGHT.  We wanted to be there at 2am when they closed it down.   Dripping wet....we headed back over to tomorrow land since the kids were enjoying it. That and we had a space mountain fast pass to use at 10:30. If you notice, we have been back and forth by the mine train a lot here. And every time we went by it was broken down. I was not happy as we missed the opening by 1 day last time we were there. Anyway I digress.   So space mountain it was again. 2 times as the wait after the fast pass was 10 minutes. Another round on the people mover as well. Went and did stitch once and Logan had a good time. I love stitch but they really need to do something new with that space. Would like to see them keep something stitch related in the park but maybe over in frontierland where the little varmint can do damage :).   At this point it started to rain and my nephew wanted a turkey leg. So over we went to get a turkey leg and hit pirates again. When we got out of pirates there was no wait for splash mountain so we did it twice again.   The second time through we were in the front of the boat and the annoying foreigners behind of us were complaining about something. So I took it upon myself to bring them a little magic....by all 3 of us ducking down under the front of the boat on the drop and they got soaked. They were not happy which I was fine with because who goes to the happiest place on earth to complain and bring others down.   When we got off the boat the second time we were going to hit the jungle cruise until something caught my attention. One of the maintenance workers had his radio turned up and I heard them say at 12:15 they were going to open the mine train back up. We ran.   Once over there the sign was already showing an hour wait. I was determined to ride it so we hit the restrooms and into the line we went. Well 30 minutes into the wait....it broke again. I was not a happy camper unlike what my shirt said. We stayed in line and I am glad we did. 10 minutes later it started moving again and the ride was going at least we were by the water piano so the kids kept busy with that while I got more annoyed. 20 minutes later we were in the queue and 2 trains away from the ride.....and it broke again. This time for about 15 minutes. It was at that point that they figured out the problem. Apparently they installed ride safety sensors on the gates leading to the track from the queue. People kept leaning on the gates and tripping the safety shut down. Once they figured out a way to reset the gate safety shutoff without purging the line we were able to finally get on the mine train. While it was a lot of fun and you could feel the cars swaying, I will say I expected more from it after all the hype. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed it but I think the constant breaking down got to me so I have mixed feelings about it.   Once off the train, we hit buzz up again....and again....and again. We actually rode it 7 times in a row. The kids love it and there was no wait at 1a. This is when I hit my crowning achievement.....my best score ever. To bad my phone was dead and I couldn't get picture proof. I scored 262200 and Logan got a 26500 which isn't bad considering he is 6.   Around 1:45 we headed up to the gate stopping to get some rice crispy treats and a few pics from the photo pass guy of Logan and I. I will post it later since I don't have it on me but it is almost my favorite photo from the trip. At exactly 2am we walked out the gate and our last time at the MK this trip. We were already planning the next trip by the time we got on the boat for the fort.   Back at the camper by 2:30, I couldn't sleep and the wife woke up. We decided to take a stroll around the campground. It is amazing how peaceful the fort is at night. What made it better is that there was no mosquitos or those yellow flies that night. Really we didn't have any issues the entire time with flying insects.   Overall Wednesday was an awesome day and we got to ride all of our favorites at least 3 if not 7 times.  

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.

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.

Well the rocks are in and the fence is going up. Still a lot of yellow vests standing around. Looks like a government job site to me.
 

Just hopped the boat to the MK to grab the monorail over to the poly for breakfast. They are dropping the stones down today. Sad to think back that as a kid we played in the water on the beach and now it is blocked off.

Well the rocks are in and the fence is going up. Still a lot of yellow vests standing around. Looks like a government job site to me.
 

Just hopped the boat to the MK to grab the monorail over to the poly for breakfast. They are dropping the stones down today. Sad to think back that as a kid we played in the water on the beach and now it is blocked off.

Taking this thread slightly off topic but the cable spool is sitting on the road right about the tent camping area past 2000. There is a semi fresh trench most of the way up the side of the road with communications vaults in the ground. Somewhere around 2100 if I remember my ride correctly it cuts under the road from the other side towards 2100 and then runs under the walking path behind of 1100. From there it runs under the road and they are working on the next part which is behind of 1300 and almost directly behind our site. There is a large conduit spool sitting up beside of the meadows trading post.
My theory at this point is that they were feeding the WiFi from the cable system which is slower. I think they are taking a fiber feed over to the meadows from the lodge (closest logical place to hook into something to feed a high speed network). Once it is ran they are going to setup a small telecommunications hub inside the meadows trading post. Once it is in they would have higher network capacity for people like me who hookup the Roku to the WiFi and steam movies (yes this works). At that point a wireless distribution system could be ran in the campground without the need to run additional cabling and power is already available in every loop. Much cheaper than trenching cable for WiFi all over the place.
On a side note, Roku streaming works flawless over the forts wifi. We are sitting out right now beside the camper streaming tomorrowland off of vudu and drinking a few beers.
 

Still have flags all over the place. So far I have seen 2 directional boring machines putting conduit under sidewalks today. One was behind of our site and boring towards the canal from the main road.
Ryan

I don't know if I misheard the guy in the meadows this morning that was working the cash register but he said something along the lines that they were going to be supporting DirecTV receivers so that people could get a feed from Disney and people wouldn't need to setup a dish. I don't think he knew what he was talking about to be honest. I take it with a grain of salt.
Ryan

Hey Fort peeps. Been a while since I have been able to post. Been on and off lurking the past few months. Not sure if you all remember but last I was on we were getting ready to start building a house. That whole thing turned into a disaster as far as the start. Because of that we have rescheduled our disney trip 4 times. Well we finally got into our new house about a month ago, ran into some issues with schedules and sure enough had to reschedule the fort trip we had setup for september to may of 2017 (originally scheduled for November 2015).
In the mean time we decided to try and squeeze in a quick trip to the smokies before the kids went back to school. About 2 weeks ago we scheduled a trip for Aug 6-14 to stay at elkmont in the park which is one of my feels like home places. Got our camper to the house and started cleaning it up and found out we acquired a leak over the winter and I had a leaking front seal. After a lot of experimentation I was able to find a good sealant to fix the leak and also an easy way to remove the old sealant. Got the leak taken care of yesterday and pretty much finished up the cleaning yesterday.
As I was packing up our towels/washrags/making the beds I was listening to some music on youtube trying to get into the mood for a week away from work. Pretty much everything that was auto playing from youtube picks was classic rock and out of no where the Carl Rae Jepsen remake of Part Of Your World came on as I was putting the last few things away and it hit my disney soft spot. At that moment I pretty much said enough was enough. Closed everything up, went into the house, got on MDE and found out the Ft had premium sites available the 6-14th. Called up the wife and told her I had lost my mind and said we were going to disney instead of the smokies. After a short back and forth she agreed to the change in scenery and we will now be at the fort next weekend. Can't wait.
Is anyone else going to be there during this time? Is there a chance I could get "spiked" even though I never got to order my official fortfiends sign (remember that being a requirement before)? Anyone have any tips on how to hang my wooden ft wilderness sign? I may break out the mickey head light I made if I can figure out a base for it by the end of the week.
 
Ryan

Oddly enough mine is a picture of me when I was a kid sitting on my bike by a bench by the settlement. Only problem is my parents refuse to let me have it. They have it in an old photo album.

Hell hath froze over..

If he doesnt, I will. Will be at Elkmont next week. Can't wait.

State parks in Ohio can be hit or miss. We like some sites at Alum Creek and Shawnee. Deer creek is OK but there is not a lot near the CG. Have not been to East Harbor or Ceasers Creek but heard both are nice. AW Marion could be a nice campground but it doesnt look like it has much TLC since the day it was opened and there is almost no one ever in there (not friendly to rigs much over 20ft). Tar Hollow can take larger rigs but there are no pads for the trailer and rain makes everything soupy there. It seems that some SP CG's don't accommodate larger rigs well and most have few to no full hookup.
One thing you may want to try is the AEP Recreation Lands. You have to have a permit to camp but it is free from their website. Once you have the permit, you can camp at any of the campgrounds there for free. I think there are 5 to 6 of them. Never been there but I heard they have power but no full hookup.

There is a back way but I am not really sure how to get to it from a main road that isn't marked with all sorts of signs.
A warning though, if this is your first camping trip, you may not want to go anywhere else. The fort rocks.

100% agree. I deal with this type of crap on an hourly basis. If you hook your network devices to the internet, you are asking for issues. Sure there are thousands of other ways to be compromised or hacked. The issue is we want the convenience as a society. The trade off is to get products to the market quicker, basic security measures in software coding are left out or overlooked. This is a very common occurance.
Long story short....if it is connected to the cloud, it is in jeopardy of being compromised. If it is stored in the cloud, you have no control over YOUR data. Yes that includes everyone with a blasted iphone/ipad and anyone running linux. Anything can be hacked and you are foolish to think it cant. You want to keep your data and privacy safe, get off of social networks and stop putting your photos, videos, document backups, etc on free storage services like dropbox.
It is freakishly scary what you can find out about people using the internet. It is even more concerning how much of their personal data anyone can get access to. I could go on and on but my non disclosure from work prevents me from talking in detail on what I see and what is out there. All I can say is that most things are better left off of the Internet.
OK.......I am getting off my soap box.

That's just sad.