FEARtheEERS

This ride truly made me feel more like an animated movie was happening right beside of me than any ride I've been on.  Whoever did the animatronics did great.  With both this one and the dwarfs I guess I'm being greedy because I want the rides to be longer.  I wonder what these animatronic faces look like when the projection goes off.  I want a behind the scenes tour of the making of them I think.

I was very interested when the "fixer upper" men came out and had their water wading boots on.  Something must have happened that required them to wade in the water.  There was a man in a plaid shirt running the show.  Wish I knew his name, he was so proud of the ride and was all over getting it fixed back up.  We also met the sisters after that and it seemed pretty efficient.  Little ones will enjoy that.  The odd thing that happened there (and happened when we met Olaf at HS) was this single older man in line snapped a photo of Ana meeting my girls.  It was like he was a blogger who just wanted a shot of kids meeting the character but I asked him what was going on he took a photo of my children..he acted like he couldn't speak English and hustled out of there.  It happened so fast I lost him in the crowd.  Told my husband about it and we reported it to both guest relations and the security.  Security seemed more interested and took a description of the man.  The guy that did this at Olaf took a random pic of the kids in front of us.  Then he hustled out.  Either we just have bloggers here or weird men with an agenda.  I'm a conspiracy theorist anyway and didn't like it.  

We rode it today.  Had fast pass.  Had to sit in line with a fast pass because it was having issues.  Wasn't a bad wait at all.  The Disney people were bringing out free Dasani waters to those in line.  They really wanted people to be happy.  The que was neat.  You walk through wandering oakens and it's sort of like you are in arendelle.  The actual ride or route didn't seem to have changed from maelstrom at all.  It was fun and the new animatronics of the sisters were fabulous.  It was the projected 3D faces that they are doing now.  The best thing was the reindeer and the trolls. They looked great!  When you go backwards from Elsa, it seemed really lacking to me like they could have put something exciting there.  I liked it but I would think they could do more.  Especially during the backwards part why not add some snow or something?  Paint a mural maybe?  Should you really be looking at plain walls?  Olafs mouth wasn't moving at the beginning but I understand you have some issues to work through in the beginning.  We were excited to say we rode on day 1.  I enjoyed watching the hustle from the workers to get it back up.  You could see their pride in the ride actually.  Also neat to see the blogger world going insane to get those videos.  It is certainly worth a fast pass.  Certainly not worth 300 minutes in my opinion.

We rode it today.  Had fast pass.  Had to sit in line with a fast pass because it was having issues.  Wasn't a bad wait at all.  The Disney people were bringing out free Dasani waters to those in line.  They really wanted people to be happy.  The que was neat.  You walk through wandering oakens and it's sort of like you are in arendelle.  The actual ride or route didn't seem to have changed from maelstrom at all.  It was fun and the new animatronics of the sisters were fabulous.  It was the projected 3D faces that they are doing now.  The best thing was the reindeer and the trolls. They looked great!  When you go backwards from Elsa, it seemed really lacking to me like they could have put something exciting there.  I liked it but I would think they could do more.  Especially during the backwards part why not add some snow or something?  Paint a mural maybe?  Should you really be looking at plain walls?  Olafs mouth wasn't moving at the beginning but I understand you have some issues to work through in the beginning.  We were excited to say we rode on day 1.  I enjoyed watching the hustle from the workers to get it back up.  You could see their pride in the ride actually.  Also neat to see the blogger world going insane to get those videos.  It is certainly worth a fast pass.  Certainly not worth 300 minutes in my opinion.

Very proud teacher moment.  I have a high school student that is awesome with design.  I had him make me a vinyl sign since I can't afford one of the big wooden ones and they are so heavy.  It was so cute, I have convinced him to open an Etsy Shop and start creating things that are similar.  He is going to also design the wooden ones but put them on vinyl.  That makes them so much lighter weight.  He could literally make anything you could think of.  Just an FYI if you are interested in anything.  He is fabulous and going to use the money for college :)
https://www.etsy.com/listing/269809942/fort-wilderness-vinyl-sign?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=fort%20wilderness&ref=sr_gallery_3

For my family, the Fort isn't even a much about Disney as it is about "The Fort."  We are actually planning to start staying at Disney resorts as a vacation in themselves (the fort included).  We are thinking the best bang for our buck lately is to stay off property and go back to the old ways of killing a major day at Disney because a hotel then only becomes a place to sleep and shower...sooo, what is the point of paying a lot of money for it?  If there were a campground that held the charm that the fort had, we would be vacationing there as well. We have annual passes so on most days we literally go in and do our fast passes, look around and get out and hang out at the camper.
I agree that the loops need more life.  It would not be expensive to just add some charm.  Heck, they probably have things laying in a building somewhere that they could pull out and throw up at Fort Wilderness and we would melt like the softies we are just from the nostalgia.  
Every resort at Disney is what you make of it, in my opinion.  I cant imagine staying at the Grand Floridian or in the bungalows and spending my time at The Magic Kingdom.  Heck no, I would be laid back eating grapes or whatever those people do.  Everyone has their own budget, I think the Fort should be more of a destination than a place to sleep while you visit Disney.  If I want a place to just sleep, I want a hotel with a low rate and an awesome free buffet breakfast.  

Noticed this evening when I was checking to see what is available for MLK weekend, the disney site now shows how often the hotel/campground has been booked in the last 24 hours.  The Fort was one of the more popular choices, being booked 160 something in the last 24 hrs, and Art of Animation was the most popular with Pop right behind it.  Posted about it on a facebook page also.  This is interesting to me because I see a major pattern going on all of the time, not just on holidays--they are pushing the DVC type rooms and the others always seem to show little or no availability.   It was really interesting to see how many times some of the really expensive ones had been booked, some appeared not have been booked at all.  Wonder what their angle on this one is?  

My kids will really miss that kid table in the living room. TCD, I'll bet the cabin with the different layout with that long looking kitchen may have been the handicap accessible cabins?

They were really pleasant about it. Maybe you got put on the bad list because they heard you have good bus luck and they don't want things to get too magical.

Ghost of maelstrom. Disappear, disappear!

We do a lot of hooks with dollar tree totes hanging from them, metal mesh baskets screwed onto the wall above the sink to hold silverware and paper plates. Over the door hooks. We also use sticker chalkboard labels to label what's in each door/drawer.

There was one small area where it appeared they could get off with the old shed by it but definitely not Disney safe. Also so overgrown with vegetation that you would think you were in a jungle. You could still definitely see structures in tact on the island but there's no way I would go on it unless we had been heavily drinking around the world.

We were all around the island today. We rented a boat. Then we are taking the scenic route on the boat to magic kingdom, very little signs of use or life there. Snapped this pic there earlier...

We were all around the island today. We rented a boat. Then we are taking the scenic route on the boat to magic kingdom, very little signs of use or life there. Snapped this pic there earlier...

All I needed was my router. Everything else was in the kit. You just hook a splitter up to your cable and run one cable to the tv the other to the modem and then hook an Ethernet cable to your router from the modem.

While we are sitting here with out generator running and deciding when it is safe to leave the camper, here are some things that are going on

Turkey visitors

Pony visitors

Pine cone Mickey

Not sure if anyone has already posted this one. I haven't read details, but a friend sent me this link today. http://coolestdisneysummer.com/Mobile?CMP=SOC-FBPAGE20150529120000