eticketride

Unfortunately it's not just 300 or length of the sites that's the problem. It's the people that have no regard for anyone but themselves.

Amen, brother. Welcome to the new America. 

I'll second the recommendation for fried okra. Okra scares people away because apparently in the north they only serve it in some slimy stew or something and none of my northern friends will even try the fried okra. Throw in some blackened grouper and a bowl of boiled peanuts and I'm feeling pretty happy that I was born in the south. 

I searched but didn't see anything on this. According to their website, they will be re-retiring in May 2016 and heading back north. I just wanted to say I hope things go well for them and their retirement, but I am saddened that they are leaving. I had an excellent experience with their company this year and I hate to see quality businesses disappear. 

I only had a couple pictures from our trip on my phone; DD16 and DD18 have all the other pictures on their cameras so these might be all I can get for awhile. But you can see how sunny the back half of 219 is. These were taken around 9:45 am.  

Here's a pic of River Country in case anybody was interested in how it's looking these days. I shot the picture through the fence, so no Disney laws were broken in obtaining this photo!

I didn't think I'd be doing a trip report, or posting pictures, so next time we go I will be sure to take more pictures throughout the trip. Again, thanks for all the words of wisdom and for the warm welcome. 

I will see what kind of pictures I have and then figure out how to get them uploaded. I think we have a couple showing our setup and the campsite. And we didn't see any deer by our site, that would've been really cool. In fact, we really didn't see very much wildlife and I was looking.  We did run across about 6 or 7 deer on the midnight bike ride, and we saw a couple of raccoons, but that was about it. Oh, and a bullfrog was about 10 feet away from us when we went up to the north end of the beach to watch the fireworks. That freaked the kids out pretty good!

If anybody is there tonight or tomorrow, I hope you're enjoying the weather - this was the April weather we were hoping for!

So again, thanks to all who answered some of my pre-trip questions, I really appreciate it. 

We had a preferred site reserved, and I sent in the fax 4 days before we checked in, asking for a site with some privacy on the outside middle part of the 200 loop. I mentioned that 219 was my first choice based on recommendations from here and from checking out the google earth links, and I was happy to find out that they gave us 219. What we liked about that site was that there was nobody behind us and it was very woodsy toward the back. The only negative about that particular site was that there was no shade in the morning/afternoon over our campsite and there wasn't a great option for setting up a tarp for shade. And as warned, we did end up with dogs to the left of us and to the right, but they were in really fancy RVs that were sealed up really well. You couldn't hardly hear the yapping, but the little dogs jumping all around the dash board were fun to watch. 

We rented a popup camper from Fort Camper Rentals and I have nothing but great things to say about that experience. Everything was set up when we got there, they came out to check on us once, and they were so easy and accommodating to work with. We will definitely use their services again and I highly recommend them to anybody considering renting a pop up. Our two teenagers slept in a tent, it would have been possible, but pretty tight to put us all in the pop up camper. And we discovered that the AC on a popup cannot keep the camper cool when it's over 90 degrees and the sun is pounding directly on the camper. 

We did not rent a golf cart, but brought bikes for everybody. The sidewalks were easy enough for my 5 year old daughter to get around with her training wheels and we were really happy that we brought the bikes. They were kind of an afterthought and we almost left them at home, but it turned out that our favorite part of the trip was riding bikes together. My oldest daughter and I went on a midnight bike ride one evening and my 6 year old son and I rode the trail to the Wilderness Lodge at sunrise the next morning. I highly recommend bringing bikes if you are questioning whether it would be worth the effort. 

We really enjoyed swimming at the pool from 9 to 10 on a Sunday night; we had the place almost to ourselves. The kids enjoyed the water parade and fireworks the first night. 

We used the boat o get to MK on a morning when they opened at 8. We rode directly to the MK and got there just as the train was pulling up with Mickey & Pals. Coming home that afternoon we had to wait almost 15 minutes for the boat back, but that wasn't a big deal. We drove ourselves to Hollywood Studios on a Sunday and avoided using a Disney bus the entire trip. 

It was summertime hot the weekend we went, the highs were in the low 90s and the humidity was kicking. I was hoping for more late-spring like temperatures, but this April was brutal. Along with the early heat came the yellow deer flies, and they were really thick and got almost all of us. That was the only real negative part of the trip. Oh, and the horse poop that stayed in front of our site for two days from a carriage ride. We never complained or asked for it to be cleaned up, so I'm not really complaining about it now. I'm sure if I had called maintenance, they would've sent somebody out. 

So all in all, we had a great time, one of our best family vacations ever and we will definitely be back, but we'll keep to the only 4 safe months for cool weather next time (Nov-Feb). It was really just too hot to enjoy sitting around outside. 

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Agree with TCD.  We have stayed in both 100 and 200 loops.  We really liked 219 since it was pretty close to the walking path down to the marina.  It wasn't as loud as the 100 loop either.  You can almost hear "All to shore that's going ashore" from the 100's...

Thanks to all again. I sent in the fax and asked for something on the outside of 200, and mentioned 219 as my first choice. I actually got 219 and it was a great site. It was awesome having nobody behind us and the kids loved it.  Again, I wanted to thank everybody for their input,we had an awesome first trip (the kids were actually crying when we had to leave so you know we did something right) and I appreciate all the wisdom that you all put out on this forum. 

Thanks to all who responded directly, and I appreciate the backstory about the cupcakes. This thread turned out to be way more entertaining for me than I could've ever imagined. Thanks again. 

I will be camping in a tent and I like to put a tarp over the tent when bad weather moves in. Does Disney allow you to make a ridgeline by tying off to the trees? I've noticed from all the pictures that most people put a popup canopy over their tents and I haven't seen anything tied to a tree, so I'm guessing the answer is no. But I just wanted to make sure so I could plan accordingly. Thanks. 

Thank you all for your help. I will just let them know what we're looking for and cross my fingers. Sometimes I have a tendency to overthink my vacation plans and try to control everything. We wanted to stay at the preferred loops because the kids thought it was so cool that we can walk to the MK boat from our campsite, so I put that above everything else for this trip. Thanks again for your thoughts. 

Hi all, I have read through as much as I can on this site to gather as much info as I can, but I was hoping somebody could help with a specific request. I know that it's wishful thinking to expect a specific site even if you fax it in, but maybe if I ask to not be assigned a particular site they will honor that request? We are first time visitors and will be renting a popup and putting a tent out, and we are in a preferred loop. I don't think we will be able to drive around and switch sites because we're renting a popup from Fort Camper Rental and I believe they will already be there and set up ahead of time. Here's what is important to us, and given these things, are there any specific sites that you would say stay away from? 

(1) Some foliage between us and our neighbors would be nice. We usually go to Juniper Springs in Ocala, and I know not to expect that kind of privacy, but I also don't want to be able to watch the neighbors' TV from my spot. 

(2) We love dogs, but we're leaving ours at home and don't want to hear barking dogs all night/early morning. If we go to the 300 loop (I know the outside sites starting around 336-342 come recommended), are we pretty much guaranteeing ourselves a canine chorus? We were in the pet loop at Ft. Desoto Campgrounds once and had a really unpleasant experience with barking dogs. 

(3) We don't want to hear the buses all night if possible, or have headlights rake over our sight all night long.

(4) We'd like some room for a fairly large tent. It looks like some of the sites don't really have a whole lot of sand area. 

With that in mind, does anyone have any insight or tips/tricks they can offer for specific sites to request versus specific sites to avoid. I've already made note of sites 101, 110, 236, 237, 329, 356, 357 and 359 as non-desirable based on some of the posts I've read here. 

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and for any help.