ependydad...Doug

What is the benefit to Disney to prevent rental companies from checking guests in? OR- what could possibly have been the supposed reason for doing so?

Wife just sent me this:

http://petapixel.com/2016/03/16/photos-abandoned-disney-world-reclaimed-nature/

I first wasted some time on a Smurfs build your colony game. Then I wasted a TON of time on a Simpsons build your Springfield game. I'm not sure I had another build your Disney game in me...

Thanks all. I'll let this idea go. :)

Say I'm thinking 2-4 weeks of Fort stays per year. Does it make sense/work at all to buy DVC points and use that instead? Or would it be super crazy expensive to buy in and I'd still pay the same yearly in "dues"?

(I've legit done ZERO research and am just posting here because y'all are awesum.)

Pretty good. Ran out of time to do milk jug base. Try to upload pic but says too big? 

You can't upload attachments here. You have to upload them to Flickr or some other photo provider and then link to them.

We actually wanted to, but ended up doing some of the Perry stuff.

We happened to notice a couple. I think we would have enjoyed it.

Personally I would just rather see any company not play these types of games and just post the real rate. To me resort fees are a lot like the fuel surcharges you see with airlines or UPS. I feel they are kind of offensive like the companies think we are stupid enough not to realize the stay costs more no matter what the stated room rate is. 

This. Just charge extra and don't list it especially if it's mandatory.

We just ate there again last week. As expected - it was awesome. The shrimp cocktail left a bit to be desired, but the service and remainder of the meal were very good.

I drove the partial hookup loop the other day and there were definitely hybrids on it.

Confirmed!

Not a whole lot happened between my last update and now except wife and I got out for a date night last night while Grandma and Grandpa watched the kids.

First, we started with dinner at Narcoossee's. We got a window table and were able to watch Wishes. Even better, no one stood in front of us on the balcony.

From there, we headed to Beaches and Cream for dessert. Afterwards, we did a little shopping at the Contemporary. And then ended at the Polynesian beach to watch the special DVC fireworks.

It was a wonderful night with the love of my life. :)

My phone stayed put away all night, so the only photograph that I have is this one of the fireworks:

17 minutes ago, Travisma said:

Gosh, you're going in the wrong direction for that time of year!

You're supposed to be heading to the cool mountains in July, not the sweltering deep south.

You come to FL November thru March.

Man, that crud you had must've scrambled your brains.

Sadly, you're 1,000% right. BUT- there's a family reunion that is being hosted in FL at the end of July. You do what you gotta do!

The funny part is that I plan on wintering down here somewhere again- I'm thinking of Ft. Meyers or further south. Depending on what my wife thinks. We probably ought to start getting on that.

3 minutes ago, dblr....Rennie said:

Great hope you can make it. Where in Pa do you plan to stay? May & early June we will be around and of course in September for the big Hershey show, trying to convince FROG the need a booth or at least at one of the manufactures to promote themselves.

So far, I think I'm going to bounce around the Thousand Trails system - Gettysburg Farm (4/19-5/3), Circle M (5/3-5/17), Gettysburg Farm (5/17-5/31), Sea Pines (5/31-6/21), and then down into Maryland at Ramblin' Pines (6/21-7/5). I'm not sure where we'll head from there. I do know that for the last weekend the end of July, I need to be in Melbourne, FL.

Getting free socks, and underware from someone not cleaning out their dryer load well enough.

This is a Fort thing. We don't harvest laundry like this in other campgrounds.

15 hours ago, bhall said:

Great pics so far!

What campground is the Full Time Families Rally in September going to be at?

I'm not sure. That part hasn't been announced yet.

13 hours ago, Littleolwoman.aka.Kristie said:

Indiana in August?  If you time it right you might catch the State Fair, totally worth visiting. Where is your friends farm?

That's cool. I'll take a look at when and where it is. It's in Covington.

11 hours ago, Ivy said:

Beautiful photo!  

Hope your wife is doing good from her surgery. 

 

Thanks. She's getting better. Being able to talk takes away a ton of frustration for her. Still in pain, which stinks.

5 hours ago, dblr....Rennie said:

Indiana in August, does that mean you MIGHT make the FROG Rally, sign up should be late this month, hint hint.

Ha! Yeah, we are talking about that now. I need to bounce around a bit- being in PA/MD for May & June and then in FL for the end of July and then maybe back to PA for September (OR- we'll get totally nuts and head to New Mexico for October which is what our original plan was). So, depending on the "choose your adventure path" that we take- I think I'll be able to swing through Indiana for the rally, visiting with my friend, and catching up with an Aunt of mine.

1 hour ago, fladogfan aka Gretchen said:

Good you guys are getting over the crud, hope you are enjoying your 3erd week!

Getting better. Still feel cruddy, but it's less bad crud.

We'll likely end up in Orlando in July, but I think the 9th is too early. Y'all have fun, though!

2 minutes ago, mouseketab.....Carol said:

Is the antique hair dryer still on the wall?

The hand-dryer mounted about 7' off of the ground? Yep, that was there. My son was very confused but then used it to start launching a balled up paper towel for a while..

We made it over to the Grand Floridian ahead of schedule. Thinking that I'd give the Moms a break, I offered to take the gaggle of kids for a quick loop on the monorail. I'm still not sure what I was thinking as it was like herding cats. We all made it, and that's what is important.

They're really a great group of kids:

And the laughter literally never stopped:

We made it back and headed in. I tried taking a nice picture of our friend and I, but like I said- the laughter never stopped...

Try #2 worked out, though:

We came to learn that instead of the evil step sisters, one of the mice was there. I was a little sad, I find the step sisters hilarious. AND, I had planned on proposing marriage using a piece of bread. Oh well, the kids still had fun.

Prince Charming came by right after I was throwing gummy bears to see who could catch them in their mouth. He stammered quite a bit when I offered to throw one his way... it was pretty funny, I think I caught him off guard.

No matter, we got our picture taken together:

Apparently Cinderella had a small mishap with her wig a couple of tables before us. She was a little disheveled when she made it to us. But, we still enjoyed meeting her:

And, because she's my absolute favorite- I got this for a new photo background and to print out and tape on my bedroom wall. <3 her.

The Evil Step Mother was hilarious, as expected. I don't know how she can keep a scowl so well. The kids wanted me to propose to her, but I was honestly a little scared of the reaction!

We left there and went to Disney Springs for a couple of little things for the kids. Really, my job was to wander around and follow my son.

Sunday came and it was time for goodbyes. Goodbyes for Fulltime Families are special- as we know we'll try to catch up out on the road somewhere. We're hoping to get together for Easter and then again maybe in August. We'll see. If nothing else, we'll see them at the next Fulltime Families rally in Gettysburg in September!

But, we did something that we so rarely do- we kicked back and relaxed!

And then we went for a ride.

Where we saw this really awesome king pin cover/head protector:

We went looking for and found a tiny bit of the old railroad tracks:

Sunday evening, we went out to the airport to pick Grandma up. Grandma came down to take care of her little girl post surgery- well, take care of the grandkids while Mandie couldn't talk for the week.

Before surgery/on Monday, they left me at home (working, woo.) and went to Magic Kingdom for the day. This was our one and only FastPass for Mine Train. AND- we only got that because the CM who sold us our 3 renewals and 2 new annual passes gave us a free FastPass for it.

Tuesday was my wife's surgery day. And then it was a pretty quiet week around camp.

On Friday, they all headed to Disney Springs for a day of shopping. Thankfully I wasn't there as my mother-in-law is one of those "walk every inch, pickup every item, talk about it all, but buy very little" shoppers. The World of Disney with her could be reserved as a special kind of torture. The texts from my wife got more and more hilarious as the day went on. I did show up for dinner, though.

et me tell you- buying that Laundry's Card was worth it. I called for reservations and they offered 3:45 and 9:15. Instead, we bought our Laundry's Card online (for $25) a day ahead of time. That gave us time to get the email with the $25 off a check AND were able to use it at our first visit. We literally skipped the entire line of waiting and waiting for a table, at all with it.

As usual, the food was passable, expensive for what it was, and service was decent. Nothing really to write home about- except the kids love it there. Boo on them for not offering the dino hats any longer.

Afterwards, my son wanted to play in the digging pit (the downside to cutting the line was no waiting time). I let him do it with clear instructions that I wasn't stepping foot in there. I've made that mistake before! After about 10 minutes, we made our way to the Lego store where everyone else was.

I also got to see the bag that made my daughter lose all sense of common sense and reason. The text that I received was:

I love you and this 300 dollar bag I saw and I was wondering if you could look for it on the internet for cheaper?"

So, kudos to her for knowing that was frightfully expensive and hoping for an online deal. But, lol- they don't see Nightmare Before Christmas Dooney & Bourke bags for cheaper online. It's a nice bag, I guess. I just had a hard time impressing on her was $300 meant in real value.

Saturday, we made it back out to Magic Kingdom. We had a slow meandering day. It started with me forgetting my eyeglasses back at the house. My eyes aren't terrible, but they're not great either. I sent the family on ahead of me and I rode back to the camper (love that golf cart!).

The ride over to MK was pretty pretty:

Then there was a flurry of patrol boats at the monorail bridge over the water.

Turns out, they were taking one of the big ferries to dry dock.

We did a bunch of things, but I have very few pictures. The place was PACKED. Ride times were all super long- even Goofy's Barnstormer had wait times of 40-50 minutes.

It looks like we took advantage of the wheelchair and It's a Small World. My wife said they ran out of return time cards or something and were just letting people head down to the handicap queue.

The kids wanted to pick up their game of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom. So we made our way up to that. Outside of there, they had hula hoops out. We played with those for a while:

And then we gamed for a bit:

We rode a ride and I found this "Where in the World?" light fixture. I feel like it's acceptably deceiving.

We used up our 3 FastPasses and got the 4th. We started jugglign that and rode Peter Pan. The ride stopped twice while we were on it. It wasn't a gentle stop but rather quite abrupt and uncomfortable. But, I did get a good shot of Peter at the boat.

Then we grabbed dinner at Pinnochio's Village Haus. What a nightmare that was. The ordering queue was literally jam packed with people. There were so many people, it was almost unnerving.

It was about 7:30 when we went in there. I don't know how long it took to order, get our food, and eat- but it felt like just shy of forever. I do know that my ear started bothering me and feel like it was going to be painful. Apparently Dad's discomfort isn't a reason to go home, so we pressed on.

Quick selfie by the castle at night:

We grabbed some snacks and goodies at Friar's Knook, I think (wherever has the Nutella Waffle). And made our way back into Adventureland to watch the Main Street Electric Light Parade. It was BARREN back there. We were able to sit and watch the parade with no obstructions in either direction. Pretty crazy.

And then sickness descended on the house. There was vomit, diarrhea, crazy sleep walking/talking, a nasty cough, and fevers. You name it, we had it. And it was ugly. My daughter literally slept 24 hours from Saturday evening until Sunday evening and then was up all night Sunday into Monday (thank God for unlimited data, Youtube, and Pinterest). Monday, I slept until 1:30pm.

While looping Monday afternoon, my wife lobbied for another week here at the Fort. She wasn't happy for how much time we lost to her recovery and the plague. So, we have started in on week #3 here. (And let me tell you- it's wreaking HAVOC on my nightly site budget. Fortunately, starting next week until the end of June or so will be Thousand Trails nights and I will either have no cost or very inexpensive cost.)

The good news is, Grandpa flew in last night! Sad that they're only here until Saturday now.

So that's that... I'm all caught up!

11 hours ago, pezheadval said:

Oh yes.  We do always say Hi to River Country...and usually use the River Country bathroom.  One of the strange little things that I like to do.  lol 

That River Country bathroom was a unique experience. I did like that they still had the "showers" sign up, but that all appears to be walled off.

17 hours ago, FlyingReese said:

Any other up dates we leave in 3 days just wondering if I should pack the router.

No wifi in the 800 loop as of today. There's a very distant "Disney Guest Public Wifi" network that my WifiRanger sees (but my devices don't), but I haven't tried to use it.

Pack your router.

I guess talks at all and the background info.  At least that's what the radio guy was mentioning.

Yeah, in Magic Kingdom in the theatre. You can ask the CM outside if Mickey is talking today or not.

It's actually pretty cool. And the kids love it.

1 hour ago, Travisma said:

May be along the same lines as StoryMaker.  Someone from a Tampa radio station took his family to MK last week.  They did a meet and greet with Mickey, and Mickey talked to his son and asked him a couple of questions about his day and the things they done.  Now he did say the hostess asked them some questions while in line that Mickey "knew" about. Is a talking Mickey new, or have we just not seen the right one?

Are you asking if Mickey talks at all? Or talks with some background info?

We've seen the talking Mickey a few times. But generally the discussion is spontaneous based on the interaction- not with any prior probing for background info.

Going to check out River Country for the first time. We all "ohh'd and ahh'd" at what we could see through the fence.

A shower is just spitting water out:

The pool:

My mother-in-law risking her phone to the wrong side of the fence:

And finally, the BBQ Pavilion:

And then we were chased out by the fuzz.

2 minutes ago, CCIntrigue...aka Gwen said:

I usually don't do well in simulators either, but Star Tours doesn't bother me much.  Now Mission Space is a different story.  You won't catch me on that one again!

I won't even try it. Literally the last simulator I got on was some "Body" one at Epcot back in 2001 on our honeymoon. My wife were still young and dumb and not very confident of ourselves. We didn't know what we were getting into and didn't have the nerve to nope it out of there. Instead, we stayed and suffered and hated every moment of it.