ependydad...Doug

We will decide when we have about 1 hour more of driving and my wife will look around 60 miles from where we are.
My preference is to use Walmarts for overnights. My wife will call ahead and ask if overnight parking is allowed. The answer is either a clear cut "yes" or "no" or a more vague, "we don't allow it but no one hassles you" or "well no, but if you have to stop, then you have to stop". If it's no or vague, we keep looking. If it's a yes, we'll ask if there is a part of the parking lot that they prefer us to be in. Don't feel weird about the questions- you're not the first to ask; they're used to it.
As for slides and generators- it comes down to a situation by situation basis. Don't ever block a parking lot "road". Some Walmarts have nothing around and the sound of the generator won't be an issue; other Walmarts have houses nearby and a generator may be a nuisance. As for slides, I'm in the "use them" camp- I "need" to open 2-3 slides for my camper to be livable (I could do it with none and with kids on the dinette/couch and me climbing over the bed, but I greatly prefer having slides out).
Other do/do not- stabilizers and landing gear are up to you. I personally don't put them down. I don't want the extra work in the morning or in the rare/unexpected event that I get chased out overnight. I want to get in the truck and roll. For folks with heavy rigs and in the hot summer- know that the small footprint of the jacks can poke through hot asphalt.
Do not bust out the grill, chairs, awning. You're parking, not camping. :)
As I said, I prefer Walmart over others- with my want for slides, I'm very restricted in where in a truck stop I can park. I'd keep driving and get a hotel before taking up 2 truck spots. I also would have a hard time personally taking a truck spot in a very full truck stop- opting instead to leave it for a trucker who is mandated to be off the road. (Though, some Flying J/Pilot have whole separate areas for RV parking.) I find the RV spots at Cracker Barrel are to short for my 60' bumper to bumper length.

If it's any consolation, this video is from the future. Just avoid Michigan on November 16, 2016.

FORT WILDERNESS IS INEXPENSIVE.
Yeah, I said it.
Checkout this insanity out in California:

Summer rates, "Supersite", $300-479 ***a night***.

Please buy him a shirt. 

You can rent an unlimited dataplan from sellers on eBay for $120-200/month. There is no contract and you can do it month-to-month. I'd just suggest buying the hotspot yourself and getting a sim card from them. Then you can sign up for a month or two and you don't have to worry about usage on your data plan.

Could be a long term effort to improve things, but more likely what you observed was simply the annual reaction of Fort management to the invasion of Wild Womenz. After a week or two, once security become comfortable that the risk has subsided, the patrols will cease.

Just got back today from the Fort.  There are some changes since our last stay in January, and much for the better.  The stay was MUCH more peaceful than in the past.  We were in the 200 loop, and got our requested site.  In addition, check in was great and very friendly.  We had to wait for the text message, but we received it promptly at 1PM and headed to our site.  When we opened our info packet, we were pleased to see the channel lineup card that others have posted about.  A nice change.  Also, there was a separate page the clearly spelled out the RULES, especially golf cart rules.  We never had that before either.  During our stay, not only did we see the rangers more often, but more often than that, we saw Disney security driving their vehicles through the loops, several times a day.  We saw NO golf carts being driven quickly, heard none of them beeping their horns.  Saw no underage drivers of the carts.  Also, the 200 loop is not a pet friendly loop.  We had no dogs in the loop until the weekend when it completely filled, and then just two that I know of and they were well trained and the owners courteous.  
All in all a very positive change in the atmosphere at the Fort.  I don't know if we've ever had such a quiet stay, and that was over Mother's Day weekend.  So, there may be hope!
 
 

I thought that I'd also share this picture of our map pin board:

It lives above our big living room slide. It's fun to look at and see all of where we have been.

Blogging is hard and time consuming! I posted some more catch-up blog entries:
Back in November/Thanksgiving, we went to Los Angeles area:
http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/04/acton-ca-for-exploring-los-angeles.html
And then we headed in for some RV service/upgrades and played at Disneyland:
http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/disneyland-and-some-rv-service.html
We spent Christmas near San Diego:
http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/a-california-birthday-christmas.html
And then we drove across the country to Florida over the month of January:
http://nowornever.learntorv.com/2016/05/we-drove-from-california-to-florida.html

I think I'm turning into a walking advertisement for Mac The Fire Guy. His site videos are pretty helpful.

http://www.macthefireguy.com/

I am also going to be looking at buying a 5-pack of fire extinguishers, 1 of the automatic fire suppression ones for in the basement where my furnace and water heater are, and at least 3 smoke detectors (my bedroom, kids bedroom, basement, and maybe a 4th in the hallway coming up the steps).

I'll also be practicing exiting my bedroom with the emergency exit (which is different than what I showed in the videos AND should be more conducive to feet first exiting). And, the kids are going to learn to open their emergency exit and get out that way.
I know they can be trained/taught to exit via it. But one of my concerns is simply daughter having the strength to open it. The red tab is a pain in the but to pop-up in order to open the window.

I would like to apologize for the comment I made in the start of this post. I never click on any of the links, because sometimes it ends up being a virus and it takes me forever to get rid of it. As I went back and looked, I saw the link showed that someone possibly committed suicide at the contemporary.  I thought this was a post like the regular BS about monorails always breaking down. As much is I have a bug up my butt about Disney These days Jason is totally right and I apologize for posting this in this area.  My prayers go out to the family of this person if this is a true story. Once again I apologize 

Someone just posted on Facebook that " WIFI AT THE FORT! It's up and it's fast!"
Loop 900.

That's a good point. Over a VPN, remotely connect to a machine that is within the network that has the accesses required.

Wife just sent me this:
http://petapixel.com/2016/03/16/photos-abandoned-disney-world-reclaimed-nature/

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.

Confirmed!

Confirmed!

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.

(We'll ignore that I just left that last trip report hanging...)
When we drove away from our house on June 19, we had no idea that we thought we'd do this long term. Fast foward by 8 months and we've started the residency process in Florida and have established life on the road. The fun side of this is being able to live at some crazy places. How many people can legitimately say that "Disney World" and "Fort Wilderness" are their home? Well, for 2 weeks- this is true for us. Our home is parked at the Fort and therefore, we live at Disney World. Boom.
This visit is split into 2 separate parts- the first week, we're here vacationing. I took off of work and we enjoyed the parks. The second week, starting today- I'm back to work and tomorrow I take my wife in for surgery to remove vocal chord polyps. To make it very real, we had my monster-in-law come down to help out with my wife + kids during recovery. :D
So, on with the TR. After our last stay of a week, I decided that I didn't want to do the Fort again without a golf cart. So, first things first after getting parked- I went and fetched that from Tee Time Golf Carts:

We opted for a 6-person cart as we weren't sure where our big stroller would go and we knew we would have friends near us who were also doing the Princess 5K. Turns out, I'm really glad that we did as we have a wheel chair and stroller and had way too many people on the golf cart. But, here she is:

Here is our site (#862). Nicely private vegetation between sites and not a whole lot behind us. Not bad for not making any requests other than wanting to be near friends:

We did a little more setup and my wife tried unsuccessfully to cut my son's hair. He's a squirmy one and it was ending in tears (wife's not the boy's). I convinced them both to let the barbers cut it. We drove to the marina and hopped onto a boat. Our first view of the castle made me a little sad- the crane is back.

Oh well. Hard to complain about something so insignificant when at Disney World. Besides, shaggy boy needed a haircut!

Only Disney is allowed to spike his hair up (his words).

As soon as that was done, we headed back to the camper as we had errands to run.

Love the short boat ride and the golf cart is just so danged convenient.

We spotted our first turkeys:

Our lights looked pretty pretty:


Since we were camping with friends, I setup the patio for hanging out and visiting:

Our friends got in next to us and they were chomping at the bit to go into Magic Kingdom. Through the craziness of life, we didn't get over there until after 10pm. The park was only open until 11, but we played while we could. Here's the train station:

We got there right as the MSEP was happening. This is literally my only picture from it.

Our friends had a mess with their payment plan annual passes. She figured things out, but we ended up with time for just 1 ride. Everyone wanted to ride Space Mountain, but by my figuring- we could ride Buzz Lightyear first and then still get in line before they shut it down for SM. Longest story shortest, it worked- but it almost didn't because my daughter's back in a wheelchair (same foot issues as always) and they sent us down that queue.

Friend and her youngest:

No pictures from Space Mountain as we were hoofing it to make it. We also had a major meltdown because my son wasn't big enough to ride it. Turns out- the ride requirements for Disneyland's Space Mountain are different than Disney World's Space Mountain. That mistake cost me a light-up sword (which then turned into Mickey ears for Mom and a light-up magic wand for daughter).
On our way out, a grounds keeper/janitorial CM (what do they go by?) was doing a water drawing. The littlest one couldn't see well enough, so I put her up on my shoulder:

That wrapped up our whirlwind first day.
The next morning, we had plans for breakfast at the Cape May Cafe. Hating resort-to-resort transportation, we opted for a taxi. Since there are 9 of us, they told us that we had to go in 2 groups. We've since have been told to tell them that there are 7 of us and just double-stack a kid or two. Interesting cab fares- wife's van cost her $16; my van cost me $22; and a later return trip for our friend costed $13. Doesn't make any sense.
Anyway, here are her boys. The Duffey Bear is my son's- the oldest teen was holding it to be helpful. So, like the good guy I am- I made him pose with it:

I made sure to stick with just healthy vegetables (if pigs and cows eat their veggies, that means I'm eating veggies when I eat them- right?):

The kids liked meeting the characters:

T2 is 12 and won't admit how much he likes Donald Duck, but this was a huge deal for him. He was very pleased:

Goofy visited.

Mom is a fairly new single Mom with the 4 kids. On top of that, she's a primary owner/worker with her Dad's trucking company. A mess happened and she had to go back to her camper to find some papers. We took her kids to Epcot with us and had her catch up later. You all with big families- I don't know how you do it! We had 6 and it felt like almost orderly chaos the whole time.
Waiting on the boat:

I think was actually the first time I ever came into Epcot from that back entrance. We meandered a bit and came across Alice. She did a great job with the kids. I love when the characters can talk and interact.



We stopped in a store where I was doing my best to keep the kids laughing (they were bummed out by Mom not being with us):

My boy loves everything about Star Wars.

His request was to ride the big ball. The kids had been to Epcot but never rode it before.


We made our way to the Disney/Chase character meet and greet where we met Mickey and Goofy but I'll jump into that later as I'm at my picture count.
 
 

Welcome to the site! Good luck today- sounds like we are in for a doozy of a storm.

I don't like the tone that this thread is taking, on both sides. I'm locking this thread for a day or so to let people cool off, and if people can't be civil, I'm going to move it to the debate thread so you can yell at each other all you want to about it. There's an interesting discussion to be had here, but it's been lost in everyone trying to score rhetorical points by sniping at one another.
I especially do not like it when you make up a name for the group of people who disagree with you. That way leads to community fracturing, and I will not have it.
It is perfectly OK for people to think that the Fort is, overall, a pretty great campsite (because it is!), and it's also OK for people to think that Disney has not managed it well in the past, present, and future (because they haven't!). People who hold these views are not enemies and, I believe, should stop arguing with one another.
I swear I feel like Dad stopping the car sometimes...

Maybe I'm just easily confused, but this bathroom door...

Ack!  I'm not going to have this TR nearly done by next Tuesday.
 
For where to eat -the great thing about Disneyland is that they don't have the stinkin' Dining Plan, so there is so much more variety than at WDW.
 
Quick serve places we love:
 
The Plaza in Disneyland (it's in the same place as the plaza at WDW but it's a quick serve- the fried chicken is awesome).
 
Smokejumpers and Flo's V8 café in California Adventure.
 
There are several places that serve soup in a bread bowl.  The bread is baked in CA and is awesome.
 
Full serve- Carthay Circle in CA, and Blue Bayou in Disneyland (way cool because it's in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction).
 
Character Breakfast:
 
Storyteller Café in the Grand Californian hotel
 
Plaza restaurant on Main Street (characters for breakfast only).
 
Snacks-
 
Bengal BBQ in Adventureland.
 
Corn Dog stands in both parks.
 
Cozy Cone stands in Cars Land.
 
 
I hope less photos means you were having more fun.
 
I'm sorry you had to come home to that much of a shock weather-wise.
 
You really need to move here!
 
 
Me too.
 
They don't have those in Disneyland either.
 
So we win that small battle.
 
TCD

I just want to thank you *SO* much for this TR!! I am new to the site and spent two evenings reading every page of your awesome trip!! Your son is so adorable and your husband totally reminds me of mine!! Thank you for being so friendly and helpful with your posts.  And the community here is amazing!! I *had* to join in after reading thru (and figuring it out-I'm not very tech savvy)!!  Thanks again, I'm sure I'll be reading more as I impatiently await returning to the Fort for the holidays!!