southernview -- Ray

However, depending on the time of day you arrive, if it looks like I-4 is a parking lot instead of an interstate, there is a point you can drop off on to 417 and get there much quicker. The tolls are about $7.00 to Disney if you do that (a bit more if you are pulling a trailer).

I-4 in Florida also has the distinction of being #3 of the 100 most dangerous roads in America and is topped by Florida's I-95 which comes in at #1.

Looking for feedback on DISH.  Currently we have Comcast in our home, but would consider switching to DISH if the mobile service is any good.  Then again, I don't know that I want (one more thing) to have to set up at a campground....but DH gets a little grumpy, when he missing too much football   :rant:

We have been Dish customers for over 25 years and haven't had any major issues.  As for their mobile service, I use a 211k receiver with the Tailgater dish and find it quite reliable and a snap to set up.  I especially like the 211k because it has dual tuners, one for satellite and another for OTA television, which allows you to use the receiver for both services when out of your home area all in HD.

The mobile service can be had without a contract and no charge to start or stop the monthly service.  All of the packages are on a month to month basis.  As far as sports are concerned, Direct does have an advantage over Dish primarily in the area of pro sports, but I am a college sports fan myself.

If you decide to go for Dish, keep in mind that Camping World presently has the Dish 211z receiver on sale for around $74.00, but the z model does not have the built in OTA tuner.  Either the k or the z can also be fitted with an outboard hard drive which allows the receiver to be used as a DVR.  There is a $40.00 one time charge for that service.

The small amount of time, distance, and money saved by using 535 is not enough to offset the driving experience on 429.

I love 429 as much as any Florida toll road.  Does Florida build any other kind of road?

We have been using 535 for years, long before the construction made the roads better and wouldn't go any other way.  Besides, I'm too cheap to pay a toll anyway.

Can I still use my lifetime refillable mug?

Yes, for water only.

If you want cheap we have stayed at Lake Louisa State Park on several occassions at found it to be acceptable.  The inconvience of having to empty your grey water tank if you stay for a while was the only drawback.  Of course, one could use the bath house and probably avoid that if desired. 

We have stayed at Citrus Valley RV Resort in Clermont and found it to be really nice.  They advertise a weekly rate of $230.00 from April 1st thru December 31st.  Alas, you still have to deal with good ole Hwy. #192.

Sure, he is!

 

 

Exactly…..and he has a knack for writing as so many of us "think"…which keeps us reading along!  I think he has been told more than once to publish a collection of his reports.

Reading through one of his trip reports tells me that he is a better writer than some that do it professionally.

This was my camper until a tornado came by my Mt. Olive residence this past April and destroyed it.  It was an Open Range 281 FLR.

This is my present camper, an Open Range LT 274 RLS.  We decided to down size just slightly from the Roamer series to the Light series as we really liked the floor plan and we wanted to reduce the UVW a little anyway.  This has turned out to be a great decision on our part because we have fallen in love with the new floorplan.  We would have preferred to have had a bedroom slide like our prvious unit, but it was not offered in a unit to our liking.

The below picture is from a Open Range brochere and shows the portable table set up for two people for a meal.  This table can be moved over to the couch in order to accomodate two more people, if desired, or it can be folded and it has a storage place between the two recliners if you want it out of the way.  The chairs also fold and can be stored.  We normally use it between the recliners and use trays for our meals.

Another view from Open Range showing the living room and kitchen.

The bedroom has the signature Open Range 60X80 full queen bed.

This shows our TV as we are ready to leave Stone Mountain Campground in Georgia.  We stayed a couple of nights here on our way back from purchasing the camper.  If anyone stays here, be sure and check the sites out before staying as some of the sites are awful as was this one.  We did not have a choice as there were only two sites open when we called and the other one was worse.

To answer the question about what is in NY worth going to, well it was Niagara Falls, we hadn't taken the kids there for awhile and we have been doing lots of mini weekend trips because we are taking the oldest off cross country to college this week. 

I am hoping we can make it to the Fort in February but we've had so many extra expenses lately and I just don't know if it will happen. I will most likely just get a decal, that way it won't fall off or get stolen. Thanks for not saying something like "it's just a stupid magnet" because I know it is, I just hate theft except for theft of terms like "jerkalope" which I stole from another friend.

 

Edit: Woohoo!!! This is my 100th post! 

Sometimes it's not the actual value of an object, it's more like the collateral value.  I had someone take my wireless outdoor temperature sensor while camping at FW a couple of years ago.  It was hanging on a tree right on my campsite so they would have to have came on my site to get it.  It may be that certain people these days don't consider it stealing if they are taking something of little apparent value.  I think people such as this are closely related to the people that will cut you off in traffic, won't allow you to merge properly, and are otherwise discourteous in their daily living.  It's the "ME" generation, you and I don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

TCD wrote:

 

If you can fight through the swamp across from the 1400 loop, there are still rails in place back there.  Here's a couple of photos I took back in 2011:

If you want to go, I would recommend going some time in the winter when some of the plant life has died down.

 

Great advice and I would add to that to be careful to keep a lookout for snakes.  Not far from there, I witnessed a Cotton Mouth a few years ago.  We sometimes forget that the Fort is surrounded by much wilderness.

By the way, great pictures TCD.

I don't like how the center console takes away leg room in them.

I'm really not sure what you are referring to about taking away leg room, I find ample leg room and I'm 6' tall. I own a 2012 Longhorn, and I don't experience any more lack of leg room than in any other truck.  My Son has a Silverado and the leg room is no different than mine. 

My neighbor in PCB goes to Long Key State Park, at Long Key, every year.  If you decide to go to the Keys, this would be one of the best, but if you go, better make reservations as soon as possible as he says they are hard to come by.

The only other true waterfront sites that I have seen is at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area, Flagler Beach.

Some other campground that I know of, and have personally seen, in my area of Florida (Panhandle) that comes close to an ocean view is Emerald Beach RV Park, Navarre, FL.  I have never stayed there, but it is a Good Sam listed park.  There may be others, one that I can think of is Camp Gulf RV & Campground in Destin.  Their Gulf front sites are water and electric only and they have holding tank pump out available at an extra cost.  The sites directly behind the Gulf front sites are full hook-up.  From what I know from a few people that have stayed there, it gets good reports.  Be prepared though, all of the waterfront campgrounds that I have researched are not cheap.

From a personal viewpoint, if you want to experience a good beach vacation, I would head for Topsail or St. George Island State Park.  For the sheer beauty of the place if nothing else.  As has been noted, Topsail State Park is the nicest, but the sites are not waterfront.  They have a tram that takes you to the beach, other than that, it cannot be beat. in that area of the Panhandle.

I'm really glad you did make it to the Fort if it was in the manner that you were forced to choose.  I really feel for you on the bad luck that you had with your truck.  My son is a diesel mechanic and I know first hand about the sorry work that you can get at many shops and my son tells me that the 6.0 is one of the main engines that a marginal mechanic can screw up in a minute.  Most dealers, at least in the areas that I am familiar with, don't have very well trained diesel mechanics, some in this area don't have one that is dedicated to their shop and must share a mechanic that will work at one shop for a week and then another for a week.  I have watched my son repair diesels that have been taken to numerous dealers and other shops only to end up coming to him for repair, and by that time he must repair what they have done and then fix the original problem.

I really hope the shop you left it with has a good, certified diesel mechanic, I know how much trouble one can have if not.

this could be the biggest problem, it seems when Disney moves people around the want to put their stamp on things and change things just to change them. This could be a good thing or this could be a very very bad thing when it comes from someone who has no camping experience, my biggest fear is that he will be more worried about "classing up" the place and catering to the cabin business.

 

That, sometimes may sound like a cliche, however, I come out of front line management with a large organization and over a 40 year career I have seen this happen time after time.  Every time a new, upper level manager comes in, he/she would change something, and when they would leave the new replacement would do the same.  Many times a new manager would change things back to the way they originally were.  Rarely did I see a change that actually helped anything, most of the time the best you could hope for was that the change would be neutral, no better, no worse.

Can someone tell me what a Rooms Manager does?  Sounds like he supervised the cleaning crew to me.

I said no snickering.

Nice hat.

 

 

I have to confess -- I snickered at that picture.

It was 76 here in PCB today and I would rather be at the Fort.  Just to make things worse for everyone, I submit the picture below to help ease our pain, or make it worse.

 

Several things have happened.  Locally, the allure of working for Disney has diminished.  As the area has grown, so have the opportunities for jobs at other places.  In addition, as labor contracts have evolved, it has become more difficult to "focus on" an individual employee without having to apply an equal level of enforcement on good employees who may slip up on a rare occasion.  Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but it does make it more difficult to work on improving or removing an under-performing employee.  Also, the Traditions training they give new cast members now is MUCH shorter than in years past.  Finally, the legacy of Walt Disney himself has faded a bit, although I can see some evidence of it returning to some degree.  But as long as the shareholders keep demanding higher and higher profits every quarter, Walt's ideals become more difficult to maintain.  These ideals are summarized in this familiar quote, "I think by this time my staff, my young group of executives, and everyone else are convinced that Walt is right. The quality will out. And so I think they're going to stay with that policy because it's proved that it's a good business policy. Give the people everything you can give them. Keep the place as clean as you can keep it. Keep it friendly, you know. Make it a real fun place to be. I think they're convinced and I think they'll hang on ... if ... as you say ... well, after Disney."

 

With all that said, I know of many cast members who place Walt's ideals at their highest priority, and look upon their jobs as much more than employment.  The company still cares for their cast members as was evident in the Cast Service Celebration a few weeks ago.  And many cast members at Fort Wilderness epitomize the Disney of the past, people like Josephine, the hostess at Trails End, and Ken a server at Trails End. 

 

 

Good information, I think you have made some good points.

As a further note; I am in no way saying that a majority of the CM's are duds, I have had too many good experiences to say that.  What I am saying is that, the quality of the CM's has regressed, at least in my opinion.  For years the DW and myself used to talk all of the time about how every CM that we dealt with was so good.  I once asked the leader of a tour we were on, just how Disney managed to get such good people, telling him that I was in management with a large service organization and I knew how hard this was to accomplish.

I don't know why the quality of the people seems to have gone down, perhaps it was inevitable with such a large corporation and with, what I think, may be an indictment of the character of more and more people in our society as much as anything else.  I have had more bad incidents with CM's in the last 3 to 4 years than in all of my previous times at Disney.  This may very well be only one person's experience, but it is mine.

I will agree for the most part about the locals on the weekends. I consider myself a local since we live in Tampa but me and my family were raised with respect which the majority of the world ignores nowadays. We have noticed there are more fort rangers on duty but what is a older heavy set woman going to do chasing some unrulely kids....nothing. We miss the days before our kids were in school because we would try to check in on Sunday morning then check out the following Saturday. We have been here since Tuesday and I have to laugh at a the "Duck commander" wannabes. I like camo as much as the next guy but people driving these carts with no mufflers, doing donuts on the beach during the EWP and just being plain rude. I am definately writing a letter this time to Disney about this past week. Many of you know I am more negative than positive but my bark is worse than my bite...lol. All these shenanigans need to be monitored more. You can't change people's attitude but they could enforce rules at least. With the kids in school now, we need to follow school and holiday schedules which means if we are fort bound, it will be during these hectic times

I would be surprised if you even got a response, but they may be in a good mood and send you a letter back apologizing.  Even so, I am convinced that Disney doesn't really give a hoot if you come back or not.  If you don't ever come back there will be about 10 others to replace you and they know that. 

Back sometime ago, I used to receive a questionnaire asking how my trip went and if I had any "magical moments" to report, but they always asked in a way that you couldn't find a spot to make any comments or suggestions about anything that you were not specifically asked.  I haven't even received one of those in recent years, all they send out now is the surveys, that you are approached in the parks to answer when you get back home.  They even go so far as to tell you in those surveys that they are not interested in comments or suggestions.  Those surveys are for their use in determining demographics and nothing else.

The DW and I really love Disney and the fort, it's a one of a kind experience that you can't get anywhere else, but I don't suffer with any delusions that they worry one iota about losing us as a customer.  The place is too big and too unique, and they have a customer base to draw from that is never ending.  They used to have some of the best employees (CM's) of any organization I knew of, but in recent years that has begun to also slip.

Hate to sound so negative, but I have to call them like I see them, however having said all of the above we just renewed our AP's, so go figure.

I assume Jen is referring to the FWRR....not the MK RR.  

Probably so--the reason I was asking was that, when I was there earlier in the month, they had the MK train shut down for some refurbishing.  I saw them running some test runs on it toward the last of my stay, but I never could determine what all they were doing to it.  I did notice some new insulated joints in the rails, at a couple of points that I could see, which would indicate that they might have been updating the signal system or something of the like.  Does anyone know exactly what they were doing.

If you haven't guessed, I'm a railfan.

As long as they bring Mr.Toad back and the train, I don't care, lol.

What happened to the train?

Anyone know what they did to the RR at MK during it's recent closing?

I usually don't mess with on-line check in.  However, on my last visit, since I had one of my daughters flying in and using Magical Express, I decided to do the online check in, just to make sure there were no problems.

 

After going through the entire process, and answering all the stupid questions, I got an error message on the last screen telling me to try again later.  When I tried again later, I got the message that I had already completed online check in.  Sure enough when I got to the Fort, they didn't have me as having completed online check in.

 

Disney's computers system has been horrible since the beginning.  I am afraid that will never change.

 

TCD

 

 

We did everything online and everything seemed to go fairly well--so we thought.  Yesterday we ate at the Mexican pavillion and charged the bill on our Disney card, when the waitress brought the bill back to be signed, the machine would not take our pin code, kept saying that the pin code had never been activated.  This almost was a really embarrassing situation as we did not have enough cash for the bill, or a credit card on hand at the time.  The waitress had to get special permission for us to charge the meal on the card otherwise we would have been washing dishes or something.  Later, at Customer Relations, the lady there told us that the computer system apparently didn't take the pin code we gave it and the check-in people at the fort should have asked us to verify it at that time, but did not.  My DW says that she knows she put it in because the first one she put in would not take because it had duplicate numbers in it and she had to put another one in.

I've pretty well decided on the 231 route. Is the bypass around Dothan the Ross Clark Circle? We will be driving that way in November to go to Apalachicola, so i can check it out then. Do you camp on the way down or do it in one shot?

Yes, it's Ross Clark Circle and it can be a pain to get through.  Dave was going to give you a route to bypass Dothan, and there is actually two of them, one that puts you back on 231 right before you cross the Florida line.  I'll let him describe it for you so you can try it on the way to Apalachicola.