The Troll

30 minutes ago, djsamuel said:

Pioneer Hall is staying.

Phew!

Man, I'm late to this party. Sorry to be so far behind...but is there evidence the Pioneer Hall is going away???

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On 10/25/2018 at 10:42 AM, BuckeyeFortFan said:

Pioneer Hall is probably the oldest building on property.  The back side is a jumbled mess, currently blocked from view from the ground by trees and a big brown fence.  I think they will have the same issue with visibility from a 7th floor room as with the barn and predict Pioneer Hall is razed and HDDR moved into a new theater in the resort.  I don't know if Trails End would get resurrected.

 

Hi, everyone.

Just read this. Hadn't thought about it. Good Lord, this would be devastating.

And it's probably true.

Sadly, this photo says it all. Fort Wilderness just isn't a campground anymore. It's a poorly designed parking lot with an annoying smattering of trees. It's just a sad reflection of modern suburban America.

I have often seen people wading in the water at Disney and, quite frankly, been very surprised by it. I think it's another case of lax rules enforcement. Disney needs to batten down the hatches on the rules. I know they're a vacation destination and, accordingly, they don't want to put a cloud over anyone's vacation by wagging a finger at them...but...

18 minutes ago, Seals said:

I think this is going to be a hard one for Disney to deal with. There is no such thing as a "freak accident" anymore. Someone or some thing has to have been at fault and be corrected. 

Exactly. I'm saying a fence will go up for liability purposes.

I assume this means fencing will be installed at all the resort beaches.

What a great, great report! It's so great to see you back in the game, TCD. Thanks for all the time and hard effort you put into it. Your photography is somehow even better than ever.

So many things to comment on. Too many. I agree with your assessment of Disney Springs. In my mind, it's a bit of an escalator to nowhere. Lots of impractical, grossly overpriced shops like "The Art of Shaving," where you can buy a $50 disposable razor. But like you say, you can't blame Disney for trying. Every time a guest leaves property for a competing shopping destination, that's cash they're bleeding.

Disney Springs is very impressive architecture for a bunch of impractical shops and about 8,000 restaurants, all competing against each other for the same growling stomachs.

When I get some free time, I'll have to post a report on my most recent trip to the Fort, the Troll's Vacation to Hell^TM.

Thanks again. Already excited to read the next.

On 2/9/2016 at 9:02 AM, Tri-Circle-D said:

Sorry, but this thread has gone off the rails.

There is no way that Disney is going to expand the Fort or build another campground.  Yes, there is plenty of land and space to add more loops.  But, you only need to look at the leaked plans for the River Country DVC to see that they have no desire to build more campsites.

They are raking in so much money from the DVC projects that they can't build them fast enough.

TCD

Yes, I agree, and I'm partly or largely responsible for the thread going off the rails. For that, I apologize.

You make a great point. Evidently the Fort is profitable enough for it to remain open but not so profitable (like the DVCs) that it warrants any sort of expansion. Say what I will, but there just is no arguing with success -- or profits. I'm not entirely crazy about the DVC business model, but it's clearly hugely profitable, so I'm wrong about that.

On the matter of what the Fort has become and when it no longer becomes worth it, I point to this:

Maybe I'm being a bit corny, but to me, this is what the Fort should be and was meant to be -- quaint, modest, quiet, charming. Cooking outdoors, relaxing in your camp chairs, grand views, plush forest.

The Fort used to be this but isn't anywhere close to it now. The common areas -- Meadows Trading Post, swimming pool, recreation areas, Settlement, etc. -- are still first rate and very nice, but the loops are just ugly.

But that's just me. A very good friend of Leslie's is a Disney reservationist -- ranked consistently in their top 10 reservationists -- and she tells us the Fort is almost always near capacity now.

So who the heck am I to complain? You can't argue with success.

Me? I'll just book a room at the Coronado in the future. It's quiet, quaint, charming...and they have hammocks on the beach. No diesel engines. No horse trailers. No semi trucks. No touring buses. No offroad golf carts. No leaf blowers going all day...

18 minutes ago, ependydad...Doug said:

I'm biased here, but I do think the angst against diesels + super large units is unwarranted. For me, I try to be very aware of how long my truck is running and how much noise it makes. I am in a 42' camper, but haven't had an exceptionally long parking job in a while. (Knock on wood/it's coming, I know.) It's also quite a fact of life that campers have simply gotten bigger in recent years. You have to look for the smaller units.

I understand what you're saying and it's an excellent point. I'm even seriously considering buying an F250 to pull my little camper with. I don't fault the owners of the trucks, I fault the management of the Fort.

The Fort was designed in the late 1960s to accommodate modest campers, tents, and station wagons. It was not designed to accommodate today's monster vehicles and campers. Yet the Fort still charges premium prices and expects people to somehow thread and snake their vehicles into narrow sites, using an extremely narrow, one-way road as access. The result is the incessant, "Pull forward! No! Cut the wheel to the left! Now back up! No! Pull back out again!" All. Day. Long.

Disney is charging people for an RV resort but giving them a 1960s campground. Like I said, Disney should build an RV resort, complete with pull through sites to accommodate guests like you.

You know, on another note, and I may be way wrong, but I sense that the wilderness hack down that occurred was the result of environmentalists complaining about invasive nonnative plant species in the state. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But probably not. So why aren't they screaming about the wanton use of herbicides in a Florida wetland? Where are they when we need them?

9 minutes ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

Whoomp, there it is!

Post of the year!

Thank you Norm.

I'm sorry that you came home from a two week stay feeling that way, but when you're right, you're right.

The Fort has become a destination for wealthy retirees who can afford the jacked-up rates, and can take advantage of the blocked reservation calendar.

So sad.

TCD

Thank you, Andrew. I am glad to know that, at a minimum, I am not crazy. That there are still some intelligent people left who understand what the Fort once was and who understand what the hell is wrong.

In a sense, it's hard to fault Disney for doing what it's meant to do -- make money. But! Think of the original vision of the Fort: Campground. For middle class families. Who take their kids to the parks and buy princess dresses and pirate muskets. MONEY.

But I guess that's not a thing in America anymore. Now the middle class families pile into a value resort. And the campground becomes a parking lot for retirees in their Aerosmith houses on wheels. Not that I'm against retirees...I love them and thank them for their lifelong service to our nation. But it's just a crying shame. The Fort now sucks because of it. I think they can now bulldoze the place and I really wouldn't care.

It's a ridiculous pipe dream, but I would very much love it if Disney would build a completely separate (and far away) RV resort and return the Fort back to what it was. Put a hard limit on the size of camping vehicles. Disallow any sort of gas-powered anything. Let Florida be Florida AND GROW BACK. Only one vehicle per site, parked perpendicular to the road. Three week stay limit. Want to stay longer? You must move sites. Plant some damned oaks and cypress and grass. And flowers! Theme every loop. Give people something to explore and look at. Conceal things like utility boxes and trash cans with wilderness-ish looking stuff. Yell at people who make too much damned noise or who allow their children to behave like brats. Call in the real Imagineers and have them design customized playgrounds, not buy generic ones from stock vendors. Bring back the totem poles and moose topiary. Build a frickin' water park like the one at Four Seasons. Lazy river. Fun slides. Ropes and swings and stuff. Food court with reasonably priced (for Disney) food. Hammocks on the beach. Cordon off a section of Bay Lake at Clementine and treat it so people can swim in it. Put rocking chairs all over the damned place. Actively change/refresh the theming for each month's holiday. Bring in new sh!t from time to time, like they do at the parks.

11 minutes ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

How about a little Troll Rant^TM for old times' sake?

TCD

Well, OK, you asked for it!

Before I say anything, please, everyone, please understand I am not trying to be mean-spirited, argumentative, or ugly. And I certainly do not mean to offend anyone. I love this site and I love everyone on it. Probably the best message board I'm a member of. So if anything I write offends anyone, please accept my apologies in advance.

So now here we go.

The place has become a dump.

I fell in love with the Fort as a child. My memories of the place are of modest middle class families in modest station wagons pulling modest travel trailers or popups and nestling them onto a densely wooded site deep inside a Florida forest on the outskirts of the world's greatest theme park. The Fort was secluded, quaint, private, and quiet. That vision of the Fort is long dead.

The place now is very little more than an RV/trailer park.

We all say that we love the Fort...but seriously, what's there to love?

The never-ending rattle of the diesel engines of Aerosmith-caliber touring buses?

The pleasant aroma of diesel exhaust as you're trying to read in your hammock?

The never-ending din of leaf blowers (employed by both employees and the guests), pressure washers, power drills, gas powered golf carts, and diesel powered F-350s?

The lunarscape of what was once a beautiful, lush Florida forest but is now a burned out, brown herbicide dumping ground? I mean, seriously, all you have to do is take a walk down the nature trail from the Fort to the Lodge and take a look to the left to see what the Fort once was. Or better yet, walk toward the Four Seasons along the canal, walk past the fence, toward the golf course, and take a glance to the right. That's what the Fort once looked like: Exploding undergrowth; old, fallen trees covered by vines; wild flowers; tall Florida grasses; acres of wild Florida ferns.

Now? You're lucky if you have a tree on your site. And a palm bush. The staff at the Fort literally and deliberately use herbicides to kill all the undergrowth. The result? Horribly stark loops that you can see straight through, end to end, yielding a grand view of what now resembles more an RV storage lot than a campground. Depressing. Ugly. Tacky.

Everyone loves to go looping to see stuff. See what? Huge pickup trucks? What's there to see? Semi trucks used to pull massive fifth wheels larger than my house? Work trailers deliberately parked on a site to advertise some local's pressure washing business? At every other site -- or more -- there is now a huge pickup truck on huge tires parked parallel to the road, with the front and rear wheels off the pad.

We saw -- and I am not making this up -- many sites with three vehicles jammed onto them. Huge pickup truck on the pad and a vehicle on its left and right, parked in the leaves, on the drainage slopes.

It's a parking lot. A grotesque parking lot, dotted every now and then by the occasional pine tree, which had better behave itself, lest it get felled by the management, to be replaced by a lemon tree.

Try to "enjoy the Fort" by maybe swinging in your hammock or lounging in your reclining camp chair, and all day long you'll be serenaded by some dude trying to thread a honking 40 foot long fifth wheel onto a full hookup site that was never designed to accommodate such vehicles! Or you get to enjoy the gentle sounds of some jerk using a gas leaf blower to blow leaves off of his $40,000 pickup truck.

And now along the vein of this thread -- what is with all these people living at the Fort?! GO HOME! I cannot fathom why a world class organization like Disney would possibly have allowed people to become full-time residents, a la trailer park, of a "resort" campground. You now have these permanently parked 40 foot fifth wheels parked on site that haven't been moved in years. The sites are chock full of depressing, decaying, sun-faded junk: Half-collapsed storage tents, planters that once held flowers that have now become overwhelmed by weeds, broken down golf carts, cheap Walmart Christmas decorations still up at the end of January...It's exactly, exactly, what you'd expect to see in a trailer park. It's a disgrace. Pure mismanagement. Completely defeats the original vision of the Fort. Disney World is supposed to be an escape from the ugly real world, not a celebration of it.

I don't know...maybe I'll change my tune in six months or so and decide to go back. But right now I just can't justify the expense. I don't want to spend $80 a night (or more) to "camp" in a depressing parking lot.

Well, Leslie and I just got back from a two week stay at the Fort, and I have to say, we probably won't be going back.

Good grief!! In a previous life, I lived about 2 miles from an AFB. It was actually kind of cool hearing jets breaking the sound barrier day after day. Then after a while your mind doesn't even hear it anymore :)

 

Here at home we hear rocket testing all the time. It's never at late hours, and I actually kindof like hearing it, as I know somebody is doing good work for our country :)

I know, right? Just so many irrational people in the world.

I have to say that I really enjoyed reading the article posted above and that the California Adventure looks like a smash hit, to me. It looks like an awesome theme park. I love the fact that Disney was able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It re-instills some confidence in me about America in general, somehow. With the right minds and the right vision and sufficient money, just about anything can be done in America.

One thing the surprised me in the article is the level of animosity that Anaheim residents feel toward Disneyland. That's crazy to me. Disneyland was there first.  These folks bought their houses knowing that Disneyland was there.  Now, they complain about fireworks and noise?

 

I agree it's crazy. Crazy how people forget their own histories and then bite the hand that feeds them. I work on an Air Force base. People come here, desperate for a good-paying job. They land a job on base, then buy a house nearby so that their commute is short.

Then complain about the jet noise.

And sue the Federal government.

I love everything about a TCD trip report, but my absolute favorite part is the morning solo walking tours of the Fort and the observations and commentary.

Great stuff. We should really market this stuff to expand the readership.

While the new light posts are not consistent with the old classic ones, they're not bad.

I wonder if the old classic ones will be phased out and replaced gradually by these?

(Welcome to FF.net, where nerds like me discuss the minutiae of a campground in excruciating detail.)

Just a quick observation.

Is this a new survey marker in front of an elderly survey marker?

Bam!

There's a first time for everything...even being first!

Very interesting post about the wilderness tour thing. While it sounds like a lot of money for what you get, I like the idea that FW is being showcased. Shows the place, in my mind, is still valued in management's eye.

I wonder if the tour of the DI landing is "from the comfort and safety of the vessel"?

I've been very hard on DI over the years, but after re-examining a lot of the old photos posted here of the place, it seems like it had tremendous potential...and maybe I've been too hard on it. There are a lot of cool pictures of walking trails and bridges and such. It would be very cool to see something done with island again. Something fun. Maybe a "Tom Sawyer Island on Steroids" kind of thing instead of a zoo/educational thing. I'd imagine there's still some infrastructure there that could be salvaged.

 

As always, you make a good point.

 

But, I kind of like it.

 

Everything doesn't have to be castles and fairy tale stuff, and I think they did a good job of creating an atmosphere that makes you feel like you are someplace else.

It's funny how that works psychologically...or at least according to my psychology. I agree that everything doesn't have to be be castles and fairy tales. In fact, the attractions I like most are the ones that aren't castles and fairy tales. When an attraction is made rustic, rundown, and "gritty" it's OK for something from a different time period. Like BTMRR. I love how everything is rusty, faded, and sort of broken down. But build an attraction based on something contemporary and make it gritty and broken down and it's just an eyesore, to me.

 

As always, you make a good point.

 

But, I kind of like it.

 

Everything doesn't have to be castles and fairy tale stuff, and I think they did a good job of creating an atmosphere that makes you feel like you are someplace else.

It's funny how that works psychologically...or at least according to my psychology. I agree that everything doesn't have to be be castles and fairy tales. In fact, the attractions I like most are the ones that aren't castles and fairy tales. When an attraction is made rustic, rundown, and "gritty" it's OK for something from a different time period. Like BTMRR. I love how everything is rusty, faded, and sort of broken down. But build an attraction based on something contemporary and make it gritty and broken down and it's just an eyesore, to me.

You know, how is this a theme park? Seriously -- let's recreate the rundown, economically depressed, blighted areas of Africa and model a theme park after them. Complete with ratty clothes hanging from a clothesline, rundown buildings, and poorly wired power lines.

And this is especially beautiful:

This is the kind of real world depressed crap I try to escape when I go to Disney parks.

I agree, and the mom was really shaken up by it, too. Now, of course, I only heard one side of that story, but she was pretty convincing to me. WTF?

Yeah, I agree -- I have to wonder, too, if there isn't another side to this story, considering the guy didn't get ejected.

Like maybe the mom stole something from the guy and attempted to ellude him by dipping into the ladies room. Like the saying goes: There are always two sides to every story, and the truth is often somewhere in the middle.

Here in my neighborhood not too long ago, there was this military guy who scared the bee jeebies out of all the women in the neighborhood by reporting on our neighboorhood message board (yes, we have one) that a man had been stalking his wife and secretly video taping her. The military guy was deployed to Iraq or somewhere, so he wasn't there to protect her. So he was offering a word of warning to all the other military wives in the neighborhood about this "stalker."

Then the story completely unravelled when the sheriff's office made the official report. The military guy's wife is a very dangerous, aggressive driver and the "stalker" had simply video'd her on his phone driving recklessly so he could report her to the police.

In today's world NOTHING is what it first appears to be.

Yep. Every time we've been to Europe the pickpockets were a problem. They target us Americans. We've learned to carry money deep in a double-tough backpack with a padlock on it.

Never let the schmucks help you with your luggage on the trains, either. They're thieves. And the European police are merely for decoration, apparently.