oft013

Our last trip this past March we stayed at the Caribbean Beach and one morning we were picked up by a non Disney bus to one of the parks.  Didn't think much of it at the time.  There were a lot of sports teams staying at the resort at the time, so I thought that Disney was just bringing in extra buses to help with all the additional people.

If the OP is interested in food that he can't find in New England or other places in the US, I really don't think there is much, if any of that in the immediate area of WDW.

 

I know you've visited the Gulf coast in central Florida.  The seafood you enjoy there is much better and fresher than what you can buy in Oklahoma or at WDW.  But you need to drive a good hour and a half to two hours from WDW to get there.

 

 

I know you venture out to Plant City from time to time.  If you're willing to drive about another hour west, you'll get to Clearwater, where you will find Frenchy's.  Try their Grouper sandwich:  https://frenchysonline.com/

 

They have their own boats, and pride themselves on serving fresh seafood.  You can tell the difference.

 

TCD

And you can see a great sunset at Frenchy's Rockaway which is right N. Clearwater Beach.  You can wash that grouper sandwich down with a Rumrunner or 2.  Rumrunners may not be regional but there is nothing like sitting at Frenchy's Rockaway watching a sunset and a couple of rumrunners 

The first question to ask about seafood in Florida is if it is from Florida.  Sounds silly but a lot of Florida seafood gets shipped out of state where they can charge more money, and much of the seafood served in Florida is imported.  I would avoid buying any seafood at the grocery stores.  Recently I went to buy shrimp at a Winn Dixie in Indian Shores and when I asked if it was fresh from Florida, the kid behind the counter took me to a freezer box and showed me the bags of shrimp they use for their "fresh" shrimp.  So be careful.

For seafood we usually try to find Florida Grouper and Fresh Gulf Shrimp.

There is an excellent Cuban/ Spanish restaurant in Celebration called Columbia that has an excellent Cuban Sandwich.

Good luck and happy eats.

We just got ours for 12/1.  If the schedule above is right should be Niel Patrick Harris.  We saw him about 4 or 5 years ago and really enjoyed it.

I have a 1 gallon Craftsman compressor that fits into a storage compartment in my MH.  It has a max pressure of 150 PSI and it is also oil-less.   Here is a similar unit, I guess they don't have the exact one I have any more.

http://www.sears.com/craftsman-airboss-8482/p-00916574000P?prdNo=20&blockNo=20&blockType=G20

There is a video on the Sears web site above where they actually mention RV tire inflation being one of the uses.  It is more expensive but I like mine it was a good investment.  When we travel with the RV I always ad air before we leave home and I check and adjust as needed before we head home.

This popped up on my Facebook this morning from the Orlando Sentinal.  Interesting read.  I guess I need a job at Disney and be real nice and then maybe just maybe I can live here.  This is located on the North side of bay lake.  You can check it out on Goggle maps.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/tourism/os-disney-cities-20150522-story.html

I guess the amoeba went hungry with this guy

Washington DC

Gettysburg, PA

Williamsburg, VA

St. Augustine, FL

Boston, MA

Man this story brings back memories!

 

My oldest moved out to Omaha in 2001.  We took a road trip out to visit her the next summer with our other 3 kids, but they were all teens.  I did the same thing, removed a middle seat from our MPV, bungee'd an all in one TV down and took off.  I heard Office Space dozens of times, but have yet to ever see the entire movie!.  While we were out there I bought them all headphones and audio cable splitters. Didn't have to hear any more movies on the way home.

On man, I sitting here laughing.  We did the same thing with our Astro van, middle seat out and the TV/vcr was bungee'd down to an old milk crate between the front seats.  Yep, next trip had that audio splitter and headphones for the kids.  

Glad to know I'm not the only crazy one.

I think my husband is already nervous that I'm looking into annual passes. He said "let's just try and get through this 18 hour drive with 3 kids in the back of the pickup first. If we're all still friends when we get home we'll look into it".

Welcome-  When our kids were young we always drove at night.  It was about an 18 hour drive from Connecticut (where we used to live) to FW.  I always felt I would rather lose a night of sleep then having to listen to the kids complaining.  That was long before all the great travel entertainment options.  The only thing we have was a 12v- 9"- TV with a VCR built in.  I have heard the movie "Good Burger" almost to the point where I can recite the lines, but I have never seen more than 2 minutes of the movie ever.  But even things like that are good memories now.  We now live in TX and it is about a 19 hour drive and even without the kids I still like to travel at night, less traffic. We now have annual passes, we usually renew them every other year.  We try to get 3 trips, usually March/ April, then Christmas and last March/ April the next year.  Then we wait until the next March/April to get new ones.  My wife is a big fan of the EPCOT flower and garden show, so that explains the March/ April trips.  

I was hoping it was a mis-print and it was really a recipe for butter beer !

A good quality Cream soda and butterscotch schnapps 

The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Pete.  And take the guided tour. Amazing place.

http://thedali.org

Two of my favorite things, Disney and the Doctor.  All is right with the world.

I was looking at the route up to Western Way on a map and was hoping that could be an answer.  We drove the 27/192 route a couple of times last week and I can see where it could get busy and crazy. 

But has anyone heard any good or bad about the resort itself.  It seems nice and cost seems reasonable enough.  I can't find anything real bad on line, so I was hoping for some personal experiences. 

Does anyone know anything about this place? I have been looking into buying a permanent site there and I am hoping for some honest input. Thanks in advance.

I had always heard that as you approached retirement age, your monthly expenses dropped.

 

That sure isn't true in my case.  Yes my house is almost paid for, but the insurance, taxes, and upkeep on it keep rising.

 

Food, cable, cell phone, electricity, Fort sites, etc.  have not dropped, in fact they have all climbed steadily.

 

I thought I had a decent retirement plan, but the million $$ that was supposed to be in there has never materialized with the crappy economy and coupled with no raises in 2+ years, makes it look like I'll be working a few more years instead of relaxing and enjoying my grandkids.

Boy I could have written this....My life in a nutshell.

This whole thread has been an interesting read.  I have always thought the MBs were more a way to get more of my cash out of my pocket without me feeling the pain until it was too late.  So to combat that, while I do keep a credit card associated with my MB, we use cash as much as possible while we are in the parks.  If I use a credit/debit card I take it out of my pocket.  I don't think I have ever used my MB for a purchase.

What I now take away after reading all these great posts is going to the old saying "Knowledge is power"  Disney is gathering information on all of us, our ride habits, our walking habits, right down to what parks we spend most of our time.  That knowledge can be used for good or evil.  Somehow I think it will be a little of both.  When we make a reservation for our "usual" vacation, Disney can present us with a pre-packaged touring plan based on our past habits.  This way they can try to control our habits (evil) or they can use the data to help predict where the crowds travel and replace the least visited attractions as needed (good).

To have invested such a large amount of money there has to be more long term goal than what we see today, or what we can even imagine today  But the bottom line is, the whole MB/MDE investment has one long term purpose and that is to raise the bottom line and make Disney a lot more than the investment cost.  Which I am OK with as long as they don't mess with my experience too much.

What we did when our kids were that young is to start the day at the rope drop, stay ay the park until 12 or 1, head back to the campground for lunch and naps.  We would head back to parks about 3 and stay for a few more hours.  Since the kids were young we would hang out at the campground in the evenings.  Some of the best pictures/ memories were our kids at the Chip and Dale campfire. 

If you have a golf cart bring it.  Cruising the campground was something the kids still enjoy doing even though they are all in their 20's. 

If you are only getting passes for 2 or 3 days I would recommend picking out maybe 2 parks only, MK...and maybe one other.  My kids enjoyed EPCOT it was a slower pace. 

Someone further up in the tread said to stick with the 2 day and you add to it if you decided on more days.  That I think was excellent advice.  My only question would be "What is the minimum days you can get for a parkhopper pass?", that may influence your choice.

A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link-  Travel at the kids pace, and when they are tired it's time to call for a break.  If we ever didn't get to a ride or show on a trip, the answer was always-  "We will see it on our next trip, so I guess we will be back." 

Well you are still on property and saving money, so how bad can it be? :-)

True..It will still be a great trip.  And maybe we need a change just to shake things up.

More playing then searching.  No one contacted us.  I constantly am checking or looking at different web sites to see what is out there.  Probably more just to get a little Disney fix when I'm not there.  But it was still a tough call.  We have been going to the FT for years and this is kind of taking us out of our comfort zone.  We have never stayed at the CB before, so this will be interesting.

We just cancelled our trip to the Fort for the end of March.  With our APs Disney is running an "Late Winter" sale for APs and we got a reservation at the Caribbean Beach with a King Bed and we are saving over $500.00 when you add in gas and golf cart rental.  I regret not being at the Fort to meet other fiends but this was just to good a deal to pass up.  We still have a FW reservation for the week after Thanksgiving so hopefully we can catch up with a fellow fiends then.

So I guess this would qualify as a "First we were but now we're not". 

Nice read, but it is kind of depressing to think of some of those Disney experiences that we or our kids can no longer experience.  But it was a good article and written in an everyman kind of view.  I remember going there with my kids and I still miss it.  I thought that the water tower was from RC but I wasn't sure.  Thanks for clearing that up.  And thanks for the article.

When we booked out Spring trip this year I about choked it was over $1000.00 for 8 nights, site only.  We looked around at several other campgrounds in the area, but ended up biting the bullet this year.  The only good thing is we also booked 8 nights the end of November into the first week of December and it was significantly cheaper.  I am thinking about looking for a permanent site in the area and buy a site in an effort to try to control costs some.

Plus we are looking forward to meeting some other fiends.

Happy Birthday Snarky.  

Go Noles!