geoffdaddy

Oh, and if I had small children to entertain, I think KOA is your best bet... we have not stayed there but they have a ton of stuff to keep kiddies occupied. Nice playground, an adorable small lazy river, a jump pillow, etc. A bit more pricey as you might expect with the amenities and a little noisier so if you don't have a hard sided travel trailer it might be kind of noisy.

Just FYI... we have stayed at several campgrounds around the Pigeon Forge area. Here's where we've stayed:

Up the Creek - all full hook up, quiet area in Wears Valley but no amenities (no bathhouse, etc), further away but not too far a drive from Dollywood. We've stayed here several times in the past.

Riverslanding - Basic, had a pool, but near a go kart track and is fairly noisy.

Jellystone - Mostly basic, the cheap sites are REALLY tight if you have a big camper. Some of the amenities like the jump pillow are dilapidated and out of commission. This is the closest to Dollywood though

Elkmont Campground in the national park - a bit of a drive, but nice, no hookups at all

Cades Cove in the national park - even more of a drive, but nice. No hookups at all

Pine Mountain - Has a pool, pretty nice centrally located on the other side of the main drag, easy to get in and out of. I don't know if they still do this, but when we stayed there they would allow you to use the indoor pool/spa at the hotel across the street. Course that was in the cool months when their pool was closed so maybe that's why? It's been a while since we stayed there so check before you go.

If you can avoid having to travel the main drag as much as possible on 441, the better. Teaster Ln between Veterans Blvd and 321 are your friends for avoiding some of the traffic on the main drag.

Slight necro-posting... but I think it's interesting to see how things have changed with WDW with this. Back in the olden-days, handfuls of years ago, if parks were crowded, they would add to the park hours to spread out the load, frequently staying open til 11pm or later.  Now, everyone has to fight for a reservation and pay more money for the ticket.

On 7/7/2022 at 10:58 AM, Tri-Circle-D said:

That rumor is true Grumpy!

 

 

There is too much sod, there are a lot less trees, but it’s 1000% better than the eyesore that was here for the past 2 1/2 years. As far as I could see, there are no speakers anymore- so no fireworks music unless they set up portable speakers.

TCD

Yes! A wrong has been righted!

Correct me if I'm wrong though... the ticket books were done at a time when the gate tickets were both separate and REALLY CHEAP. 

EDIT: Ticket prices at WDW at opening were $3.50 a person minimum. Even accounting for inflation that is seriously cheap by today's standards.

We got to see this in person on our last trip. While I agree it does look nice and the equipment is probably an upgrade from the old stuff, I think it places smaller children dangerously close to the cart path with nothing to corral them in.

Nothing says special like a panning for gems sluice in a campground. Never seen that before!

I gotta say, the way sites are assigned has never made much sense to me. You would think given that they don't advertise the ability to reserve specific sites that sites would be handed out mostly on a first come, first served basis. On our last trip down we tent camped and got the 2000 loop. We arrived on a Tuesday staying through Saturday. We were assigned a site that was extremely rocky (like river rock rocky). Jennifer called the front desk and they told her, "well, they are all like that." Yuh huh. The loop was almost completely empty when we arrived and she said we need another site and gave a few options. "Nope, that's not available," On several of them and was assigned another site. All of those sites she requested sat vacant until late Friday.

Returned back from the Fort a couple of days ago. So far, I'd have to say that the impact to the Fort is minimal, so here's hoping it stays that way. So much so that I retract some of my Negative Nancy sentiments. 🙂

Enquiring minds want to know... any updates?

"Go back, Sky People!"

4 minutes ago, keith_h said:

Are you suggesting that the Fiends should rise up, mount their golf carts and go to war?

 

There's an idea. Maybe some artistic type can replace the musket mickey in the Disney Ft. Wilderness Campground logo  with a Na'vi holding a stick and that'll be the new logo.

After seeing that vid of the backhoe tearing down Mickey's Backyard BBQ and the pics of the beach I made the comment "I can relate to how those Na'vi felt in the Avatar movie now."

We'll be there in a couple weeks. I'll take pics.

Just saw someone over on facebook posted video of them tearing down the Mickey's Backyard BBQ pavilion building with a backhoe. Heartbreaking.

What torques me is that they could have thrown some money at improving the campground instead... but now they are making it smaller.

I don't have a problem with a new resort. I do have a problem when it:

A. Encroaches on the resort we know and love

B. Eliminates the amenities (Backyard BBQ - GONE, Horse barn - moved into the campground land, setbacks and greenspace - GONE, jogging path - GONE, beach - GONE).

C. The 3D renderings I've seen of the construction plans shows the edge of one wing of the resort building is practically right next to Pioneer Hall.

Not only that, at least with the old River Country DVC plans it looked like a Disney themed resort. This one looks like an Embassy Suites, it doesn't look special at all. It's hard to be positive when you see these types of changes. It would be another thing if they had left room to scooch the Fort futher east, but it is of course boxed in by the Canal and the other monstrosity (Four Seasons) on the other side. I expect in a few years the whole place will be razed for a Reflections expansion, and if/when that day comes it will be a shame.

On 4/16/2019 at 7:10 PM, PGHFiend said:

Late to the party.  

Here at the Fort. Today was an amazing day; Trails End breakfast, horse barn, bike riding, nap under the awning, dog walking.  A few sites open in every loop, over 25 open in the 2000, saw 2 or 3 Prevost buses and a few other big ones. Mainly campers like mine and many older ones, like cousin Eddie style.

Expensive?

Yep

Value to cost?

Unmeasureable.  But for us, worth every penny. 

Ymmv!

The best times to visit the fort are during the week I think.

On 3/19/2019 at 8:47 AM, Travisma said:

Not to be snarky and not being judgmental, but how do Fiend non retirees, have the time and $$ to visit the Fort multiple times during the year for more than a week at a time?

Have you saved vacation time from previous years so you can take more time off in one year?

Do you work from home?

Do you own your own business and have reliable employees that take care of the business while you are away?

I see the same thing on other Disney camping site... "we have 4 three week vacations to the Fort planned this year!"

Just being nosy.

 

I think a lot of that is probably Florida campers. If you're close it's a lot easier to justify a bunch of trips. For us, a 10 hour one way drive more than a couple times a year kind of kills the magic for us. Your mileage may vary. At my job I get 4 weeks vacation annually currently. Wife doesn't work, so getting time off is not too much of an issue. Our girls are in a half-homeschool/half-public school program (they are in 2nd and 4th grade) that is flexible where we can take off a week at a time even during the school season, so you can bet with the way the prices are now we are watching for the lowest cost days at the fort, balancing that against the super-hot summer weather. 🙂 We have two trips this year, one in May which is 4 nights and another for a week in August. Cost of fuel is a major deal since we do a 1400 mile round trip tow for each trip down to central Florida, so being able to cost-average the fuel costs over more days is a must. The first half of the May trip we are staying at a much cheaper campground for three days away from Disney and then driving an hour over to the Fort for the second half of the trip. The week-long trip we were able to get a deal on a Premium site that was almost as cheap as a partial hook up loop (using the Sun and Fun room offer), so deals can be had if you book early and can be flexible. I agree the prices are getting out of hand though.

We save up our credit card points for Disney to offset the cost, which helps. I have "gamed" the Disney Visa a few times when they've had the $200 gift card promos by signing up for new cards in the past.

As far as visiting the parks though, that's another story! We haven't done a multi-day park-hopping extravaganza in several years. Been there, done that... a lot of fun when we did but on top of being expensive, we have realized we're getting older and it just wears us out and we get tired so we typically limit ourselves to 1, maybe 2 single park days on any trip lasting a week. We love the Fort and visiting the other resorts and buying drinks and snacks when we're not penny pinching theme park tix. We bought season park tickets to the water parks last October which are of course still good til October this year. We love the water parks and for the most part they are MUCH more relaxing than the theme parks are. We don't plan to visit any of the normal theme parks at all in May, and we're only going to do the Not So Scary Halloween Party in August. The water park tickets will still be good for both trips, so that helps a lot on the cost. Again, that was cost-averaged for several park visits over three trips and it's just a little more than a single theme park day's ticket cost for each person and is good for a year.

To save money in the past we have also tent camped several times instead of towing our camper down in the cooler months (late Oct-late March). For those trips we can use our Prius which gets about 42MPG on the highway, vs towing our camper at 8MPG.

We have said this several years in a row now that this will be our year visiting the Fort for a couple years. It's not a stretch to say that it's getting to the point where it's not worth it. I have a feeling this year might be the last for a year or two for real though. I know this is cynical and a bit mean-spirited of me but Disney World is lots of fun of course and I always say there's nothing wrong with Disney World that a "good" recession wouldn't cure IMO.

EDIT: Oh yeah, most importantly for a few trips, our camper has three queen beds, so we have been able to split costs between our family and another on several trips! Sometimes with family, sometimes with friends. Our girls are getting a little too big to split a bunk more than two ways though, so I think those days are over, unless we split a tent site with separate tents.

Just now, Travisma said:

Might be some great bargains out there

Yes, but for whom? I can imagine a third party real estate company snapping some of these, which would really throw a wrench into the works, particularly with regard to "city" governance. Disney might lose out on their monopoly position.

I have been saying this for a while, but since we haven't had a serious downturn in the economy since 2001 (housing crisis aside), I wonder if Disney World is setting themselves up for a big fall with all these DVC expansions when the next recession hits. The first thing that goes in those cases is discretionary spending and timeshares are darn near the first thing to get defaulted when it does. It seems like Disney will expose themselves to a lot of risk when it happens.

How's that for a doom and gloom prediction?

19 hours ago, YENSIDCAMPER said:

Thanks for posting these pictures.  I find this topic strangely interesting.  Kind of like watching a train wreck.   I really hope the access to this resort comes from the Wilderness Lodge area and not through The Fort. 

I expect that it will. Think about check-in at the Fort at peak times. I don't think they are going to want to subject the guests of their high dolla resort to that. Much better to have them use the Fort Wilderness lodge bus road for that instead since they park in the back anyway.

On 10/18/2018 at 2:31 PM, Tri-Circle-D said:

I agree. It kind of looks like Bay Lake Tower. What a wasted opportunity. 

They also released updated artwork for the big tower they're adding to Coronado Springs. Like this- it looks like a sleek generic hotel. It doesn't match the previous theme of Coronado Springs at all. 

I really hate the direction they've taken with these new resorts. I guess theming cuts into the bottom line too much.  We can't have that.

TCD

They ditched their original plans for THAT???!?

(insert grumblings of toll bridge on major interstate in the first place...) ;)

My wife has traveled this way for family visits a couple times since Riverlink went live and I've got a couple observations:

The first was right after it went live. It's a toll by plate/transponder system only, and after she crossed over, I looked up the info and it said that if you had no account that the system would monitor for a round-trip within I think a 2 week period and you would be mailed an invoice. The first sign of mail I got was a "2ND NOTICE" that tacked on another $5 administrative charge even though we never received a first notice. We called to complain of course, but after spending 45 minutes on hold we decided that we were beaten and paid the extra $5.

The next time she went I opened an account. Even if you don't have a transponder on your car, you can register your car plate and add funds to the online account. So I registered both our cars and put some money in... the system worked as advertised and recognized our plate on each crossing. Riverlink sent us two free transponder stickers in the mail a la the SunPass transponders. It wasn't clear from the website that they would do this but sure enough, two free stickers arrived in the mail a couple weeks after I signed up. I think between SunPass and RiverLink we've got most of the east tolled stuff covered now.