geoffdaddy

Someone is bound to have seen this one already but I found this on one of our old Disney LP albums

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I will say that they have been more receptive to selecting a site once you get there than in previous trips. The trip before the last one I made a specific request not to be next to the main bus road in the camp, and sure enough we were given a site that placed the backside of the site about 10' away from the road. We used the nifty fort fiends app and noticed this when they told us our site number and asked if we could select another site. If we didn't have a 5 and 7 year old that are a bit flighty it probably wouldn't have been as much of an issue. Anyway we were instantly presented with about 6 other options. Previous times this would have taken an act of congress. :)

It maddens me to no end after a 10 hour drive to arrive at the fort an hour after check in time only to be told that the preassigned site is not ready. grrr.. The last time we arrived they told us the site wasn't ready at 3:30pm. Instead of parking in overflow we drove down to where the site was to check it out to find it was completely empty, and looked to have already been cleaned off by the cleaning crew. In fact about a quarter to a third of the sites in the loop were unoccupied. I called the front desk and asked them if we could just park it since it obviously wasn't occupied. They made me wait on the phone and then a Fort Ranger came around to check it out while I was on hold. As soon as the Ranger passed the spot the front desk took me off hold and said it was okay to park it.
On another trip to St. Andrews State Park in Panama City we drove down a couple hours after check in and found our reserved site was occupied, on a holiday weekend and no indication that they were planning to evacuate the site any time soon. We went and tooled around the rest of the park to find a space to park in overflow and the whole parking lot was pretty much full so we had to shoehorn our rig at the Jetty parking lot and check out the beach for about a half hour or so, thinking surely they would leave (after all, there's about 3 hours gap between checkout and check in)... nope! Still there! Went to the ranger station and told them about it and they said give us a little bit, so we left our camper and went to get a bite to eat, came back and they were finally gone. About three hours total after we arrived.
 
 

It maddens me to no end after a 10 hour drive to arrive at the fort an hour after check in time only to be told that the preassigned site is not ready. grrr.. The last time we arrived they told us the site wasn't ready at 3:30pm. Instead of parking in overflow we drove down to where the site was to check it out to find it was completely empty, and looked to have already been cleaned off by the cleaning crew. In fact about a quarter to a third of the sites in the loop were unoccupied. I called the front desk and asked them if we could just park it since it obviously wasn't occupied. They made me wait on the phone and then a Fort Ranger came around to check it out while I was on hold. As soon as the Ranger passed the spot the front desk took me off hold and said it was okay to park it.
On another trip to St. Andrews State Park in Panama City we drove down a couple hours after check in and found our reserved site was occupied, on a holiday weekend and no indication that they were planning to evacuate the site any time soon. We went and tooled around the rest of the park to find a space to park in overflow and the whole parking lot was pretty much full so we had to shoehorn our rig at the Jetty parking lot and check out the beach for about a half hour or so, thinking surely they would leave (after all, there's about 3 hours gap between checkout and check in)... nope! Still there! Went to the ranger station and told them about it and they said give us a little bit, so we left our camper and went to get a bite to eat, came back and they were finally gone. About three hours total after we arrived.
 
 

My vote goes to worn out or bearings with no preload on them, but I see someone beat me to it. :)

I'll admit we did fill up right after I heard about it. Back in 2011 tornadoes tore through our part of the state in North Alabama and that left the power off in large areas for a good week. We had about a 1/4 tank of gas and I was concerned about where we were going to get more. Thankfully no real shortage materialized this time.
If 2011 was any eye opener for us it was how woefully unprepared we were personally, and just how sorry local news media was. We probably would have made an impromptu trip to the fort then to avoid it if we had any clue if we could make it to a gas station with gas while towing our camper.  I mean, you would think a communications company could wrangle up some HAM radio operators within their midst to find out what was going on regionally, but noooo..
 
 

I'd wager there were a fair fewer numbers of Alligators in that lake when you were a kid out there from all accounts of the then endangered alligator population. It is kind of sad that some of the natural looking beauty has been lost in a way, but let's face it: Alligators are more prevalent on the water than they used to be.
I think this incident was a result of a sort of hand waving on the part of local Disney execs: "Everyone knows the dangers of Alligators in Florida." Does everyone that visits Disney World know this? Disney has gone out of their way to project an illusion of safety by incorporating beach areas around the Seven Seas Lagoon with their pool areas and lounge chairs in these beach areas, so I think it's natural for people to assume that there is no real threat. Is a "no swimming" sign equivalent to avoiding ALL water contact and/or an equivalent warning to "Beware of Alligators" sign? I don't think so. Would someone who fell asleep on the beach on a blanket or a lounge chair be completely safe? Hmmm. Anyways, when we were there about 3 weeks ago, we sat on our blanket watching the water pageant and the fireworks on the beach about 5' away from the water's edge (people kept standing in front of us anyway but I digress), and plenty of small kids were seen with parents within sight's distance splashing around in the water. Now, our family is informed enough to know that any body of water is a potential danger in Florida and we never get in the water with exception of the swimming holes around spring heads down there. However, I was blissfully unaware that we were still within danger being that close to water's edge, until I heard about the incident reported last week of the one kid about 30 years ago feeding ducks bread from dry land at Clementine's Beach and the Alligator lunging out of the water to get him and barely escaping with his life, and another of a British family that was attacked by a gator at the Polynesian just last month while waiting for the fireworks. Pass! With or without that sign or the fence, we'd be sitting a lot farther away from the water's edge in future.
The thing that's pretty surprising after all this to me is the reaction that some people have to this that the family is going to be gold digging over this or that Disney shouldn't pay handsomely for it.

This may be unique to me, but I did store my camper in FL a few years ago for a short time in between a Halloween trip, and early December trip, then did it again when I came back for New Years. It was a TOTAL pain in the arse.
 
My problem, is there is certain stuff that rides in the camper, and certain stuff that rides in the truck.
 
Storing the camper meant totally rearranging the way we packed up to go home. We had to pull a bunch of stuff that lived in the camper at the end of the trip to take it home, and all the stuff that normally rode in the truck, we had to wait until time to pull out to load it in the camper to store.
 
In my OCD obsessed brain, I spent an inordinate amount of time obsessing over that process in my head over the course of the vacation.
 
It extended breakdown time because, instead of just putting the "outside" stuff in the truck, had to empty some of the "inside stuff" into the truck, and then put the outside stuff in the camper.
 
The whole process was reversed when we came back down. Had to empty the camper of the "outside stuff", put the new "inside stuff" we brought back down in the truck back into the camper.
 
Packing for the 2nd and 3rd trip down was more difficult as it had to go into bags/bins in the truck, then moved to their appropriate spots in the camper when we arrived.
 
In addition had to empty and dry out the fridge each time as no power with storage. Normally doesn't get done until we get home. Also winterized "just in case".
 
Me personally, I won't do it again.

I 2nd this.  Epcot was my 2nd favorite part right behind MK.  Now I like MK, then AK.  I what a full retool of future world!! and I want it NOW

I've had my T@B on a partial many, many times. Technically, it is not a van camper or popup, and no one said a peep. I've seen hybrids, even a very small 5th wheel on that loop. If you have a means for not needing the sewer, then no worries.

I know when we were looking at camper rentals for our stay at the Fort all rental places mentioned their hybrids could be used on a partial site.
Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Okay, here we go. Pull up a chair, kiddies. My wife and I went for lunch one day. It was hot, and I was thirsty so I ordered a large beer. For those who have never been to the Biergarten, the large beer is very large. It was cold and smooth and delicious. About the time I finished it, the first show of the day was going to start. They started the show by selecting someone from the audience who likes beer. Of course, my hand shot up and I was shouting "Right here". I got picked to be the honorary Burgermeister and lead the ceremony of tapping the first keg of beer. Afterwards, I was given a free beer, not as large as the one I had just had but pretty large nonetheless, and led the first toast. It was time to drink, and the crowd loved me and was yelling "Chug, chug, chug'" So, I reached down deep and summoned up all that college experience and chugged the thing, much to the crowd's delight. Now I should point out that, while the other patrons of the restaurant were thoroughly entertained, FWGirl was not seeing the humor. She had gotten the check and was ready to exit. I insisted on paying but damn, I could not do the math for the tip. For some reason the numbers were just not making sense. So I did the best I could and paid the bill. The waitress was thrilled, I was happy, but FWGirl was silent for the afternoon. It wasn't until later that she informed me that I had tipped the waitress at least 50 bucks. She also informed me that I would never go there again. And so I have been banned for life from the Biergarten.

I'm gonna have a different vote here. I "like" Biergarten, but I don't "love" it. I was raised on GREAT German food from my grandmother, and we have a REALLY GOOD German restaurant in Huntsville that has been here for over 50 years. (Started by a German family that came when all the Germans working for Dr. Von Braun came to Huntsville).
Hmmm, think I'll go there for lunch today :)

Ahhh, the GAG. We get one after we set up, amazing deal.
We're crock potting this time for sure, but the only place we plan on eating offsite this time is a breakfast type place that we last went to in Vegas called Hash House a Go Go. We just found they opened one on International Drive. It was on man vs food tv show a while back.  

Well, I have to agree partly about the Fort being about Wilderness. I do think that there are three things that bother me most about the current state of the Fort:
The Meadow Pool seriously needs an upgrade
No more swamp trail...
No more Cypress Point Nature Trail...
Seems like those things would fit nicely into the current Fort Wilderness. The latter two (or ones similar) wouldn't be major expenses to do either.

Yeah, I understand that, I'm not advocating opening the natural water pool back up, but surely they could put a new chlorinated pool in its place.

Well, I have to agree partly about the Fort being about Wilderness. I do think that there are three things that bother me most about the current state of the Fort:
The Meadow Pool seriously needs an upgrade
No more swamp trail...
No more Cypress Point Nature Trail...
Seems like those things would fit nicely into the current Fort Wilderness. The latter two (or ones similar) wouldn't be major expenses to do either.

It's the "old timers" that are the most vocal about the current sad state of the Fort.  The campers that have been around since the good old days and have seen all the amenities and uniqueness slowly stripped away.
The newer campers love the Fort because they don't know what they missed.
The Fort is a great campground.  Is it expensive for a place to drop a camper or pitch a tent? Yes it is, but as others have stated it's not too overpriced because some other highly rated sites nickel and dime you to death.
The old timers still love the Fort but to us, we are paying more and getting less than what we used to,
Disney treats the Fort like a red headed step child or a necessary nuisance.
People would be a lot happier if they did give us some perks, added amenities, and enforced the current rules fairly across the board.
It's hard to stomach paying as much as a value resort and not get the same amenities as they do.
Personally, I would love to see the trams come back in addition to the internal busses.  They could run them in-between the bus runs so everyone didn't have too wait so long.  Who knows, it might cut down on all of the carts flying around. Then that way if the busses are still running, they would still be ADA compliant.

We've been going to the Fort since we started in 2009, sometimes a couple of times a year, and a couple of things I'll mention:
Even with the prices the way they are, it is still our favorite place to vacation, hands down. Even if we didn't visit the theme parks, that wouldn't bother us so much.
Now, that said, I read The Troll's responses, and I think that he has several things spot on. I never visited the fort (or even knew of its existence) in its heyday, and from reading about it I feel like I can commiserate with the old timers sense of what has been lost. I think this is the thing that bothers me about the Fort. They are jacking the prices up, because they can (and that's The American Way), but from my perspective, I can't think of a single thing that they have improved at the Fort since 2009, where's the money all going? It can't cost very much money relative to the other resorts to maintain the Fort, even accounting for occasional improvements or repairs to the infrastructure. It's gotta be going straight into the shareholders pockets, and they have to be profiting by a much wider margin than any of the other places. The amenities are all the same as they have been since 2009. Now clearly, the Fort is popular enough that they don't need to bother with this, but you would think they would want to roll a little more money into the cash cow instead of milking it bone dry. How about some updated amenities? I like the idea of a lazy river, or heck, scale back River Country and make it as some have suggested a shared amenity for guests of the Lodge and Campground? Seems like even in its current state of disrepair it would be less trouble to refurbish it than start it brand-new. It's only been vacant for 15 years, that's not a very long time....
Of course, we all know that that is not in the cards, since clearly they've spent some serious $$$$s designing a River Country DVC and that's the site they have in mind. They will pour money into that before anything at our beloved Fort.
Now, to suppress my grumbling and to think happy thoughts about my favorite place...

I can attest to the barricades in the pedestrian path being a pain for bike trailers, and I find the bikes on the ped path counter intuitive. In the world outside of Disney, bikes are supposed to ride on the road with other traffic, not on sidewalks. I tend to follow that rule unless safety dictates otherwise. I agree ped paths are probably good for smaller kids on bikes though and perhaps that is what they intended.

As a walker I don't mind sharing a path with bicyclists as long as they follow the protocol of announcing where they are when they come up from behind. It isn't that hard to say "Passing on left" or "Passing on right" and we get that when we take walks on our dual use trails nearby our house. The problem with the Fort is I have yet to have any cyclist announce they are coming up behind me so I would prefer they stay off the sidewalks.

I have been told by my wife, who is a big Hocus Pocus fan that Bette Midler said that it was her favorite role in a movie and that she frequently performs "I put a spell on you" at concerts she does, so I don't think she would be against it.

Suits me!
 
We have been multiple times and requested specific sites, only to be given another site and find all of our requested sites were empty and no one setting up. Why can't we have those empty sites? "We have a big group coming on the weekend."
 
Oh, I thought these were first come-first served sites... nope, here's a huge group, here for three days... sorry pal, you can't have it for the five days prior since you are staying through the weekend. Sure enough, the sites sit vacant for a full five days.
 
Pretty crummy if you ask me.

We bought our current RV when we were "just looking." That trip could be dangerous.

Our last 2 campers were purchased when "just looking", I refuse to "just look" anymore :D