CrusherChronicles

So after spending Halloween at Ft. Wilderness, then a wonderful trip to James Island, what’s the CurbCrusher family to do during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Go back to Ft. Wilderness. This has the advantage of being a short drive from CurbCrusher abode, so it takes less than 10 gallons of gas to move the RV to the most magical place on earth, and it is the Christmas season, so the campsites are almost as decorated as Halloween.

Not a lot new at the Fort in the intervening month and a half. They still don’t know how to check people in quickly, and basically its just a change of decorations. Of course the campers at Ft. Wilderness know how to decorate, so there are a whole lot of RV sites decorated way beyond what one sees in a normal neighborhood. In addition, what’s a trip to Ft. Wilderness without a golf cart parade. While it was not “formal” and sponsored by the Fort, we ran across the “informal” parade of about 40 decorated golf carts while we were “looping.” Note that “looping” seems to be the official jargon of those that frequent the Fort for riding around campground loops in your golf cart.

That’s right, I said riding around in your golf cart. The CurbCrusher family decided that they would splurge and get a golf cart this trip to see what it was like. As I noted in the Halloween trip report, one of the great things about driving a golf cart at the Fort is that you don’t have to do all those pesky rules of the road like yielding to pedestrians and observing annoying traffic signs like one-way and stop. We rented our cart from a guy named Kenny that Lady CurbCrusher found on the forum at fortfiends.net, a snarky bunch of folks that know pretty much everything there is to know about camping at Disney. The hint to rent from Kenny was worth it, his price for two days of golf cart rental was about what Disney charges for a single day. He dropped the cart off and picked it up from us, so it was fairly hassle free.

All in all a great and relaxing weekend. All of our photos are here.

Well it was Halloween and the CurbCrusher clan continued with the second year of our new tradition, camping at Fort Wilderness at Disney World. Of course this is a destination that we’ve been to before, in October of 2009, November of 2008, and September of 2007, so we’re fairly familiar with the place. This time was a little different, as we ended up in the 1600 loop, in site 1645, which is off the main road. On all our previous trips we’ve been in the 1200 and 1300 loops that are on the main road. As always, the site was clean and big enough for the rig. And at Halloween, the Fort is one of the best places to be. Lots of folks decorate their sites, the candy is great and there are number of activities for all ages.

The only scary thing about Halloween at the Fort is the golf carts, or more particularly the golf cart drivers. It almost appears as though Disney has given golf cart folks instructions that it is fine to ignore stop sign, pedestrian cross walks and the arrows painted on the streets that indicate the proper direction of traffic. On more than one occasion we were on a sidewalk that was clearly marked “No Golf Carts” only to encounter three or four carts trying to navigate around the pedestrians. It’s almost as if when issuing you a golf cart, instead of asking for a drivers license, Disney simply ask that you divorce yourself from your ability to reason and whatever literacy you have.

	Enough of the complaints though, we were in the most magical place on earth. To top it off, we had free tickets from the Disney Give a Day Get a Day promotion to use. We choose to visit Epcot and enjoy the Food and Wine Festival by eating our way around the world. It was the first time that we had ever been to the festival and we enjoyed sampling the food from Chile, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Mexico, Poland, China, Italy, Morocco, Belgium, Ireland,and Canada. In addition we took advantage of some of the rides during the visit, riding the boat ride in Mexico, Test Track and Soaring. As always, Little CurbCrusher likes to visit Club Cool where they have different Coke products from around the world that you can sample.
	Saturday we got up and went over to the Meadows at the Fort. The event was a Mummy Run. Teams had 10 minutes to wrap their selected team member in toilet paper as a mummy. Then all the mummies ran about 30 yards across the field and came back. Leaving a trail of mummy wrappings in their wake. This was followed by a visit to Downtown Disney for lunch. Trying to eat healthy, we visited the Earl of Sandwich and Ghiradellhi. After each having a sandwich at the Earl’s we visited a couple of shops and walked over to the Ghiradellhi soda fountain for desert. The three of us shared two chocolate sundaes (a brownie sundae and a caramel sundae) to top off the visit to Downtown Disney. Back at the Fort, we walked over to the main road and watched the golf cart parade. We ended the day at the Fort Wilderness marina, watching the Magic Kingdom fireworks.
	Halloween day started early for Mr. CurbCrusher. 13.5 miles of running around the Fort and back and forth to the Wilderness Lodge a couple of times. After a good pancake breakfast, the family jumped on the boat to the Contemporary Hotel. Lady CurbCrusher had heard about the Dole Whip, which is basically a serving of pineapple flavored soft serve ice cream. It turned out that the Dole Whip is not available at the Contemporary, but can be found at Captain Cooks in the Polynesian. So it was up to the monorail to ride over to the Polynesian. Lady and Little CurbCrusher got their cups from the cashier and headed over to the Dole Whip machine. Lady CurbCrusher put her bowl under the nozzle and pulled the handle. About three ounces of soft serve ice cream came out, and the machine stopped. After the manager came over and turned the machine off and on a couple of times, it became apparent that there was to be no Dole Whip goodness for anyone on Halloween. We concluded the excursion by taking a boat back to the Magic Kingdom, and then another boat to Fort Wilderness.
	Back at the Fort, we wandered over to the dog park and watched the pet parade. There were some cutely costumed dogs, and only only one non-dog pet, a cat. After for a while, it was time to get into our Halloween costumes and trick-or-treat. Park Ranger CurbCrusher, Eyeball Little CurbCrusher and Marathon Girl Lady CurbCrusher headed out and walked through seven loops. It was a great walk. Lots of people out, kids and adults in awesome costumes, friendly campers and great candy. Not to mention getting to look at all the sites that were lavishly decorated.

Once again, it was a great Halloween. So good that we’ve already booked next year’s trip to the Fort. As always, the only real negative (aside from dodging golf carts) was the check-in process. It took over 25 minutes to get through the line and get checked in at the Fort. It is hard to understand how a company that does so much right with hospitality, can get RV campground check-in so wrong. Pictures from Epcot and Fort Wilderness.

This was the CurbCrusher’s and Lady CC’s first time camping in the MH w/o PreTeen CC -who got to spend her weekend at the Nick Hotel with friends. We decided to camp at Kelly Park/Rock Springs. It is close by in Apopka and since it was still hot we wanted to tube the river. We had also decided before hand that we would not cook dinner this trip since it was only the 2 of us.

So we set up and got our tubes out and filled them and preceded to head to the spring head. The water was refreshing cold and it was a hot day so it was pure joy to cool off. On our first trip down the river CC put a hole in his tube when he ran into some rocks. So he was left holding the side the entire run to keep the air from leaking out. This greatly lessened his picture taking on the run so we don’t have much in the way of pics on the first trip. When we exited the run his tube was less than 1/2 inflated so we needed to return to the RV to patch and refill.

Upon returning we found that our power was out and so we called the ranger. CC went around and determined that the 4 sites adjacent to us also had no power. In about 10 minutes the ranger on duty showed up and flipped the breaker and all was good. I think she doesn’t understand how RV’s work because she told me that if we were using all 30 amps and we plugged in a fan, for example, we would blow the breaker. In our case, we have a power management system on our MH and it would shut something down if we added more appliances instead of throwing the breaker. In our 5th W, the fuse would blow 1st before a breaker. So the power problem was really the park’s and not because we were over using.

Well after that happened and was resolved we went and got showers and decided to head out to dinner. We seemed to have to drive awhile before we found what we were looking for: a Mexican restaurant.  We had dinner then stopped to get ice cream and headed back to thr RV to watch a movie and take a nightly walk.

Saturday morning we decided to fill the tubes with more air and then take a hike which we have never had enough time for. We walked the Kelly loop trail. It is said to be 2.1 miles and rings the park and springs. It didn’t seem very long but there were parts of it that were pleasant to hike. We saw 2 deer and got to see the 3rd landing area for camping. We walked the boardwalk behind the springs and came back out in front of the ranger house. Then it was an easy walk back to the campsite. We loaded up our tubes and then headed to the springs.  We did a couple of runs and then bought lunch from the concession stand. We had hamburgers and onion rings and both were very good and were not too bad in price either.

it started to sprinkle so we loaded our stuff up and headed back to the RV where we found a neighbor setting up for a party. I guess it is cheaper to rent a campsite for $18 then the pavilion for $50 so they did. They set up, then went tubing and when we were gone for dinner they came back to have cake and ice cream and packed up and left.

We showered then had naps and read our books and then went to the Melting Pot for dinner. We bought coupons last year and this was our last one to use before they expired. We had an excellent dinner, went back to the RV and took a walk around the springs. We saw a deer drinking on the other side of the river but some tubers scared it away. Turtles were swimming around as well as some very large fish. We weren’t lucky enough to see the otters this time though.

After our walk we came back had ice cream, and watched another movie and went to bed. Sunday was restful and we got up and had breakfast and then cleaned up, dumped the tanks and made it home. It’s lovebug season but we were lucky and didn’t hit a swarm of them so clean up was pretty easy. We took the RV back to storage and went  to pickup PTCC at the Nick Hotel. She had a great weekend and so did we.

Here’s our review I posted:

We camped in site #8. Very shady with w/e, fire ring/grill combo, picnic table on a concrete slab. Sites are long enough for the longest RV’s. We did have a problem with the power going out, but it was rectified quickly with the ranger. This our 3rd time camping here and we still really like this campground. It is quiet, but close to the river where the tubing is. Park is not crowded during the week but does get full on weekends. We saw deer on the Kelly park Loop Trail hike, as well as turkeys, raccoons, and a bear was sighted in the campground during the weekend.