Friday October 28th 2022

Today’s weather was a step down from the previous days. It was a mostly cloudy day with an occasional rain shower in the afternoon. The overall temperature reached the mid eighties, so it was a comfortable day.

My mission for the day was to view some Halloween decorations. Decorating for Halloween seems to have become as significant for some people as decorating for Christmas. Several years, particularly when I was out west, I have stayed in campgrounds that the residents really decorated for the holiday. The last couple of years I haven’t seen many RVs decorated. Today I went to Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground to see what anecdotally has been called the ultimate Halloween decorated campground.

Fort Wilderness is decorated by the campers. They personalize their campsites with all kinds of festive, spooky and generally creative decorations. Disney doesn’t encourage visitors to the campground. They have parking problems and they want to avoid crowd control issues. You can’t just drive to the campground if you aren’t staying there. Today I parked at the Magic Kingdom and took a boat to the campground. I think even that method of getting to Fort Wilderness will be restricted to people camping in the campground this weekend and on Halloween.

I started my adventure with a quick visit to the Magic Kingdom theme park. I arrived just before 1PM only to be greeted by the start of a rain shower. I dodged the rain most of the day by riding rides or eating inside. I got in four attractions, watched the Parade and the Castle stage show before it was time to make my way to Fort Wilderness.

Here are some pictures of the Halloween decorations in the Magic Kingdom.

It was still daylight when I arrived at the campground. Being very familiar with the campground from previous visits I set out to explore the various loops to check out the decorations. The majority of the sites were decorated. The most common forms of decoration were store bought blowup figures. There were lots of blowup pumpkins, ghosts, witches and of course Mickey Mouse. Some people were more creative. I saw attempts to recreate the Haunted Mansion, elaborate grave yards, and other things that were just plain creepy. After dark they got even spookier.

Shortly before 8PM I caught the boat back to the monorail at the Magic Kingdom for the ride to the parking lot. The next adventure was navigating the traffic back to my RV home. It wasn’t theme park traffic, just everyday commuter traffic combined with several construction zones. It was close to 9PM by the time I was home.

Here are some pictures of Halloween at the Fort.

This turkey on a fence post in Fort Wilderness didn’t seem impressed by the decoration or me as I walked by with in a yard of its perch.