Tuesday October 25th 2016

I spent most of the day in research and planning mode. I need to add details to my general plans for the winter. I’ve known for some time that I want to stay in Florida until the end of January then head west for Arizona in March. I made reservations through December 30th last June, but I haven’t gotten around to completing my plans. I need reservations for January in Florida and March in Arizona assuming I’ll be traveling west during February.

A couple of visitors to the RV park this afternoon.

An RV park observer.

Soon after I made the November and December reservations I went into intense sell the New Hampshire house mode. It really is only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve slowed down to a more relaxed life style. Shortly after closing on the house I traveled to Alabama to get warranty work done on the RV. I got back to Florida in time to run to Georgia away from hurricane Matthew. The last two weeks I’ve been playing tourist as the realization set in that I could slow down.

So far I’ve been met by three obstacles in my search for a place to stay in January. The obstacles are high prices, lack of availability and repetition. The repetition element is a desire not to stay in the Orlando area where I spent time last winter and for the last two weeks. Ideally, I’d like to be on the Gulf coast from Tampa south during January.

The fact that all of the parks I’ve checked in my target area are more than twice what I paid last winter for a monthly rate has me annoyed. Just for the heck of it I checked the place I stayed last winter. That’s where the repetition concern comes into play. Interestingly, they still have similar prices, but don’t have room in January unless I’m staying for three months or more.

I’m working my way through a short list of parks starting with the lowest price acceptable park. To determine acceptability, I look at internet reviews, blog comments by other full time RVers and a check of the area and site layout using Google Maps. So far I have two places that don’t have availability on the New Years weekend, but are ok for the rest of the month. One other place is in the process of expanding and their new area is “planned” for completion before January. Tomorrow, I’ll try more parks at higher price points and further inland.

Sunset at Disney Springs

This evening, I decided to check out Disney Springs at night. I wanted to see the lighting in the new areas. The floating lanterns in the river separating the Landing area from Town Center had drawn my interest during the day. They turned out to be less than spectacular at night. In general, Disney Springs comes alive with entertainment at night, but the lighting isn’t all that impressive.

Living Statues in Halloween attire at Disney Springs.

For a weekday evening in October, there was a lot going on. There were street performers, bands and solo artists in gathering areas throughout the complex. Music also drifted out of the bigger restaurants like House of Blues. The crowds were thick around the entertainment, but judging by the empty spaces in the parking garage, many more people can visit the park before it will be consider close to full. The new Town Center area is about one third of the total space so the complex is considerably bigger than it used to be.

One of many bands at Disney Springs.

I will have to remember that night time is a better time to visit Disney Springs than the afternoon. Since I don’t plan to go back during my stay at Fort Wilderness in December, I’ll have to remember until 2018 when my next opportunity to visit id likely come up.

Monday October 24th 2016

Another great Florida day with a high temperature around 80 degrees. I did chores in the morning and returned to the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival in the afternoon.

The biggest chore was the laundry. This park has small front load washers, but high capacity dryer. My two loads of washing made for one quick 18 minute dryer load. The variety of machines, costs and cycle time to do the laundry continues to amaze me. No two parks are the same. So far the cost has varied from one dollar a load of wash to $3.50. This park was right in the middle at $2.25 per wash load and seventy five cents for the short dryer run.

Spaceship Earth at EPCOT

Late this afternoon I went back to the EPCOT International Food and Wine Festival for dinner. The only attraction I visited was a repeat of Soarin. I enjoyed it so much the other day, that I got another Fastpass for it. You really get the feeling of flying like a bird over the land and water. This time I had a seat closer to the center of the theater. It results in a clearer view of the picture. Last time, nearer the right side of the theater, the picture was a little distorted.

For dinner I started with the Lobster roll at the American Pavilion. It was good but hardly more than 3 mouth fulls. It was about 3 inches long. For my next course I had the Black Pepper Shrimp from the China pavilion. It had 3 little shrimp on top of noodles. Again it was good, but tiny. The entries with a drink each cost more than $20 combined and I really needed another one or two to complete the meal. My bottom line on the Food and Wine festival is good food, but terrible value.

After eating, I hung around the world showcase until 8PM. I watched the Fireworks from the Hollywood Studios park. They can be seen clearly from the bridge near the International Gateway entrance. Trying to take pictures of the fireworks with my camera is a lot of fun. I didn’t hang around until 9PM for the EPCOT Illuminations show. It’s a good show the first couple of times you see it. After that it seems nothing more than fire on a lake.

Sunday October 23rd 2016

It was a beautiful day in central Florida. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky all day. The temperature topped out around 80 starting from a low in the 50s this morning. The humidity and temperature is supposed to increase every day this week.

River separating Town Center from The Landing

I went to Disney Springs this afternoon. I wanted to check out the new Town Center section in a little more detail and do some general people watching. The traffic getting there wasn’t to bad. One thing that helps is Disney has built bus lanes into the median of Buena Vista Drive. Keeping them out of the main traffic flow really helps.

The first surprise at the Springs was the on-going construction on the Observatory. The conversion of Planet Hollywood into the Observatory must be behind schedule. It looked like they had full crews working on the exterior with more people inside the building. The other construction areas in the Landing section of the Springs did not have any workers present. I imagine they want the Observatory restaurant open for the holidays.
The crowds were very heavy for a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I didn’t expect it to be such a popular place on a weekend afternoon. There was also a great deal of security present. Disney security was in blue and the local sheriffs in green. I’m used to seeing one or two of each during a typical visit, but today they were at every corner in pairs with singles walking the grounds. Nothing was reported on the evening news, but it seemed to be an unusually heavy presence.

I spent about 2.5 hours walking around and checking out the shops. I successfully resisted the urge to buy anything not even any food. The new stores in Town Center are higher end places. They are some of the same names you see at outlet malls except these don’t pretend to have discounted prices. Some of the names I recognized are Tommy Bahama, Columbia Sportswear and Under Armour Brand House. Others like Uniqlo seem to have an Asian origin. Uniqlo is apparently a Japanese clothing store.

I didn’t pay much attention to the restaurants. The couple of menus I looked at had medium to high priced entries listed. You had to read the description to get a clue about the content of the meal. Usually the name will clue you in on the general category (pasta, meat, fish,…) but not some of these dishes. Disney has needed more restaurants that aren’t in the theme parks. I think they have filled that need.

The New England Patriots game was on TV at 4:30 so I rushed back home. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to watch the Pats when they are on the national broadcast. I miss be able to watch all of their games on TV. Down here they get the show the Dolphins, Jaguars or Bucs games. It doesn’t look like Orlando broadcast market has been designated the home area for any specific one of those teams by the NFL.

Saturday October 22nd 2016

This campground is a different place when the weekend campers arrive. I woke up this morning to loud music, kids at play and loud conversation. It was only 8AM, but it got worse as the day went by. From noon to 3PM, there was a party for the end of the summer term for the long term residents complete with DJ. I think this is a bit of a party campground.

To get away from the DJ, I went grill and grocery shopping. I need to replace my propane gas grill. It’s ten years old and showing its age. I wasn’t very successful finding a new grill. The big box stores like Home Depot, Walmart and Lowes have limit stock on hand. They are using the space for Christmas decorations. The Camping World has grills on display just not what I’m looking for. The old grill will last awhile more so, I will continue looking.

I got back to the campground with my groceries as the DJ was finishing his set. It really didn’t look like many people attended the party. Many of the long term residents that have kept their RVs here since May will be leaving for during the higher priced winter season. That season begins on November 1st.

It was loud

It had a license plate so it must be street legal.

This evening I walked up to Old Town to observe the crowds at play and check out the cars at the Cruse-in. Every Saturday night since sometime in the 1990s, Old Town has held a classic car show and parade. For some reason, according to the PA announcer, tonight had a particularly heave turn out of cars and spectators. It maybe because of the weather. For the first time this fall in Florida, the temperature got low enough that I had to put on a sweatshirt.

There were many restored cars on display. The majority were muscle cars from the 1960s and 70s, but there were a fair number of cars from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and some later years. The Halloween holiday spirit was on display. Zombies, witches and spiders were popping out of the engine compartments of cars and trucks. Also in tune with the season, I think the roar of some of the engines would wake the dead.

Friday October 21st 2016

This afternoon I went to Disney’s Animal Kingdom park. I was armed with two Fastpasses. One was for the Kali River Rapids Ride and the other was for the Kilimanjaro Safari.

The Kali River Rapids Ride is a wet ride so I made sure my scheduled time was at the heat of the day 4PM. I needed to kill some time after I arrived at the park, so I started with the Maharajah Jungle Trek. A Kimodo Dragon and a tiger were do a good job of posing and drawing a crowd. The warm sun allowed the Kimodo Dragon to be the most active I have ever seen. I also lucked out and got an up close view of the tiger moving around. They are usually basking in the sun far from the viewing area.

When I finished with my jungle trek it was time for the river rapids ride. The line to get in the Fastpass entrance was much longer than the standby line, but this was offset by the length of the line once you walk the long round about path to the boarding area. The standby line was listed at 50 minutes and even with the various Fastpass backups it probably didn’t take more than 15 minutes until I was ready to get wet. The 12 person rafts go up a ramp to rapids that are advertised to be class 4, then after traversing the top of the hill drops you back down “over the falls”. You can’t avoid getting wet. Purely by luck, I stayed a little drier than some of my raft mates. The ride was closed for rehab last winter so I didn’t get a chance to enjoy this ride. It was worth the wait.

My Fastpass time for the Safari was 6:20. I had two hours after the river rapids to dry out and do other things before the safari. I walked around the park looking for a snack and a place to sit and watch the crowd. I found the snack, but not the place to sit. This park doesn’t have many places to sit that aren’t in restaurants. It was warm enough so I was dry in 15 minutes and finished with my snack soon thereafter.

Taveta Golden Weaver

Merrkat

The other rides and shows either didn’t interest me or had lines that would get in the way of my up coming Fastpass. I took my time on the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail watching the merkats and the gorillas. The merkats are very community oriented. One stands guard with the others eat, work and play, then they switch off. The gorillas are family unit oriented with the silver back male keeping his mates and young nearby. The single adult males have their own area. The gorillas were near the viewing areas today.

Black Rhino

After spending more time than I would normally spend on the Gorilla trail, I still had more than an hour until my safari time. The standby time for the Kilomanjaro Safari was only 20 minutes so I decided to get in line. I could use my Fastpass for a re-ride. It is a good thing I did. I was able to see many animals and get some good pictures. The second trip around was as darkness was arriving. The route the vehicle took was shorter and it was very difficult to get clear pictures.

On the way out crowds were gathering around the tree of life. The animal carvings on the tree are highlighted by flood lights and lasers to tell a story. I caught a little of it but kept moving toward the exit. Disney still hasn’t come up with a complete nighttime show even though they have completed all of the seating areas around the wide area in the river by the Finding Nemo theater.

Thursday October 20th 2016

After three active days, today was a stay at home and do errands kind of day. It was a slow morning. Between watching TV and surfing the Internet I was just finishing my morning coffee as the morning ended.

I took a walk around the campground to kick my self into a higher gear. Much of the lower area of the campground is reclaimed swamp land. To dry it out several streams and retention ponds have created. Wildlife has claimed those areas as habitat. They have bench seats with large umbrellas around the area to use to observe the wildlife. That’s exactly what I did; watch the wildlife.

A very tropical scene with five birds. Can you find the Blue Herron?

Zoomed in view of the birds. The herron is in the middle.

At one of the containment ponds I watched a ripple in the water move from the far side toward me. It was to small to be an alligator so I was betting on a water snake. It turned out to be a turtle. It would pop its head out of the water every few feet for air. When it got close, I’d estimate it was a foot and half or more long.

Turtle popping its head out of the water for air.

The turtle just below the surface of the water.

Later in the day I went out for a drive and for groceries. My drive route took me to the nearby town of Celebration. This is a planned community that was originally designed by the Disney Corporation. The center of the town is setup in a historic sort of Art Deco motif with park facilities. I wanted to stop and walk around but they were setting up for an event. Streets were blocked off and parking was scarce. So I continued on to the Publix grocery store and back to the RV for the evening.

Wednesday October 19th 2016

This afternoon I went back to EPCOT for more of the International Food & Wine Festival. I was a little more prepared today. I had booked two Fastpass reservations for rides and I was prepared to be more original with my choice of food for supper.

EPCOT Spaceship Earth

There are two attractions at EPCOT that I want to see. Both the Frozen Ever After ride and the updated Soarin Around the World experience are new since my last visit in the early spring. I was successful in obtaining a Fastpass for Soarin. I will continue to check other days for a Frozen Ever After Fastpass. I know I can get one for my December stay at Fort Wilderness, but I want see it sooner.

Soarin Around the World is terrific. The original Soarin focused on California, this version goes to sights all over the world. The experience starts flying low over polar bears and ice flows only to be surprised by a whale breaching in front of you. As you fly through the splash from the whale returning to the sea the video transitions to flying above elephants only to transition to other areas. Some of the highlights include kites flying over the Great Wall of China, going around the pyramids of Egypt, flying with Hot Air balloons in Monument Valley and flying around the Eiffel Tower. This is really a fun experience.

Muppets entertaining the crowd

My other Fastpass was for the Journey into Imagination ride. I really like Figment the featured character on this ride. The ride is showing its age, but I enjoy it. The depiction of computers as flashing lights and magnetic tape reels is anachronistic. The current generation finds it hard to believe that computers were ever that big and clunky. If they knew how slow they were compared to today’s cell phones they’d be even more amazed.

This visit I came prepared to eat and drink at the Food and Wine Festival. The kiosks around the park sell different International foods and wines. The food is in small portions costing between four and eight dollars. The wine choices are similarly priced, but you get closer to a normal portion for the cost. To have enough to call it a meal, you need to purchase more than one mini entree.

For my dinner, I started with a spicy shrimp dish from Australia combined with a Chardonnay. It was tasty and not overly spicy. Since it only contained 3 medium sized shrimp another mini entree was in order. A little while later I chose a Beef Burgundy dish with a Merlot and Cabernet blend wine from France. The two pieces of beef on a three inch round by three quarters of an inch thick mashed potato glob was also very good. I was tempted by a few other choices but will leave them until another time.

I left the park about 7:30. Waiting around for the evening entertainment would mean walking around the world showcase another time or two to kill time then fighting the crowds to exit at the end of the night. I chose to come home early.

Tuesday October 18th 2016

Today’s adventure was at Walt Disney World. I didn’t go to any parks, but toured some of the resort hotels instead. I gave Disney transportation got a workout.

My tour started at Disney Springs this afternoon. I had a hot fudge Sunday at Ghiradelli’s using the dollar off coupon I got at the Food and Wine festival. It still is a very expensive Sunday, but good. From the Springs I caught a launch to the Port Orleans Riverside resort. The ride up the canals passes the Sarasota Springs resort and one of the golf courses. It was very picturesque with quite a few wading birds along the way.

Along the bank of the canal leading to Port Orleans Riverside

Small period patrol boat following the launch in the canal through the golf course.

From the Port Orleans resort I caught a bus to the Magic Kingdom. The bus takes a route through lesser developed areas of Walt Disney World. There were a couple of deer along the side of the road. One father on the bus attempted to convince his kids that the deer were Bambi’s children. Even at about five years old, the kids weren’t buying it. I think the father had a little to much Disney cultural indoctrination.

The bus drops you off at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. It was organized chaos with departing day visitors and arriving visitors for the separate admission Halloween Party trying to pass through security. I bypassed the crowds my getting on the resort Monorail to the Polynesian Resort.

The Polynesian Resort had its own crowd scene with people waiting for dinner reservations at the Ohana restaurant and another line for the Luau. I walked from the Polynesian to the Grand Floridian resort checking out the beach area along the way. After the death of a child to an alligator attack last spring, Disney has put up a fence between the beach sand and the water. It sounds really strange but way it has been accomplished looks fairly natural. If you hadn’t been there before or you didn’t know the why behind the fence you think anything of it.

Beach with fence and 6 feet of heavy boulders around the Seven Seas Lagoon at the Polynesian Resort.

Fence and boulders between the beach and water at the Grand Floridian resort. It looks normal.

From the Grand Floridian, I took the Monorail back to the Magic Kingdom to pick up a boat to Fort Wilderness. The crowd at the Magic Kingdom had more arriving visitors for the Halloween party this time around. People were really into it. I saw people in costumes from the complete range of Disney movies and animation. The only restriction was visitors couldn’t wear masks. There was plenty of face paint used to get around that restriction.

At Fort Wilderness the Halloween theme continued. Many campsites were heavily decorated. There weren’t as many sites decorated as I’ve seen during Christmas, but the decorated sites were just as over the top. As Halloween gets closer there probably will be many more sites decorated. I grew up with decorating for Christmas, but the concept of decorating for Halloween has never set in.

Halloween decorations at Fort Wilderness

Halloween decorations at Fort Wilderness.

Halloween Decorations at Fort Wilderness by an avid Greenbay Packers fan.

I returned to Disney Springs by bus to pick up my car and return home. The Springs at night is more alive than during the day. Live music is played throughout the complex and acts like jugglers and mimes are performing. I didn’t get to check out the lanterns in the river that I saw during the day light. That means another trip to Disney Springs after dark.

Monday October 17th 2016

I got up this morning with the general plan to do something interesting today. This afternoon a more detailed plan of going over to Disney’s EPCOT to eat was put into action. I arrived at the park about three thirty and proceeded to join the crowds.

EPCOT Food and Wine Festival

There were a lot more people at EPCOT than I had expected. The Food and Wine Festival must be a successful draw, because the crowd level reminded me of the holidays not October. I’ll be able to judge better after I see how busy the other parks are. I had to park at the back of the second section of parking lot. All of the times I visited the park last winter, I never had to park as far away as today.

Festival Center

I really didn’t know what to expect of the Food and Wine Festival. It turned out that the primary feature is food kiosks around the park that sell International foods and wines. In hind sight, it’s pretty obvious that’s what it would be, but I hadn’t thought it through ahead of time. I had planned to have Fish & Chips at the British Pavilion. A better plan would have been to find something more unique from one of the kiosks. Now that I know what it’s all about, that’s exactly what I’ll do next time.

Chef Mickey holding a skewer of green.

Most of the kiosks served small reasonably priced (for Disney) portions of food that could be paired with a wine from the region. I saw many things that interested my somewhat limited palate. The American Pavilion even had a kiosk selling lobster rolls.

One of the Flower beds with fall colors.

The festival center is in the building between Ellen’s Energy Adventure and Mission Space. It originally held life science related attractions like the motion simulator ride through the human body. It has only been used for special events for many years now. For the Food and Wine Festival it had a couple of restaurants with white table cloths, a couple of lecture areas and several shops. You could buy cook books, wine and Ghiradelli chocolate. Ghiradelli was even giving out samples and discount coupons for the shop at Disney Springs.

One of the things I look forward to at EPCOT are the gardens and plantings. They are usually very bright and attention drawing. This time they were all in muted fall colors. Browns and purples were very prominent. It seemed appropriate for the season and the event, but it didn’t live up to my high expectations. There was one big topiary of Chef Mickey barbequing.

One visitor to EPCOT that didn’t seem to care about the crowds.

I only went on two rides; the Living with the Lands boat ride and Spaceship Earth. These are favorites that only had 20 minute waits. Had I planned better, I would have made Fastpass reservations for some of the other rides. The new Frozen Ever After ride had a two hour standby time. I’ll try to make Fastpass reservations for another visit in the next two weeks.

Sunday October 16th 2016

It was another partly cloudy day with a couple of significant scattered showers. When it rained it was brief but intense. One of them came at the breakfast hour causing my whole day to slow to a crawl. My car never left the campground.

I spent the morning watching “how to” shows on TV and the afternoon watching football games. The football games weren’t the one of interest to the local population, not to my northern tastes. My phone kept me up to date on the Patriots game, but it’s not the same as actually watching it.

Go-Carts climbing the first of three decks on one of two multi-level tracks at Fun Spot America Amusement Park.

About four, after the first set of football games, I went for a walk that ended up back at Old Town and the Fun Spot Amusement park. It is not nearly as busy on a Sunday afternoon as it was Friday and Saturday nights. I wanted to take a picture of the Go-Cart track to better explain my comments about traffic jams in yesterday’s blog. I got the pictures, but there were no collisions while I was there. The number of people using the Go-Cart track was about half of the number last night. Also, there didn’t seem to be as many aggressive drivers casing problems on the track.

Most of the weekend campers departed today. I have new neighbors on one side and the other side will be leaving tomorrow. Having the weekend campers depart on Sunday is to be expected. Kids need to go to school and the parents to work. The odd thing about many of the long term campers is that they departed the first thing in the morning. Usually campers that leave their equipment at the campground long term, will not return home until late in the day. They try to get the most out of their weekend at the campground. A lot of these long term campers were gone by the time I finished breakfast. A minor mystery that I don’t think I’ll solve.

Tomorrow I need to get a little more active. Spending time at my RV home is enjoyable, but there are things to see and do in the area.