Fort Wilderness Disneyness

We decided the other day that since we were going right past Disney World, we'd stop for a day and ride some stuff. We found a campground INSIDE Magic Kingdom called Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground and in the photos online it looked like a wooded Oregon state park. I called to see if we could get a reservation and got a Disney Robotron who sang to me on the phone and wanted me to talk to her. She said/sang things to me things like: 

"Okay now I'd like you to SAY and then SPELL your last name! Like THIS: 'Smith!' S-M-I-T-H. Now it's YOUR turn."

She's a robot, but she's a smiling robot. I can just tell.

I say: "Domela. D-O-M-E-L-A."

Robotron says: "GREAT! Now I'LL spell it BACK to you to make sure I got it right: G-O-M-I-E-L-A."

I laughed.

Robotron says: "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

Eventually they connected me to a person, and he said: "Hi!!! MY name is Connor. HOW can I HELP you??"

I could hear his huge grin through the phone. He was just like my robotron, only he was real!

We reserved a spot and a park pass for one day and we were set. I wasn't sure what to expect…camping at Disney World. I grew up in Southern California and we went to Disneyland many times per year and it was fun, and casual –probably because I was a local. It was not a huge to-do. We could watch the fireworks from the roof of our house in Seal Beach, and sometimes on Friday night when I was 16 and could drive, I'd take my friends and we'd go to Videorama (I think that's what it was called) to dance…like you'd go to an all ages club.

Anyway, we went through all the Disney rigamarole and got to the campground and it's really nice. Our spot is beautiful and big and the campground itself is wooded and pretty. 

We parked and did a bunch of work, then walked over toward the lake and went in and had some dinner at the Trail's End restaurant (buffet, with full bar, decent food, reasonable prices for Disney). It was about 8:30pm when we finished so we walked out to the marina/lake. There's a beach, with sand and sun cots and everything, so we grabbed a couple cots and waited to watch the 9pm fireworks show. There was Disney music background that I'm pretty sure plays over every single speaker covering every single inch of the park property…but it was nice.

We walked back to our campsite and on the way, saw this:

There's more there that didn't fit in the photo, too. And the little curtained theater-looking area in the back: That's the front window of the RV in this particular campsite and some of the decorations are about 7 feet tall. It's apparently a thing here, to decorate for Halloween. 

We walked a little further and saw this cute little Halloween travel trailer complete with scary ghost that opens and closes the trailer door:

The trailer was part of an enormous display that took up a huge area in what looked like a big corner lot in the campground.

As we came around the corner, we realized that ALL of this decoration belonged to one campsite. This campsite:

On the right, The RV, and the RV's front window…completely covered with Halloweenness. On the left, they've got an inflatable doorway with black streamers that opens to the yard with the gazillions of inflatable ghosts and scaries, so I assume they'll still be here for Halloween….with candy and stuff. It's so hard to capture the intensity of the festivity here. Maybe I'll try in the daytime. 

What a cool deal. In our little welcome pack, there's a page thats called "Guidelines for Holiday Decorations on Guest Sites." Kevin said we should just keep the tiki torches in the truck since we are clearly out of our league here. 

After we got back to the Airstream we were working while listening to the presidential debate. Outside, they were playing happy happy Disney music over loudspeakers throughout the entire campground. I'm not sure what was going on out there, but it was loud, and it was Disney, and it was a comical accompaniment to the debate, for sure.

Tomorrow: rides and Epcot and stuff.