Current Location: Fort Wilderness Campground, Bay Lake, Florida (Disney)

We slept in a bit this morning and slowly pulled up stakes at Casey Jones. We had a 1:30 PM check-in at Disney and figured on a 3 hour drive plus a little time for lunch. So, right about 10:00, we pulled out onto the highway with David following us in his car.

I-75 was pretty busy, as is typical. No big accidents or anything, though. It was smooth sailing. We hung a left onto the Florida Turnpike and headed towards Orlando. We went through two toll plazas with our new stickers. Everything seemed to work just fine. We stopped at the first service center on the turnpike and had grilled chicken sandwiches from KFC. They were OK.

As Malcolm did a walk-around of the trailer, he noticed several ladybugs wandering around outside. I guess they are out and about down here, so we still can’t totally get away from them. Malcolm carried a few into the truck and had to get out and brush them off a couple times before we could leave.

We got to the Disney campground entrance right around 1:30, as planned. It wasn’t too bad of a wait. Fortunately, due to Malcolm having checked in on the internet the night before, once we got to the gate it just took a few minutes to get going towards our site.

Check-in time.

Site 1613.

We got a site that was on the outside of a curve and almost at a 90 degree angle to the road, making it challenging to back into. We finally got backed into the site without incident, though we were curious why one small tree on the driver’s side of the rear of the trailer kept leaning towards the trailer when we backed up. We found someone had left a clothesline strung between a smaller tree and a larger one across the site. When we backed into the line, it pulled the tree down into the back of the trailer. We borrowed scissors from a neighbor and took care of that problem.

We got the truck unhooked, leveled the trailer, hooked up the utilities and turned on the air conditioners (it was 82 degrees and sunny). While things cooled off, we organized some stuff including bringing the remaining food in from the outside refrigerator that we put out there before Christmas (mostly condiments) and loaded them into the inside refrigerator.

Malcolm and David ran the truck over to the extra vehicle parking area and left it. If we go anywhere by car (and we don’t expect to, necessarily), we’ll use David’s car to get there. With the car dropped off, we headed to the bus stop, rode the bus to the boat dock and rode the boat over to the Magic Kingdom. There, we hopped on the monorail and rode the loop through the Contemporary Resort, the Polynesian, the Grand Floridian and back to the main gate. From there, we hopped on another boat over to the Wilderness Lodge, where we had dinner reservations for 6:40 PM.

Sunset over the Grand Floridian

We were about an hour early and our light lunch had long since worn off. We stopped in a gift shop and grabbed some snacks, sitting outside and enjoying the weather. Malcolm used the Disney app on his phone to reserve lunch and dinner spots for tomorrow at Epcot, as well as obtaining a couple Fast Passes for rides there for he and David.

After dinner at the Wilderness Lodge, we caught the boat back to the campground. We arrived on shore just in time (8:00) for the evening fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom, which can be seen from the beach near the boat launch. They pipe in the music from the show so you can follow along. After watching that, we caught the bus back to our loop.

We stopped to check out the Christmas display completely surrounding one of the motor homes on our loop. The picture, below, doesn’t do it justice. We suspect they’re using the 50 amp circuits from their own site and the two adjacent sites as well. They had a lit path all the way around the coach and around the back.

Christmas lights

Once back at the trailer, we plopped down to relax. Tomorrow is Epcot. Temperature forecast is 68 degrees. I believe we’ll be catching the cold front towards evening. It is supposed to be down around 32 tomorrow night. Tonight is pleasant. We opened a few windows and turned on the power fan.

License plates were plentiful, as one would expect on I-75 in Florida. 28 out of 51.

Today’s plates