M-I-C......K-E-Y......M-O-U-S-E!

I left Daughter's house and headed to Orlando.  I am meeting Son and his family at Disney World.  The last time I was at Disney World was 1989.  Son was 11 years old and Daughter was 9 years old.  That seems like a lifetime ago!  I had purchased a book named The Unofficial Guide to Disney World.  I had studied it, wrote a schedule for each park we were visiting, knew all the tips to making the most of your visit, and stressed myself out making sure we stuck to the schedule and everything was "perfect".  Now, they have apps that give you wait times for rides, wait times for restaurants, lets you sign up for Fast Pass (that too is new), etc.  At that time, Disney World (DW) only had 3 parks.  We bought 3-day tickets and visited only 2 of the parks, Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  We did not stay in the park.  We stayed at an RV park that was right outside of the park.  We were up early, went to bed late, and ran ourselves ragged.  So, on our way home, I ask the kids if they had a great time.  Daughter said it was wonderful.  Son said it was OK but he liked Astroworld better. What? I spent this much money for you to like a Six Flags Park in H-town better?  Are you kidding me? Fast forward 25 years and Mr. "I like Astroworld better" is at Disney World with his kids and trying to make their experience magical.

The grandchildren knew nothing about this trip.  Thanksgiving morning, Son and DIL gathered the children and told them that they were going to go one by one and say one thing that they were thankful for.  Son went first, then Boy-child, then Girl-child, then Squeaky, and finally DIL.  DIL said that she had 2 things to be thankful for.  She said she was thankful for her family and that her family would be leaving that afternoon to go to Disney World.  There was silence.  The children just looked at her with a deer in the headlights look.  They didn't believe her!  Now that would have been a horrible joke to play on your kids.  After several minutes of talking and saying it over again, they finally convinced the kids that they were serious.  THEN, there was a whole lot of yelling going on!

So, they left Thursday afternoon, spent the night in Biloxi, and arrived at Disney World Friday evening.  They are staying at a cabin at Ft. Wilderness.  We arrived Saturday morning and are staying in a campsite in Ft. Wilderness which is within walking distance from their cabin.  I sure was glad to see those kiddos.  I will say that we arrived early and did have to wait for our campsite.  Once we got into our campsite, the electricity did not work.  The 50 amp was arcing every time you tried to turn it on.  We plugged into the 30 amp to wait for the 50 amp to be repaired and the 30 amp started making a sizzling sound and a burning smell.  Unplug period.  I called and reported it.  They told me they would send someone out right away.  An hour later, I had to call back and ask when they thought someone would out.  The guy came shortly thereafter.  He had to replace the whole panel of breakers.  There are many things about this experience that were questionable and for the amount of money I'm paying for this site, this should be a "Disney experience", not a questionable experience.

Once the electricity issue was taken care of, we all headed for Downtown Disney.  DIL wanted to go and do some shopping and Son wanted to see what they had there since he had no recollection of visiting Downtown Disney 25 years ago. This child of mine............

Me and Girl-child

It's Christmastime at Disney

This serpent is made entirely out of Legos

This entire thing is made out of Legos too.  They are both right outside of the Lego store.

This was advertised as a "Family Experience".  We didn't make a reservation and don't have time to make one. Someone will have to fill me in on what this is.

Ft. Wilderness has enough things to entertain you without ever going to any of the theme parks.  One of the things is the Hoop-Dee-Do Revue.  It is a dinner theater.  Everyone knows that it is not cheap to eat at Disney.  Well, it's not cheap to do anything at Disney, but food is one you really notice because you have to eat.  So we decided to go to the dinner theater because in the whole scheme of things, it wasn't a bad deal.  You were served fried chicken, bar-b-que ribs, mashed potatoes, corn, beans, salad, and cornbread as your meal.  It was all you could eat.  Your drink was included and you could choose soft drinks, tea, lemonade, coffee, milk, beer or wine.  Your drink was also all you could drink.  Strawberry shortcake was dessert.  The chicken, ribs, salad and cornbread were good.  The strawberry shortcake was better than good! The entertainment was fun, family friendly, and interactive with the audience.  We ended up sitting very CLOSE to the stage so we had perfect seats.  The kids really enjoyed this show.  I even saw a lot of smiles and laughing coming from Girl-child! You are doing something if she smiles and laughs!

Pioneer Hall where the show is

Our table. The kids weren't too crazy about the food.

The kids were playing the washboard as the singers sang.

The best strawberry shortcake ever!

After the dinner theater was over, we waited to go to the beach area and watch the fireworks from Magic Kingdom.  When we first got there, there was music playing and a light show of water creatures was happening.  This went on for about 10 minutes and promptly at 10:00 the fireworks began.

We are not seasoned Disney RVers.  So, who knew that people would be decorating their campsites for Christmas? Well, they do and some of them are over the top.  I should have known something was up when the guy who checked us in told us that if we put up holiday decorations and lights in our campsite, we had to turn them off by 10:00 pm.  We even heard from fellow campers than their friends had come one year during this time and they were the only people in their loop that had not decorated.  Their fellow "loop campers" gave them such a hard time that they went to the dollar store and bought decorations!

This was only half of their decorations.