Travel Picture - The Walt Disney World Experience
November 27, 2001 - Arrival

 

We last came to Walt Disney World with our children in 1975.  We had left Buffalo, NY in a snowstorm.  When we arrived in Orlando a day or two before Christmas, it was cold.  Rudolph left Christmas stockings filled with candy on the handle of our pop-top trailer.  Twenty-six years later, we leave our seasonal campsite in Port Charlotte for the easy drive up to Orlando. Interstate 4 has exit after exit announcing Walt Disney World.  We decide on exit 26 B and leave the interstate to enter Disney Intrastate Highways, a vast internal road system leading to what employees refer to as "The World."

A huge arch with Mickey smiling from the crest crosses the road and we feel we've entered the World.  We stop at a ticket booth where our reservation is compared to a picture ID and we follow the signs past Epcot Center and on to Fort Wilderness.  The roads are lined with trees and shrubbery with an occasional parking lot or roof the only indication that anything exists beyond the highway and the signs.  We turn left into an entry area and pull up behind another rig.  Only two of six gates are open, but the lines are quite short.  The gate looks like a tollbooth tricked out as a log fort. Through the gate we can see people riding around on bikes and others happily moving about on the ubiquitous golf carts.

We pull up to the gate where Darlene, a trim black women with very short hair dressed in the Fort Wilderness uniform of a blue denim dress greets us with a hearty "Howdy."  We hand her a credit card and our reservation and begin discussions about our site.  We ask about cable TV and decide to upgrade from loop 1600 to loop 300, both pet loops.  The upgrade raises our daily fee to $47.00 per night, low for Disney World as this is one of the slowest seasons of the year here.  She hands us six credit cards, which contain our keys to the World.  She asks whether we want to use these for cash free movement around the World and adds a $1500 automatic draw against our credit card.  It sure is easy to spend money here.  Darlene has been helpful, knowledgeable, and smooth as silk as she offers us the opportunity to upgrade and then charge; we never once feel to see if our wallets are still in place.

We drive to our loop.  The road is paved, as are the sites.  Trees crowd in from both sides of the road.  The sites are close together yet separated by plantings and trees.  There is a central comfort station.  Recycling centers are placed unobtrusively around the area - baskets for newspapers, periodicals, aluminum, and plastic as well as a half-buried trash barrel low enough so trash doesn't have to be lifted to be dumped.  All the trees, the recycling centers, and the trucks parked in front of their rigs present us with a significant challenge backing into our site.  I cut it to close on the first try.  On the second, I'm still too close and, while backing and filling I nip the bike rack on the front of the truck against a tree across the road and bend it.  Meanwhile, our new neighbor helps at the window, obscuring my rear-view mirror so I can't see Irene who is signaling me into the slot.  Finally I get it right and slide right in.  A little backing and filling and we're in.  Whether we'll be able to get out again is another question.

The site, while tight, is the best-designed campsite we've ever used.  On the utility side, the sewer connection is placed in a stainless steel sink with an additional drain.  Any overflow will stay contained.  Water, electric, and cable are on a solid post beside the sewer.  A green hose hangs from a second spigot.  When the sites are emptied, "cast members" spray down the cement pads and rake the sand at the back.  There's enough room in the site for the kids' tent as well as our fiver and truck.  The site is raised above the surrounding roots, trees, and shrubs.  Despite the foliage, there's enough hole to shoot the satellite.  Happiness is both local cable and the dish.  Our rear living room window looks out on the woods with nothing obvious behind us.

We get on our bikes to ride up to the office.  The bike path winds along beside the road.  It's just wide enough for bikes to pass in either direction.  The loops head off the main road.  There seem to be plenty of rigs here, especially since this is supposed to be slow season.  Our pet loop is almost full.  We arrive at the desk where Darlene is now behind a cash register.  We purchase four adult and two child seven-day Park Hopper tickets.  She hits a few keys on the computer and our hotel IDs are now admission tickets to theme parks and other attractions.  This sets us back $1825.44.  Darlene warns us to treat the Disney ID cards as if they were money.  They are.  The IDs also serve as keys to the comfort stations after midnight.

November 28, 2001

At one in the afternoon our environment changes completely as two energized grandsons run from gate 129 at Orlando International Airport into their grandmother's waiting arms.  Alex (age six) and Peter (age 4) accompanied by their parents (Rick age 36 and Suzie age 35) have arrived for a ten-day stay.  We stop at an outlet mall to buy a few forgotten pieces of clothing and head back to the The World.  Peter wants to head for the rides immediately.  Alex studies Birnbaum's Walt Disney World for Children trying to decide what to make of this new experience.  Peter is crying because we are planning a trip to Cape Canaveral tomorrow to see a launch rather than launching ourselves into the Magic Kingdom immediately.  The nazi at the gate insists on seeing my picture ID (again) and looking at my plastic entry pass even though there's a perfectly good parking permit prominently displayed on our dashboard.

We orient the kids to the campsite and put gear in their tent.  Rick and I go for a short bike ride to get bread at the camp store while Suzie and Irene finish getting Rick's family unpacked and dressed in Florida clothes. The winter clothing from New Hampshire quickly disappears.  Peter whimpers because he can't go on a ride, now.   Alex watches and waits.  He makes a short entry in his journal.  Draws a few pictures.  Studies Birnbaum.  We decide we need to do something to satisfy Peter and begin to create this new experience for all of us, so we head for Downtown Disney.

It's nearly dark, and braving the road network is my first challenge. Irene, Rick, and I all try to read road signs as we near Downtown Disney West, which includes attractions like Disney Quest, an indoor mini-theme park for which tickets cost about thirty bucks, Planet Hollywood, House of Blues, an AMC multi-plex theater complex with 24 screens and Pleasure Island, a complex of nightclubs and nightlife centers having its own admission charge, too.  We're headed for the Downtown Disney Marketplace. The parking lots look full, but we turn up an aisle and find a close-in parking space into which our rented mini-van slides easily.  If we had the truck we would need to head out to a much more remote parking space.  The Marketplace is devoted to eating and shopping.  It's mobbed at 5:30 P.M. as if a day at the theme parks has only whetted the appetites of thousands of people for more opportunities to walk, eat, and spend.

I walk into The World of Disney where I am immediately informed that this is the largest character store in the world.  The vast floor contains every sort of Disney bauble one could possibly wish for - clothes, toys, souvenirs, coffee mugs, clocks, and on and on.  I am looking for a road map to the Disney complex.  A "cast member" (read sales clerk here) wearing one of the ubiquitous headsets found here sends me to the information desk where a helpful clerk hands me a couple of maps she takes from beneath the counter.  Other brochures are available for the taking, but the road map is under the counter.  I wonder why this is.

Outside, we walk towards the Lego Imagination Center.  A snoring Lego grandfather sits slumped on a park bench.  He is made of yellow and blue Lego blocks and people sit next to him on the bench to have their pictures taken.  He doesn't seem to mind.  A huge green Lego Loch Ness Monster rears from the nearby lake.  Other Lego constructions stand about the area.  A Lego store is set back nearby, but the big attraction is a group of round tables with metal drawer underneath them.  Each drawer contains an ample supply of Lego blocks for building things.  Nearby is a small race-track where kids are running the Lego vehicles they have built.  Peter's disposition picks up.  He and Alex both run Lego cars built by others before heading for the tables to make their own.  I head for a bench.  Happiness reigns.  One glorious feature of Disney is the number of benches available. Lego doesn't seem to care that many Lego blocks probably leave in kids' pockets. There never seems to be a time when I can't find a place to get the load off for a few minutes.  Great planning.  Alex heads into the store with his mother.  Immediately he finds a $200.00 movie making kit he has to have. Disappointment reigns.  Later he will select a Lego techno set too difficult for his father to put together.

We head for the Rainforest Café for dinner.  A lighted rocky mountain looms over the area and we use it for a landmark.  The restaurant is hung with thousands of faux tropical plants.  Lifelike animals and birds are scattered about.  Every few minutes there is thunder and lightening and a rainstorm surrounds the bar with falling water.  The "cast members" playing waiters are cheery and helpful.  We are seated on an outdoor veranda overlooking the lake.  There is no wait.  The kids order mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. We order food which arrives just as we return from a tour of the rainforest. It's reasonable well-prepared and tasty and costs about twenty-five percent more than it would in the real world outside "The World."  When the check arrives I'm surprised to find the gratuity included and pleased that it's less than I would have tipped the waiter.  We suppose enough waiters get stiffed by people scandalized at the prices to make it necessary to include the tip in the price.

We finally find a ride for Peter.  A small train runs around in a tiny circle.  He and Alex ride while Rick and Suzie explore the nearby Team Mickey Athletic Club, a sporting goods store.  Rick comes back to tell me I need to visit it myself and I spend $85.00 on a golf shirt and visor for Irene and a golf hat with Tigger putting on the brim for me. We wander back to the Lego store and buy a kit for each kid before returning to the parking lot to retrieve our car.  Somehow, we find our way home.  The kids play more or less quietly until bedtime.  Peter wants to go on rides.