Disney World, Part II -- More Free Fun

Besides the sand and water fun that Keira was partial to, there was plenty of other free fun to be had.  Not only is the camp ground about half the price of the hotels, it seems to have even better amenities, too.  One of our favorites this trip was the new pool.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the pool on this trip.  The pool has always been fine, but since our last visit they added a large water slide and a big water play area.  The new improved pool nearly made visits to the water parks obsolete.  In fact, this trip we only visited a park, The Magic Kingdom, once.  The rest of the trip we spent exploring the camp ground, the pool, and the rest of Disney World by boat, monorail, and bus.  Keira's favorite mode of transportation were the boat rides.  That's another advantage to the camp ground, while the budget hotels are only accessible by Disney World buses, the camp ground, however, can also be reached by boat.  From the boat, you can get to Magic Kingdom or the various resorts on the lake, who are also linked by the monorail.  We enjoyed many boat rides this trip.

One special highlight of our boat rides was that one skipper fed the birds.  Apparently, the birds could differentiate between the various skippers, since he was the only one we saw feeding the birds, and consequently the only one who seemed to attract them.  Birds would land on one of the wires attached to the bow of the boat and the skipper would feed each bird by hand.  It was very cool.

After our boat ride we headed to the Contemporary Resort to ride on the monorail.  We did this trek from boat to monorail on a few separate days, and each time we passed the Mickey shrub in front of the Contemporary Resort.  Each time, Keira insisted on taking a picture with it.  Yet, she never seemed to want to cooperate for the picture.  After multiple tries, here's the best picture I got in front of that Mickey shrub, as you can see Elijah was a little frustrated by the multiple attempts by this point.

Besides taking advantage of the awesome new pool and boat rides, we also found some great places to hang out around Fort Wilderness.  Daddy and Elijah got in plenty of games of checkers on the Settlement's ample porch.  While the boys played checkers, I watched Keira splash in the puddles and play on the playground, which you can see if you look behind Elijah in this next picture.

Possibly my very favorite Fort Wilderness diversion was the nightly campfires.  Every night, when it's not rained out, there's a free campfire program at the Meadows (near the awesome pool).  There's a singing cowboy who sings favorite songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It."  He also tells Knock Knock jokes and performs other family friendly entertainment like a speedy western version of the Hokey Pokey.  Elijah really enjoyed the cowboy's jokes and silly asides.  He seemed to get quite a few of the jokes and participated fully with a huge smile plastered across his face. 

The special guests at each night's campfire are Chip and Dale who perform with the cowboy, then come around to hug, give high fives and sign autographs.  I think the campfire is one of the single best character experiences available.  You don't have to wait in a long line or pay any money for this encounter.

In short, our stay at Fort Wilderness was awesome, and inexpensive.  In fact, we had such a wonderful, affordable time, that we've already booked our next vacation in November.  I know -- crazy!