RV Newbies STEER CLEAR of Disney's Fort Wilderness

T minus one week till we leave Florida. We are taking a caravan trip from Florida to Arizona and we're going with two other RVs. It's just gonna be wild. The Hanks would give you nothing less. Before we start this caravan trip, there is one thing we need to do before we leave Florida. We really need to go check out Fort Wilderness. Everybody raves about Fort Wilderness. Everybody says it's like one of the best campgrounds in the whole United States. I'm like, really? On top of that, I've also heard people saying not such great things. I've heard a lot of people saying that parking your rig there is a real challenge. I am not holding my breath on these campsites. Everyone says they're super clean. Are they? I'll be the judge of that. Disney World, you're sucking the money out of my pocket. Yeah, you're darn right. I'm gonna be the judge of that one. We're getting there today. Weather's perfect. It's raining. It's like setting the scene for how intense this parking's gonna be. Let's get this done. I mean, come on, really? What are we realistically paying for this campsite every single night? $5,000 a night. I just love that sarcasm. It's so refreshing in the morning. I don't remember, but I'm gonna say it was like a Coming out of your budget, sir. When I watch these moments that he deals with us, I feel like he's saying, you guys need a kid already. Just throwing that out there. Okay, it was fun at first, but now it's just getting weird. Great news is it's 12 o'clock and we still haven't checked out. No, we are not running that late. We are at a state park campground and checkout is 1 p.m. The Hanks family is sucking up every minute of that that they can. Watch the old noggin here. One thing about these state park campgrounds is they don't have sewer hookups here, so we have to go utilize the dump station on our way out. This place has a sweet setup to where as you're pulling out, there are two immaculate dump stations waiting in all their glory for us to arrive and let it rip. Yes, you called that right. That means I only have to unhook the water and I don't even know it. It's the small things in RV life that make the biggest differences. We're able to withstand four nights here at the state park campground, which is really nice. So I foresee some more boondocking in the future as we head out west. You never know what the Hanks are going to get into. I heard there's lots of exciting places to boondock along the way. Yeah, I'm feeling that one. Nothing like the fresh smell of a dump station. Oh, the joys of dumping tanks with the Hanks. Gotta say, Orlando traffic sets the bar for strenuous driving days. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is an everyday occurrence on Interstate 4. Towing an RV is a challenge as vehicles dart in and out. Prepare by giving yourself some extra drive time if you're traveling to or through the Orlando area. The last thing you want to do is show up to your destination stressed out, short-tempered. Trust us, we've been there before. Even though today was raining, it couldn't damper our excitement for what was to come. I do have to say, however, that the rainy day set the eerie vibes for what we were anticipating with our forthcoming visit to Fort Willerness. We had no idea what we would be in for when it came to navigating the park and backing in our home safely. Needless to say, the check-in process was pretty painless, so I'd say we have that going for us at least. We're officially in, and we gotta go really far, actually. Well, I hope we can fit all right in here. Man, this is tight. It looks like they got big rigs, so we should be fine. We're not. This is taking a while. How many sites are there in this honker? It's big. How you doing? I bet you're wondering when did we make these reservations, because the Hanks don't make reservations for out in advance. And you're right, we didn't. We made these reservations about three to four weeks ago, and they had availability, and it's a Friday. Like, for the whole week, they had availability. Oh dang. Oh yeah, you're going this way. Oh my gosh. When was this park built? Tight in here. This is gonna be a tight back end, I'm not gonna lie. 340, I hope it opens up more. If this is your first time towing an RV, don't come to Fort Willerness. This is wild. We've heard people say they just gave up because they couldn't get their RVs in here. Is that true? Yeah. They had to have somebody else do it for them. I love me a good challenge. This is not good. It's not good. And the Starlink's not gonna do so hot here either. A lot of trees here. Ooh, she's tight. Hopefully it opens up, like I said, just we'll keep going around the bend. Where are you going with a truck out on the road? Look at this. Oh my gosh. Sideswipe peeps. Move it. Move it or lose it. Now people are gonna laugh at us. Wow, there's not much room at these campsites. What's going on here? Everyone raved that these campsites are amazing. Oh, I see, yes, I see, yes. 346, here we are. Ooh, ooh, ooh. And we're at a good spot. And it's a passenger side back end, correct? Yeah, driver's side. Or that's what I meant, driver's side back end. This is tight though. Yeah. All right, let's do this. Don't call yourself. Do not call yourself. You'll just have to, like, you can start cutting it around this. Nice. Looking good. That's a good angle. Just watch your swing on that right side. There's a tree there. If you just keep that angle, you'll get it in here good. You think this is my first rodeo? I'm gonna have Mickey Mouse come over. Back here, Jack. To your driver's side more. Perfect. Keep coming back like that. Because if you come all the way back, you should be good. Perfect, perfect. Okay, slow down a little. I'm gonna have you get that other and stop. That might be good. Well, you gotta be able to park your truck. You're gonna have to do a wraparound. Look at wilderness. Look at the wilderness. Are we at Disney already or what? It's a little cattywampus. But I'm gonna live with this, okay. I'm just glad that we got in here one shot. That was pretty good, honey. I would say we've been doing this for a bit. Darn tootin' right. Let's go to Disney. You know what's comforting? What? The comfort station is right there. Nice. Let's get unhooked. You're silly. What is Disney gonna be like? So pumped. I'm so excited we're gonna do this. We're gonna have such a great time. Now that is how you do Disney. No, Disney, no, no. Now after all was said and done, we ended up staying seven nights at Fort Wilderness for a grand total of $1,376.26. Now before we go explaining our thoughts and exactly why we made the title and thumbnail to this video that we did, let us set the record straight about our exact thoughts on the campground itself and whether or not we would actually go back again. Might I add, before you dive into that, that we booked our stay at Fort Wilderness about three weeks before we actually went there. They had openings. Just throwing that out there. Now we went into this knowing that Disney has some outrageous prices as is. Granted, this is a Disney resort, so we figured the prices were gonna be jacked up every single night. We knew that this was gonna probably be like a special treat. Yeah, like a vacation. I like it. So we treated it just as that. Having said that, however, it was really cool to find some of the special perks that come along with the Disney resort itself. One of my favorites was parking was included, meaning that every day, if you were to come in and just hop around the Disney parks, you would have to pay $25 a day just for parking alone. But when you stay at Fort Wilderness, your parking's covered. And they have bus transportation and boat. The boat was really cool. It actually picks you up right at the campground and then it takes you directly over to Magic Kingdom. You can't beat that. Now here's the ultimate question. Would we go back if we had the opportunity to do so? Me personally, I'd say yeah. Well, let me ask you this, Carl. Would you go back just to experience the campground and pay those prices just to be at the campground? Because we did meet somebody that said that they travel from Tampa so many times a year just to hang out at the campground. Wow, you really put me on the spot here. Expect a lot of crowds. A lot of people visit there every single year. Me personally, if I was not visiting Disney itself, I probably wouldn't just go there to stay there. But what is our concern? What are we getting at? Fort Wilderness was built in 1971. So let's be real. I personally feel like they need to start spreading the wings a little bit and expanding to accommodate more modern rigs. You mean like really big, long rigs? The honkers that are out on the road right now are gonna have a difficult time getting in there. It's not gonna be a pretty sight. Back when they built the resort, they thought people just used RVs to camp and that they were maybe 20 feet at the most. Like that was probably a big rig back then. And now we're living in them. What is wrong with us? Now they're like 42 foot. And immediately when we pulled into the campground, we started noticing just how tight things were. Now we have been warned multiple times by other people that are saying it's gonna be tight. And we're like, yeah, sure. We've been in some tight situations. No, let us tell you, it's definitely tight. Reason we titled this as Newbies Watch Out is because we wouldn't recommend a total newbie taking this as their maiden voyage and getting out there and practicing backing up. And they do. We've heard many stories where people say, I just bought an RV and the first place I went was Fort Wilderness and I want to quit RVing. Well, no wonder why. You got trees, you got kids, bikes, dogs, other campers, all smack dab, confined and squished together in one tiny little campground that was built in 1971. So you could see how quickly things get stressful. And if it's 11 a.m. on a Sunday and you're trying to leave your campground loop, you ain't going anywhere. People are trying to either pull out or back in or reposition and there's only one way traffic. And then you could be stuck behind like five people trying to pull out. Another thing we noticed is as we were pulling in, I think other campers kind of situate themselves within the campsites to accommodate their living arrangements. And what I'm getting at is I noticed some campers backed in to where their dump valve was right next to the sewer to make it really convenient. But what that ended up doing was allowing them very little parking in front of their rig for their tow vehicle. So a lot of people were actually kind of sticking beyond this yellow line that separates the actual sites to the road. And it made for even tighter situations. Oh yeah, that phone call. I was just gonna ask you about that. What time was it? It was late. Almost 11 o'clock at night. Yeah, and I, well, I saw the voicemail cause I missed the call and they said something along the lines of, we have to move our truck because we're hanging over the yellow line. I said, the guy next to us is the one parked over the yellow line. Probably should also not show up when it's dark because that is just gonna amplify that stress. Trust us, we know a thing or two. Make sure you're prepared for RV life. We got tons of videos for you starting right here. See you guys next week. Bye guys. Bye.