Long Live TCD's 2010-2011 NEW YEARS EVE TRIP REPORT (Maybe the last of the best)

[Tri-circle-D]

TCD with all the pictures you have of 617 just once your camper should be in the shot at 617.

Thank you for sharing my dream!

Some day.

Some day.

I would set up my camper sideways.

And, my bunk would be even with the fence and sidewalk.

I could hang out there all day and say hello to everyone passing by.

Plus, I would sell hot dogs from the grill.

And maybe set up a kungaloosh machine.

Oh the fun I would have . . .


TCD

 

[anolefan]

Who said the best site in Fort Wilderness?

You are right!!!

It’s site 617!

I am going to request that site on my next visit just so I can post a picture of my rig on the DIS boards. The site in our loop that was by the comfort station saw three people check in and out during our stay. It was similar in layout, right next to the sidewalk to the comfort station. I laughed each time.

That VW camper with the flower power decals can only mean one thing.

Hippies!

My kids actually commented that they were a little scared by that camper. I think there was another Farfegnugen up in the 2000 loop but maybe I am mistaken.

The coffee machine that used to be here was a real coffee machine. Not this chemical stuff that comes out of a box. But, don’t mourn this change for long. The truth is that old coffee machine made some pretty nasty stuff. Still, I used to like to have a cup of each, just so I could decide which was worse. Now, all we can have is Nescrape’.

I thought it was different this visit. One morning I went to get my coffee and the machine was empty and nobody knew how to change the "box" of coffee so they went to the server station and poured me a cup. It was pretty comical to witness the changing of the "box".

Florida State was set to play South Carolina in the Chic-Fil-A bowl this evening.

We had to show our support:

Those blowups looked great through my Garnet and Gold glasses

 

[VACAMPER]

Good report, you should've stopped by site 632 and said hello while you were in the loop.



Dog pics...my girls loved the great danes that were there our weiner dogs looked so tiny beside them.

 

[starbuc71]

TCD, is that a modern day green hippie mobile parked on your site next to your truck? I thought I would say it since I knew it would come up eventually

 

[campingdawgs]

Brace yourself TCD- we counted FIVE hippie vans while we were looping New Years weekend. Several were on the same site. We wondered if it was an organized group, or if there were just that many hippies that come to WDW for the holidays.

 

[3gr8kids]

we prefer to call them "vampers".

 

[DaveInTN]

I was surprised on this visit to find that the old coffee machine at Trail’s End has been replaced by one of the ubiquitous Nescafe’ machines

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love this shot with Rocky in the background straining against the leash to run to you.

 

[stacktester]

Just a little Disboard tip that I will give about the coffee machine is if you ask they will get you a cup from the wait station in the back. Before this change I asked for real cream from back there as well. Paulette is usually the nicest one about it.

 

[starbuc71]

To be honest, liquid coffee (as it is called in the food industry) is the wave of the future. I agree most taste like crap, but some are so close you can't tell the difference. In my business we started with liquid coffee about 10 years ago. The only two major vendors back then were a company called vitality that was for the longest time just a juice company and another company called Douge Eggbert. If you ever have a chance to try some Douge Eggbert, I will just about promise you the best cup of coffee. They were mega expensive to stock though. Now fast forward 10-15 years and all the companies are trying to do the liquid coffee thing. I'm probably not explaining this right but it is real coffee. The beans are reduced and boiled down into a liquid form which becomes like a coffee extract. When the "extract" is packaged into the boxes or containers, everytime you pull the lever for a cup of coffee, you are actually getting a somewhat fresh brewed cup everytime. That's technology for you. I think TCD said in an earlier post that the old machine at TE was nasty or something like that. He is right. Most traditional coffee machines never get cleaned properly which will make a bad cup of coffee or for some it makes a good one. We currently use a liquid Maxwell House brand at work and all the Fed Ex and UPS drivers stop at my place first to get the best coffee. Just my 2 cents from prior years of working in the food industry sooooooo long. I will say Nescafe is not one of the higher end liquid coffees but I belive Disney has some contract with Nestle.

 

[daddyphat808]

Awesome as always TCD! One of my clients just had one of the new fangled espresso machines installed It has about 10 choices on it. I have to say it was pretty good! I am not a big coffee drinker but it is growing on me.

 

[YodaGirl]

Sorry to hearabout those hooligan fugitives busting into your laundry room. Hopefully they'll be receiving 3 hots and a cot for a long time.

Enjoying your pics thus far. Looks like ya'll had a pretty good time considering how it started off. Can't wait to see more!

 

[3girlsfun]

Enjoying the report as always! Loving the pics. I can't wait to see a pic of the Dole Whip. I never did get one when we went down in October, so I have never had one. (I will get one when I go back in February!)

Sorry to hear about your house. As far as convicts go, I can't STAND a thief! Glad no one was hurt as well!

Having never been to the Ft. (yet), I love these pics, DH loves them also.

Rocky is adorable, and makes me miss our boxer that we had to sell.

Waiting for the next installment!

 

[Tri-circle-D]

Good report, you should've stopped by site 632 and said hello while you were in the loop.

Well, darn. I'm sure I drove by your site a few times.

TCD, is that a modern day green hippie mobile parked on your site next to your truck? I thought I would say it since I knew it would come up eventually

Yes, my oldest DD drives a VW Beetle. And, for full disclosure, I learned to drive on a VW beetle, and my first two cars were VW's. And, get this . . .
my father drove a VW Bus back in the day. But my father is the complete opposite of a hippie, and so am I.

Brace yourself TCD- we counted FIVE hippie vans while we were looping New Years weekend. Several were on the same site. We wondered if it was an organized group, or if there were just that many hippies that come to WDW for the holidays.

Yes, I saw more than this one too. I saw three on one site in the 2000 loop, but it was too dark at the time for a photo, and they were gone when I went back during daylight.

we prefer to call them "vampers".

You can call them what you like, but they are hippie vans.

I love this shot with Rocky in the background straining against the leash to run to you.

I like that shot too, and that is exactly what is happening in that photo!

Just a little Disboard tip that I will give about the coffee machine is if you ask they will get you a cup from the wait station in the back. Before this change I asked for real cream from back there as well. Paulette is usually the nicest one about it.

Well, no body has ever gotten me coffee from the back. You get this treatment because you're the Mayor. Us normal folk have to drink the swill.

To be honest, liquid coffee (as it is called in the food industry) is the wave of the future. I agree most taste like crap, but some are so close you can't tell the difference. In my business we started with liquid coffee about 10 years ago. The only two major vendors back then were a company called vitality that was for the longest time just a juice company and another company called Douge Eggbert. If you ever have a chance to try some Douge Eggbert, I will just about promise you the best cup of coffee. They were mega expensive to stock though. Now fast forward 10-15 years and all the companies are trying to do the liquid coffee thing. I'm probably not explaining this right but it is real coffee. The beans are reduced and boiled down into a liquid form which becomes like a coffee extract. When the "extract" is packaged into the boxes or containers, everytime you pull the lever for a cup of coffee, you are actually getting a somewhat fresh brewed cup everytime. That's technology for you. I think TCD said in an earlier post that the old machine at TE was nasty or something like that. He is right. Most traditional coffee machines never get cleaned properly which will make a bad cup of coffee or for some it makes a good one. We currently use a liquid Maxwell House brand at work and all the Fed Ex and UPS drivers stop at my place first to get the best coffee. Just my 2 cents from prior years of working in the food industry sooooooo long. I will say Nescafe is not one of the higher end liquid coffees but I belive Disney has some contract with Nestle.

On a trip earlier this year, when I went to get coffee from the old machine early one morning at Trail's End, there was a guy ahead of me saying the coffee looked and tasted funny. I poured a cup, and took a sip. I agreed. The coffee was lukewarm, and very weak, with a bitter/burnt aftertaste. The guy called a castmember over, and the castmember called over the young lady who was responsible for making the coffee that morning. It turns out that she didn't empty the coffee that was in the machine from the day before, and she ran a new batch with grounds that had already been used. Yuck! I'll bet that wasn't the first time that happened.

Awesome as always TCD! One of my clients just had one of the new fangled espresso machines installed It has about 10 choices on it. I have to say it was pretty good! I am not a big coffee drinker but it is growing on me.

It would be nice to have one of those machines at the Fort. But, I don't see that ever happening.

Sorry to hearabout those hooligan fugitives busting into your laundry room. Hopefully they'll be receiving 3 hots and a cot for a long time.

Enjoying your pics thus far. Looks like ya'll had a pretty good time considering how it started off. Can't wait to see more!

Thanks. We did have a great trip, and there is more to see.

Keep reading!

Enjoying the report as always! Loving the pics. I can't wait to see a pic of the Dole Whip. I never did get one when we went down in October, so I have never had one. (I will get one when I go back in February!)

The Dole Whip photo will be coming soon.

I never tried Dole Whip until just a few years ago.

Now, it is a must on every trip.

TCD

 

[Tri-circle-D]

Now, on with our report.

At the end of my last update, I menitoned that I ran into an old friend at the Fort.

And that is true- sort of.

The only thing is that I really don't know this friend very well.

This is him:

Those photos are from a trip we took to the Fort in March, 2007.

As in almost four years ago.

We were staying on the 800 loop for that trip.

And, this guy with the giant poodle rode by our site quite often on his Segway.

I had never seen such a thing.

And, I haven't since.

This was before there were Segway tours offered at the Fort.

So, seeing a Segway in operation was a rare thing.

Well, when I was visiting site 617 on the morning on December 31, guess who I ran into?

Segway guy!

Complete with giant poodle!

Here he is:

I struck up a conversation with my long-lost friend.

He doesn't use the Segway anymore.

He said it was too much of a hassle operating it at some of the places he visits. Including the Fort.

He used to camp at the Fort a lot.

Back when they offered winter settler rates.

Now, he and the giant poodle camp all over the country.

And visit the Fort just briefly each year.

Nice guy.

Nice dog.

Just goes to show . . .

You never know who you're going to run into at the Fort.

TCD

 

[stacktester]

TCD, just another note. Paulette actually get's me fresh cream as well. I don't like that nasty junk in the plastic thimbles lol.

Jen and I spoke to one of the hippies in the VW on Sunday morning. Just an FYI, he wasn't a hippie lol. He owns a pet funeral home and cremation service in W Palm Beach. He also does humans at another place. He informed me that peeps spent 5-6k on animal funerals. I have a client here in Jax that I test the crematories for that offers the same service so it wasn't a shock to hear this. One thing that was shocking was that he uses that van for pet removals and some repeat customers have said they want their pet picked up in the same ride as the previous deceased animal rode in. Put that info in your TCD honorary badge pipe and smoke it lol. They were really nice folks and it was interesting talking to him.

 

[Tri-circle-D]

TCD, just another note. Paulette actually get's me fresh cream as well. I don't like that nasty junk in the plastic thimbles lol.

Jen and I spoke to one of the hippies in the VW on Sunday morning. Just an FYI, he wasn't a hippie lol. He owns a pet funeral home and cremation service in W Palm Beach. He also does humans at another place. He informed me that peeps spent 5-6k on animal funerals. I have a client here in Jax that I test the crematories for that offers the same service so it wasn't a shock to hear this. One thing that was shocking was that he uses that van for pet removals and some repeat customers have said they want their pet picked up in the same ride as the previous deceased animal rode in. Put that info in your TCD honorary badge pipe and smoke it lol. They were really nice folks and it was interesting talking to him.

Well, darn. I forgot that one of the VW buses in the 2000 loop was painted with the name of an animal cremation business. I think this was on the site with three buses on the same site. I hate to miss a photo opportunity like that, but I did miss this one! Thanks for the 411, Donnie. Interesting.

TCD

 

[Tri-circle-D]

One of the things that I really enjoy about camping at Fort Wilderness is the opportunity to meet new folks. This is one of the things that distinguishes camping from staying in a hotel. It isn’t often that you have chats with your neighbors in a hotel, but campers often meet their neighbors.

The folks staying next to us on the 1500 loop, in site 1506, were also camping in a pop-up camper. A vintage Apache pop-up, to be exact. Here it is:

The occupants of this site were an older couple, along with their adult daughter, her husband, and a few grandchildren. The grandma on this site loved Rocky. On our first morning, she asked if it would be OK for Rocky to have a piece of bacon. I walked Rocky over, and she gave him a slice. She was now his new best friend. She hooked him up with some cheese later on in the visit, and whenever he saw her, he would wag his tail like crazy. One afternoon, I got to talking to the grandpa. I told him I really liked his Apache. I always thought these were cool. He said he bought it new. Thirty-nine years ago! And that he has used it ever since. It turns out that he is a retired high school math teacher, and his wife is a retired elementary school teacher. They both had all summer off, and they used to take their kids camping. They have towed that camper all over the country. For almost forty years. I told the guy he was my idol. They are from Pennsylvania, and they always travel to the Fort for the week after Christmas.

Compared to the forty year old pop-up next door, my eleven year old pop-up is practically new:

I wonder if I’ll be camping with my grandkids in this thing one day?

Here’s the back of our site. There’s a Boston Butt Roast in that crock pot which I had cooking all day for pulled pork sandwiches that night:

The last day of 2010 ended up being very pleasant. The temperature was in the 70’s, and there were a lot of folks enjoying the pool:

Rocky made several visits to the dog park throughout the day:

This was our third consecutive New Year’s Eve visit to the Fort. This year, there were new activities scheduled at Clementine’s Beach:

As you can see, they didn’t start until 9:00 pm, so we will take a look at them a bit later.

TCD DD snapped this photo of an RV with a Lotso attached to the Front. If you have seen Toy Story 3, you will understand why. If you haven’t seen Toy Story 3, you really ought to:

Here’s Rocky back at the Dog Park:

I know that a lot of people from South Florida visit the Fort, but we only saw one person who was willing to admit being a fan of the “U” all weekend:

We spent early Friday evening watching FSU beat the snot out of South Carolina (sorry to the SC fans reading along). Here are some FSU blow-up photos in honor of FSU’s victory:

Since it was December, it was dark early on the 31st. After we enjoyed our pulled pork sandwiches, it was time to break out the sparklers. DD experimented with her new camera:

BTW that’s the Disboarders CampingDawgs campsite you see there in the background of the last three photos. I think I even see Mr. CampingDawg in one of the photos.

I loved this display on the 1600 loop, so I made sure to get a photo. These folks had great decorations, plus a nice outdoor screen that they used to watch a hockey game on the night of the 1st:

I had stopped at a store called Total Wine back home to get some provisions for this trip. They have boxes at the checkout lanes for customers to use to carry out their purchases. This is the box that we got:

Has anybody tried any of these products?

Is it OK to name a beer He’Brew?

I would think no.

But, apparently I am wrong about that.

Next up, we check in on the official New Year’s Eve activities at Clementine’s Beach!

TCD

 

[KeepSwimmingDory]

Awesome as always!

 

[lucy_love]

Continuing on with our report . . .

It is still morning on the 31st.

We were just looking at site 802.

You know what’s right across the street from there, right?

Right?

Who said the best site in Fort Wilderness?

You are right!!!

It’s site 617!

I wonder what lucky camper got to stay in 617 for New Year’s Eve?



Some people have all the luck.

Boy, I sure hope that I get to stay in that site sometime.

While we were in the 600 loop, I figured that I might as well snap a couple photos of the new part. So here you go:

It made us look schizophrenic, but we had to support both teams, as the TCD gang is a family divided.

But, everybody was happy come Saturday!

Next up, I run into an old friend.

Kind of.

TCD

Hey we almost had that site! When I heard we were in the 600 I was worried. You can see our site in the above pictures-> the snow globe with the black lexus SUV... that's my car!

And don't worry about being sports schizophrenic, I have a UCF, UF, and UGA sticker on the back of my car I felt bad having gator plates and frames... had to support my other schools too

 

[3girlsfun]

I love the sparkler pics. There is something about sparklers and camping, they go together, and are always a must when we camp, even before the kids.

I will be anxiously awaiting the dole whip pics!

Following along, and enjoying every min.!

Ohh, and the hippie vans do sort of creep me out, but, there is this really old motorhome that we pass every Sunday on the way to church. I have begged DH to buy it and have it restored, I love it. I'll have to get a pic and share it with y'all next Sunday.