What in the WORLD Have We Been Up To?

It's been way too long since I posted, but that seems to happen when several folks get together and head on down to Walt Disney World for some fun family time!

A week ago Sunday we piled into our vehicles and headed down to fabulous Walt Disney World for a stay of two wonderful weeks this winter. Al's mom and sisters are staying in an apartment about five minutes from the maingate entrance, and we are staying at the Fort Wilderness campground on Disney property. Along with us at The Fort is Al's cousin Bill and Denise in their beautiful Allegro bus, and Fred and Kathy in their Navion motorhome. Our three sites arrived on Sunday, the rest of the group arrived on Monday. Al's aunt and uncle were staying in the same complex as his sisters, another cousin Rocky and his wife Lucia in the site next to us, and cousins from another branch of the family in one of Disney's resort, Rosemary and George. All total, 16!! Disney is awesome, as always, and had us all in sites together in the same loop :-).

Sunday, our arrival day, was a beautiful sunny day, and we arrived around 3PM. Its a long two hour drive from the house :-). A very nice cast member assisted us in checking in, suffered through our jokes and requests, even waived the pet fee for us (nice!) and gave us the annual passholder discount rate (even nicer!). As we turned into our loop, who did we see but Nancy, Gin, and Tricia! I knew there was a group of fellow blogger Dreamers here, but it was so fun to see them as soon as we arrived :-). A quick wave and we set about getting situated in our site. We had an early dinner reserved at Disney's Trail's End Restaurant here in the campground, a buffet meal that is quite good and one of the best deals for dinner here at the resort, in my opinion :-). While having dinner, we received a text from Nancy that they would be down at the marina at 8PM to watch the fireworks. So of course we went down and had a nice chat with Nancy and Bill, and also Bruce and Laura Raber, whom we haven't seen since we met at the 2011 RV-Dreams rally in Tennessee. It's so nice to re-connect with friends from on the road :-). This was their last night here, so we bid them all safe journeys and a big "see you down the road".

Monday we continued to settle in and await the arrival for the rest of the family. We had a great pot-luck dinner with everyone, and many laughs. We had many compliments on our Mickey light as well.

No Christmas hat this time of year though :-).

Tuesday we ventured into the Magic Kingdom for a few hours. I'm finding as I'm getting older, I don't like to deal with the crowds for as long a period of time anymore. So a few hours in the park is fine. We did several of our favorite rides and attractions, and had a lovely lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, The Plaza Restaurant on Main Street. We also don't like to leave the pups alone in the trailer for too long, so we head back to relax at the campground and take them for a nice walk. It's a mile and a half loop around, so Chelsea goes around once, and Casey goes a second time. Poor Chelsea has some arthritis settling in, but we do like to keep her moving, just not as much.

I have to apologize for the lack of photos, but I just haven't felt like dragging my big Nikon around the parks, and my small camera I bought last year to go hiking with became damaged as we drove to Florida at Christmas. I have always kept them in an overhead cabinet, and for the first time in 2 years the door came open during transit and it tumbled to the floor. Grrr! I'm hoping Nikon might be able to do something with it, but I'm not counting on it, and am now storing them in my closet for travel!

We have also spent time in the other three parks, had a GREAT time at the Wishes Dessert Party ( if you have a sweet tooth you should definitely do this at least once), had breakfast with Chef Mickey and his friends at Chef Mickey's breakfast buffett, and the whole group of 16 met up for a lively dinner at Carrabba's Italian Grill out on Hwy. 192. 

Sunday we had a lovely day. The weather was beautiful, but we did need to decide what to do, as we weren't able to visit the parks. You see, when we became Florida residents, a whole new set of passes to Disney became available to us. We have chosen the Weekday Select pass, which allows us to visit the parks Monday through Friday, but not weekends, or select blackout periods, such as holiday weeks or mid-summer. So as the customer service representative is telling us this, Al says, 'so, we can't visit the parks when 100 thousand people are here, or when its 110 degrees out, oh that's a bummer". She laughs and we purchased the passes, which cost us $211.00 for a year. I think that's a great deal! 

Anyway, so its Sunday, and we decided to have lunch at another of our favorite restaurants, Olivia's at the Old Key West Resort.

Old Key West is one of Disney's vacation Club properties, which we used to be members of until we hit the road. 

Conch Fritters, isn't the serving dish neat?

Onion rings as well

Shrimp Po'boy sandwich

Club sandwich...yummm!

After filling our tummies, we decided to take a pontoon boat ride down the canals to Downtown Disney.

A tethered hot air balloon ride at The Marketplace

The Marketplace shoreline, with one of my favorite places...Ghiradelli's Soda Fountain :-)!!

Treehouse Villas, unique accommodations in the Vacation Club...we stayed in one of these back in the 1980's, really neat.

Saratoga Springs Resort

Port Orleans Resort

The Riverside Resort

Back to Old Key West Resort. Its so nice and quiet there, it was our favorite place to stay when we vacationed here.

That night of course was Superbowl Sunday, so 10 of us gathered at the apartment to have pizza, play games and watch the Superbowl. No winners in any football pools for our group, although we came close in one...darn safety in the closing minutes spoiled our win ;-)!! We did play a rousing game of Marbles, Cards and Jokers....

which we learned out in Colorado from our good friends Sandi and Joe. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that another workamper with us, Jack, built this beautiful set for us to take with us and teach others how to play. Its a lot of fun and we look forward to sharing it with new friends :-).

So, that's what we've been up to, and we still have 5 more days before we check out. We have our fingers crossed for good weather in the midwest at that time, as we'll be heading to Indiana to drop off the trailer at Keystone for the needed repairs. In the meantime, we'll keep doing our best to have fun here in the "World" with the "Mouse".