We arrived at the most magical place on earth around 4pm on Sunday and made our way to the Fort Wilderness Campground. We had read lots of really good things about the campground, and they were all true…it’s wonderful! The sites are huge and really private, something we haven’t seen much of this trip. There are mature trees everywhere giving us lots of shade. It’s not a concrete jungle like we often find. But, we would expect no less from Disney – they are the hospitality experts!

After we set up and had dinner, we drove around a little to figure out our plan for getting to the Magic Kingdom on Monday. One of the best benefits of staying here is that we can just catch a quick boat ride over to the Magic Kingdom – no driving, no buses, no hassle. But, we needed to figure out how we would get to the boat dock in the morning. We discovered that it would be quite a walk, and since we knew that there’d be more than enough walking once we got to the park, we decided that our bikes would be the perfect solution!

Monday morning, we got an early start and took the five-minute e-bike ride down to the dock, and hopped on the boat for the quick 15-minute ride over to start our magical day! Our last trip to Disney was in 2022, and we’ve been going every three or four years since 2006, so we’re always interested to see what’s new and changed since our last visit. They are making a lot of changes at all the parks right now, so several rides are closed, but there’s still plenty to see and do! We hit all of our favorites – Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, It’s a Small World, Buzz Lightyear, Monsters Inc, and more. The Country Bear Jamboree was updated and just re-opened in July, so we got to see the update of an old classic!

We caught one of the live stage shows at the castle, and the tail end of the afternoon parade – both were wonderful!

Another benefit of staying at the Fort Wilderness Campground is that you can see the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the beach at the campground – no need to fight the crowds in the park and camp out for an hour to get a good spot. So, we biked down to the beach in time for the 8pm start, and had a fantastic view of the show, “Happily Ever After”. In the park, we would also see the light show & projections on the castle, but that’s okay…we were happy to just have the fireworks!

Tuesday was our day at EPCOT. Originally, I wanted to go on Wednesday, but the weather forecast wasn’t great. Wednesday would be the official start of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival which I really wanted to see…but I did some research and confirmed that most, if not all, of the topiaries and gardens were already installed and we’d still get to see them on Tuesday. We headed to the park early afternoon, since we also wanted to see the 9pm show, and knew we didn’t need that many hours in the park. We started with our favorite ride at EPCOT, “Soarin’”, and wandered around the front half of the park to see all the topiaries, plus all the changes they’ve made to EPCOT since 2022. There was tons of construction there last time we visited, so we finally got to see it all finished. Lots of changes to the central plaza, shops, and restaurants…all good! Then we headed to World Showcase and made our way around the world from Canada to Mexico and everywhere in between.

By late afternoon, we were done and made the quick drive back to the campground for dinner. I did a telemedicine visit because I had all the symptoms of a sinus infection (so thankful for telemedicine when we are traveling!)….got a prescription, went to pick that up, and then back to EPCOT for the evening. We did a couple more rides & shows, and then planted ourselves for the show. It was incredible. I’ll never forget IllumiNations, the original EPCOT show, and I love that one, but this is a wonderful replacement (the interim ones were a bit disappointing). So glad we made it back to the park for this! Sadly, I didn’t take any photos or videos, but trust me, it was amazing.

Wednesday was a free day (really glad we had the flexibility for this, since it rained on and off and would not have been great at the parks). We visited Disney Springs briefly in the morning – we haven’t spent much time there since it went through a bunch of changes, so we wandered through all the new sections. For the afternoon, it was time to drive to Winter Park to finally get my artwork from the gallery in Key West. It was a painful process with lots of mistakes on the part of the gallery, but finally on Tuesday I got word it had arrived (and made them text me a picture to prove it!). It was about a 45-minute drive each way, and I was very glad to finally have it in my hands. It is now safely packaged in a bunch of layers of bubble wrap to make the journey home safely. I didn’t take a photo before I bundled it up, but if you’re curious, here’s an image of it from the artist’s website…

Just up the street from the gallery is a wonderful gem, The Morse Museum. They have the world’s most comprehensive collection of work by Louis Comfort Tiffany – windows, lamps, pottery, jewelry – plus the remnants of Tiffany’s Long Island estate and the chapel interior that he designed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. What a place! We had a wonderful time looking at all the beautiful pieces and learning more about Tiffany. It made the trip to Winter Park even more worthwhile!

On Thursday, we headed to Hollywood Studios. We only planned on three days at the parks, and we decided that Animal Kingdom was the one we were willing to miss (although we love that park, too!). The campground gives us a nice, short 15-minute drive to the parks, so it’s a real treat to be there so quickly. We went straight to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in the back of the park. We’ve seen it before, but I will always be impressed and awestruck by how incredibly well-done it is. You really feel like you’re on the set of the one of the movies…every detail is perfectly Star Wars, even the restrooms and trash cans. While we’ve been there before, we haven’t been on the rides because it’s so hard to get in…since we’re staying on Disney property, we could book ‘lightning lane’ passes a week ago, when there was still availability (I’m not a fan of waiting in line for an hour or two!). Our first stop was “Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run”, a cool ride where you are a crew member on the Falcon. As expected, every detail was incredible. I was assigned to be one of the two pilots (pretty sure I was Han Solo and the other guy was Chewbacca), and we engaged hyperspace and flew through the galaxy. So fun!

Next up was “Rise of the Resistance” – by far the most popular ride in the park, and I was so excited to finally have a chance to ride it (Mark had opted out…he’s not a fan of rides like this). It’s a long pre-show, as the mission is explained and we get captured by the First Order. We encountered hundreds of stormtroopers, Kylo Ren, and much more. And we get to one point, about 15 minutes in, where suddenly the ride stops. And the alarms start. The ride was broken. And I was on it. UGH! Mark was outside seeing hundreds of people leaving the ride, called me to see what was going on, and it was probably 45 minutes before we were finally freed. The ride was a bit too realistic – it’s like we really were being held captive. Apparently, the doors didn’t open automatically like they are supposed to when the ride has an issue, so it took much longer than usual to figure it out and get us all out. Fortunately, we were in an open car, plenty of air, and we weren’t upside down or anything like that! I was so bummed because I had been looking forward to the ride so much. Oh well, on with our day. Lunch and some other rides, including our favorite, “Toy Story Mania”. And then I decided to give it another try and go back to “Rise of the Resistance” (it had finally reopened after about two hours of downtime, and they had given us passes to ride anytime) – Mark was willing to sit and wait for me again, but hopefully not for an hour this time! And this time, the ride worked perfectly and it was incredible – worth the wait! And with that, our time at Hollywood Studios was over…back to the campground to start packing up. It’s always sad to leave Disney, but we know it was a good trip because we’re exhausted! Oh, and I have to mention…the weather all three days at Disney was absolutely perfect. Couldn’t have asked for better. And overall, the crowds were manageable. Hollywood Studios was probably the busiest of the three.

Friday was a short travel day, just a couple hours Northeast to Crystal River, Florida where we’ll spend the next few days recovering from Disney! Oh, and enjoying this area of Florida! Just a couple of weeks left in this amazing journey!