Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Walt Disney's Fort Wilderness - May 3rd-5th


 Dave and I packed up Winnie and headed over to Fort Wilderness for my birthday weekend. We sure packed a lot in for just being there Friday late afternoon and checking out Monday morning.

We made reservations quite a while back as we had registered for Disney's Expedition Everest Challenge which is a fun run 5K and scavenger hunt through Animal Kingdom at night.

We stayed at such a great time! Our favorite loop (the 700 loop) was very quiet and less than half full! We have a new favorite site...706. look how deep and wide it is, plus on the hook-up side there is a walking path so we didn't have another RV right next to us.


Our view


The Walking Path


Setting up camp getting ready for Mom, Dad and Scott to come over for my birthday dinner.





Mom fixed us a delicious meal and we all had a wonderful time! It was a great evening!!

Saturday Dave and I headed over to the Wide World of Sports to pick up our race packets!

The Everest Challenge!

Our team name was the Hoppy Huffers, lol. See where Dave wrote it, then look at the photo below...it's somewhere on there...on the lower right side.

You can see it...right? Lol!
After picking up our race packets we headed to Epcot....Dave surprised me and took me to Le Cellier in Canada for lunch! Can you say best cheddar cheese soup ever?! Yum!


Look at the adorable mini cake they brought out to me!

Look at my adorable husband being adorable!!

That's me...Sweet Pea!!

After a lovely lunch we decided to walk around Epcot a bit. The photos below are just outside of Le Cellier. Beautiful!! It always looks beautiful here but they also had the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival going on.






Mama and baby ducks...too cute!!


The flowers and topiaries are amazing....Mike and Sully!
Late afternoon we headed back to our RV to relax a bit before the race which was at 10:00 that night. We had to be there at 9:15. We along with a few thousand other people inched along in our cars into the Animal Kingdom parking lot where the start and finish of the race was held.

Waiting for our turn to start!

Hoppy Huffers are ready to rock!

It's snowing here at Expedition Everest!
 After we finished the 5K, we started on the scavenger hunt which was basically doing the 5K again but looking for clues. We did not break a sweat on the second go around, lol. Slow but sure!
Only photo I took while on the scavenger hunt..the Tree of Life looked so cool at night.

Once we had all the clues at the end of our hunt, we had to put the 4 cards together in the right sequence to come up with the symbol in the middle of the four cards.

We finished and claimed our medals!

Hanging with Baloo at the 'After Party'.

Since we got back to the RV at like 2:00 a.m. we slept in! We decided to chill and enjoy a relaxing day just reading and listening to the Ray's baseball game.

Look how empty our loop was!



It was SO peaceful!

We had dinner reservations at the new Be Our Guest Restaurant in Fantasyland. It is set inside the Beast's enchanted castle from Beauty and the Beast. If you want to go, make reservations months in advance.
We rode our bikes to the beach and boat dock for Fort Wilderness


It was a gorgeous afternoon!

If we hadn't had dinner reservations that had to be made several months out, we could have  chilled on the beach or taken a boat out! Onward to dinner!


 Taking photos while waiting for our pager to go off! it's such a cool place...especially at night.

The door to the restaurant

We ate in the West Wing which was wonderful...more intimate than the main Ballroom Dining Area. In the West Wing you can hear thunder every few minutes and when it reaches it's loudest, you can watch the photo of the prince briefly change into the Beast. The Enchanted Rose is also in here.


They stamped celebration on our ticket....that means you get special dessert...the gray stuff!

The Enchanted Rose

Grand Ballroom Dining Room

The Beast in his library

The Beast receiving guests
As we were leaving the restaurant....so cool! The meal was great! A very nice end  to a fantastic birthday weekend!

Ok, so Dave and I love the amazing architecture at Disney so we decided to check out 'Enchanted tales with Belle' simply because we wanted to see inside the building. The 'show' is great for kids, we just liked walking through the house.



Lumiere was by far the coolest part of the show. I've read that it's a quite high tech animatronic figure...he was so real looking....really cool!

So with full bellies we took the boat back to Fort Wilderness for our last night before heading back to work on Monday.....well, we did work remotely from the park for a couple hours, then the rest of the day back at home in Apopka. I am one blessed girl who had a wonderful birthday...thanks Sweetie, Mom, Dad and Scott!

Until our next RV trip.......

Blessings~
Misi and Dave