Apr 2008

Jere has had enough of the Disney theme parks and decides to take the day off while Joe and I head over to Magic Kingdom.

We ride his favorite rides one more time, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain (do you notice a theme there?). It’s cold again so we walk right on Splash Mountain.

We go over to the Polynesian Resort for lunch at the Kona Kafe,

return to Magic Kingdom for another of our favorite ride, The Jungle Cruise, laugh at all the corny jokes (this driver is very funny), watch the afternoon parade,

and then take the monorail over to EPCOT to ride Joe’s favorite EPCOT ride, Test Track. We're wondering if Disney has received some sort of bomb scare today--security really searched us closely today and now there is a dog checking all of the monorail cars after we unload.

We buy and trade some pins, ride the new & improved Spaceship Earth and then head back to the campground for dinner.

Jere still has no desire to go to the parks, so Joe and I put on our winter coats (yes, winter coats--it's cold tonight) and return to the Magic Kingdom to ride a few favorite rides again (It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion and Thunder Mountain – yes Thunder Mountain again). We watch the fireworks, wave good bye to the Disney cast members,

and wait in a long line for our boatride back to the campground. The wait turns out to be a lot shorter than we expect as they load more people in a boat than I ever imagined could fit in that size boat. The boat captains must be anxious to end the day.

We wake up and it is COLD. We're in Florida in April; it is supposed to be warm. I guess this is better than 90 degrees and humid.

We dress warmly and head over to Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM Studios). We see all the shows,

get ice cream at Gertie's and then head back to the campground for a late dinner, and then just hang out in the RV for the remainder of the evening. It's just too plain cold to go out to do anything! They are predicting near record low temperatures tonight (in the 40s).

We head over to Animal Kingdom today.

We get a Fastpass for the Kilomanjari Safaris and then head over to Dinosaur. The line is short (yea!), but 15 seconds into the ride, our car stops; in fact the whole ride stops and soon the lights all come on and they announce that they are having technical problems. Several minutes later two attendants come to our car with a ladder and tell us to climb out. The ride is broke. So we walk past the dinosaurs--they're a lot less scary looking in the bright light. The attendant tells us that we're 'getting a backstage tour' in place of the ride. It's not really backstage;it's just all lit up and we have to all walk in single file instead of riding around in a bumpy car. They give everyone Fastpasses to ride later in the day, which we do.

Then we head over to what may be my favorite show in Disney World: Nemo, the Musical. I love the scenery, the music and everything about this show. It's a wonderful show.

We grab a quick lunch and when we come outside, it's raining. We can't believe it. It rained every day when we were here about a week ago. We figure we got at least 5 inches of rain in three days the last time we were here.

The good news is that when the rain finally stops later in the afternoon, the weather is great--much cooler. In fact it's much much cooler. We are glad we brought jackets in our back pack.

We enjoy the rest of the park and then head back to the campground for dinner. Then we take the boat over to Magic Kingdom to see the night time parade and ride a few rides. A great day is had by all.

We had a wonderful sunset last night here at Monument Lake. Not sure why, but they often have pretty sunsets here.

This morning my parents left early to head back north. They arrived here at Monument Lake early last December and will now return to Potter County Pennsylvania for a few weeks before heading to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park as a campground host June and July. Then back to Potter County til next December when they plan to return here to be campground hosts again. They like it here and I can understand why. It is really a nice setting for a campground.

We leave soon after they leave and head back to Fort Wilderness Campground at Disney World. We set up camp and notice that there are some real Disney fanatics in this part of the campground. The one motorhome near us has Disney wooden characters that are attached to a motion sensor, and move whenever we walk by them. Funny.

It's close to 90 degrees today so we head over to the pool to cool off.

After dinner we head over to Disney Studios to see the Fantasmic show

and after Fantasmic we head over to the Magic Kingdom to see the fireworks display

When we return to the campground, the motorhome across from us is all lit up with Disney lights, including Mickey ears that are hung at least 20 feet up in the air between the trees. They are real Disney fanatics!

We had planned to stay at Disney World 6 days but we decide to leave DW early to return to our 'fishing camp' near Everglades City to finish the kitchen. So we're back at Monument Lake Campground at Big Cypress National Preserve with my parents. The other volunteer camp hosts have left to return to their home in Maine so we get permission to park in the camp host spot beside my parents--electricity! Yea! Only the campground volunteers have electric at Monument Lake.

We work from around 9:30 am to 6 pm each day and by Friday afternoon we finally have the kitchen, living room and hallway finished. The bathroom and bedrooms are still disasters but at least we have half the inside finished and we rebuilt the dock in January. Hopefully we'll finish the remainder of the inside next winter.

I should have taken photos before we started renovating so that we could see how much better the inside looks, but I didn't. The kitchen isn't anything fancy but it's a big improvement to what was there. People suggested that we just junk the mobile home and replace it with a new one, but Plantation Island is right next to Everglades National Park and there are a ton of regulations for building etc. to the point that it's cost prohibitive to replace an old mobile home with a new one. We used 'recycled' material wherever we could: meaning our new kitchen has secondhand/pre-owned cabinets, sink, formica counter, and appliances. The sub-flooring and flooring are new material. The flooring looks like wood but is actually vinyl planking.

Here is the dock we repaired/rebuilt in January:

People keep asking us what we plan to do with the property. We don't know. The original plan was to clean and fix it up and sell it, but the Florida real estate market is horrible so we won't be able to sell it any time in the near future. Jere seems to be getting attached to the property and is trying to convince me to keep the property as a winter retreat. So who knows what we'll do???