Home and unpacked the car. Still have a lot of laundry and other things to do, but taking a little break to catch up on email and to post a little trip report. As I mentioned earlier, this was our first stay at the Fort, and it did not disappoint!
Weather during our Stay: Hot and sunny every single day - no rain. But we spent all day in the parks, and it was actually cool enough that we needed blankets in our tents at night. The only time I felt uncomfortably hot was on setup day because - obviously - setting up a campsite in the sun is going to make you sweat
Roadtrip/Driving details: We never hit any real traffic, and had sunny weather the entire way both to and from WDW. No car problems, and even came in $50 under budget for gas expenses. Could not ask for better trip conditions.
We left from just North of Austin TX around 6pm on 5/20 to begin our 16.5 hour drive to WDW. We made it as far as Vidor, TX (close to Louisiana border) by 10pm and stopped for the night. On day 2 we made it to Madison, FL. And on Day 3 it was a 3 hour drive to the Fort. We took our time lingering over breakfast so we got to check-in at noon. I will mention the only "negative" about our roadtrip. Not sure if it was just bad luck but every..single...bathroom we used along the way was just disgusting, no matter how clean the dining area was, or how how pretty the buildings/shopping centers looked from the outside. From Applebees to Winn-Dixie, to Subway to McDonald's, we dubbed it the "tour of America's nastiest public restrooms".
We stayed at all Best Westerns along our travels, and the hotels were all clean, with large beds and friendly staff and free breakfast. I have Best Western Rewards, can use my AAA discount, and some have suites for about $150/night for up to 6 ppl. My favorite location this time was in Baton Rouge - we had to drive a bit off of I-10 to get to, but it was so adorable with its French Quarter theme.
Arrival at the Fort: We arrived ahead of schedule, at about noon. So, our site wasn't ready yet. We parked at overflow, and walked over to the buses, planning to ride the internal buses to look around. But about 2 minutes after sitting on the benches we got a text that the site was ready so we headed back to the car.
The Site: Site 2002 was HUGE! Plenty of room for our two large tents (10x10 and 17x10) and screen canopy(12x12) - all completely ON the tent pad . Also, just a tiny walk to the Comfort Station and Bus stop. Directly behind us you could see the work going on in the 2100 loop.
(above) View of our Site and Tents
(below) View to the back of our site
Bus/Boat Service: Never waited longer than 10 minutes for a bus, and about 20 for a boat. Loved, loved, loved taking the boats!
Food at the Fort: Three days we ate breakfast at P&Js takeout. One day we had dinner (pizza) at P&Js. Takeout was a little on the slow side, but food was good and there was no crowd and no line.
Neighbors and noise: Never heard a peep from the sites near us. But we did notice that the adjacent sites had new people on them nearly daily (mostly ppl staying just one night)
. The only noise we heard was fireworks, and one evening the golf carts were out in force (sounded like a road rally for a bit as we were trying to get to sleep). Probably just due to timing of everyone returning from Wishes and heading back to their sites.
Fort Amenities: Comfort stations were clean. But, long lines for showers except the one day we got up at 5am to use them. Ice machine was convenient but I felt SO bad using it at night after returning from the parks. It was incredibly loud and felt awful for disturbing those in sites right near it. But since we were at the bus stops at 6:45am and not back until nearly 11pm each night, I couldn't get ice during a non-quiet time. Sadly we didn't have time for the pools, so can't review them.
The Parks: Moderate crowds. Our first day got off to a not-so-great start being stuck nearly at the loading area of Test Track for almost an hour (with FastPass!) because it broke down. Not easy to console a 4 year old who can SEE the ride but can't get on it for so long. In fact, Epcot rides broke down all day long causing extra walking and aggravation but without hoppers we decided to stay. FP lines not managed well there either. The FP line for our Epcot Character M&G Greet was actually a 45 minute wait (60 at standby). It was just weird because the park itself felt VERY empty - emptier than I've ever seen it actually. Good days at the other parks kind of made up for Epcot's shortfalls. But it's the first time we left a park feeling truly let down and like it wasn't worth the park admission that day.
Hollywood Studios was great for us since my boys and DD's fiance are all Star Wars fans. Fireworks there = incredible! Kind of wish we had skipped Epcot and done two DHS days.
Magic Kingdom - we spent two of our days here and both were jam-packed with rides and snacks and we really made great use of SDFP and rider swap too.
5/27 was our AK day, and we got to see the Tree of Life light up and snagged a FP for Jungle Book show soft opening. The Tree was AMAZING, but the Jungle Book show was a little too artsy for my younger kids., Glad we got to be there for it though and used our rider switch pass to ride Everest in the dark.
Highlights of being at the fort: My sons LOVED the campfire singalong. We manged to get to it on our first night since we didn't hit the parks until the next day
. Beautifully managed grounds, even/flat tent sites and the trees around the site were just a tent campers' dream.
RECAP: Wish we had planned for another day or two at the fort to really explore and spend more time there. But it gives us another reason to return sooner.
In a nutshell, if you want to know if we had a good trip, DD(21), who has gone camping with us her entire childhood, turned and said to me on our walk back to the bus stop from the campfire sing-along, "Mom, THIS is where I want to bring my kids some day to go camping". 
).
