My Disney World: The Cabins at Fort Wilderness

This is easily our favorite place to stay when we head to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando. As you may know, we are a Disney family. In my last Hub, I mentioned that I have taken my kiddos to WDW about 50 times. Although we have made a lot of day trips over the years, we prefer to spend the night. And my kids always ask to stay in the Cabins.

This is the only way I will camp. Ever. My usual rule is "No Outside Doors" for hotels... Disney is my exception. The Cabins are basically trailers with the Disney touch. Each Cabin has a full kitchen, one bedroom (with full bed and bunk beds), one full bathroom, large deck and single car driveway (parking space). There's also a Murphy bed in the living room. It's quite comfy.

If you're traveling with little ones, a pack-n-play fits perfectly in between the full bed and bunk beds. And there's an exhaust fan you can turn on just outside the bedroom to drown out the noise from the front of the Cabin. Oh, and blackout curtains.

When people ask why they should stay at Fort Wilderness, there are several things that just jump out. Here's my list of "good to knows":

• Bring food to stock your kitchen. This will save you a lot of money. There are two country stores in Fort Wilderness incase you forget something, we inevitably do. But it's pretty pricey.
• Bring up the kids bikes. You can spend hours riding all over the place.
• If you're going with a group of friends or family, make sure to "link your reservations" when you book your room. And the first person to check in needs to specifically ask to be neighbors with the linked people. For whatever reason, Disney doesn't always make this happen when you book.
• You can rent golf carts. Or bring your own from home. We ALWAYS bring a golf cart or rent one. It's not a requirement, there are busses running inside the Resort to transport you around. But we love the freedom a golf cart gives you. Plus it's just plain fun to ride around on.

As I've said before, this Resort is excellent for larger groups. Two years ago, we had the pleasure of going to Ft Wilderness with several friends. Seven families to be exact. We went there to celebrate a birthday. It was the perfect location for a bunch of families to gather and spend excellent QT together. (full story below)

Nearly two years ago, we had the great pleasure of introducing our friends to our Happy Place. A group of families that we are friends with all decided to spend a long weekend at Disney. And most families agreed to try out the Cabins. We were going up to celebrate a birthday in the group. (most of us opted for Disney trips instead of traditional birthday parties) Here's how it went down:

So there we are, on a beautiful sunny morning. The weather was perfect... I don't think the temperature could be more perfect. We were packing up. The suitcases were full. Sweets' had been packed for a night or two. She's a bit of a control-freak - wonder where she gets that from - so she LOVES to be able to pack her own stuff. And I don't mind. One less person to worry about. It's not like she lets me have much of a say in her outfit choices anyway. Pick your parental battles.

We kept Sweets home from school for the day. My Crew spent the morning packing up the trailer. Shane loaded the golf carts, and I finished packing the coolers. Sweets and Buddy were counting down the minutes until we left.

The plan was to meet up with the birthday girl's family at the Turnpike entrance at 1pm. So at like 12:30, we began the task of strapping little ones in. Stu puts the key in the ignition to kick on the A/C... and nothing.

Seriously. Nothing.

Battery is dead. D-E-A-D. Dead.

The kids are less than amused as we pulled them out of the car. Stu is even more unhappy than the kiddos. So change of plans. The Smiths will bring a new car battery to our house, and we will leave from here.

Finally, we are off! Disney: here we come!

We checked in, and the kids played in the "yards". They had an absolute blast running back and forth between the Stu cabin and the Smith cabin. Genie and I took to unloading the food and stocking the kitchens while Shane and Charlie did something. I'm not really sure what.

Since Genie was going to be cooking for a massive group of peeps on Saturday and we had dinner plans for Friday night, we thought it would be lovely to cook dinner for our friends. Steaks on the grill with baked spuds and a caesar salad. Yum. Yum. Yum. Oh, and hot dogs for the munchkins.

Friday was a bit more chaotic than it was planned to be. We had intended to spend the day at Animal Kingdom. But in the morning, on our way to catch a Disney bus, Genie and I decided to check on the other cabins for our friends. Several other families were going to be arriving over the next 24 hours and we wanted to make sure that their cabins were going to be on our loop. We had linked our reservations when we booked, so it should be a no-brainer, right? Wrong. This happens to me every time... I don't understand why it took Disney so long to master "linking". (update since this event: WDW handled linking like pros for my sis's wedding last month. Hopefully they have gotten their poo together, and that that wasn't a wedding-fluke.)

Anyway, we discussed it with the manager. And we had 2 options:

Option 1 - stay where we are and our friends will all be together at the other end of the loop... NOT next to us.

Option 2 - move into a new loop. Our entire group will be clumped together. Perfect for the kiddos.

The only hesitation is how angry our hubbies will be when they hear that we have to move. Hmmm... Almost on cue, the phone calls and text messages from the husbands begin. We give them the good news. Shane was less than excited, verbally. Then he hung up. Good times.

So, we packed up. And moved a few loops over.

In the end, it was worth it. And I think even Charlie and Shane would agree.

We spent the afternoon playing at the cabins, went to ride the ponies, played on the playground and waited for more friends to arrive.