Showing posts with label Gatorland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gatorland. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2022

Fun at Sherwood Forest and a Broken Dryer!

We just wrapped up another two weeks at Sherwood Forest RV Resort.  You'll find this one featuring prominently in the remainder of our time in Orlando, as it ended up having the availability we needed and it's super close to Disney.  This time around we were placed in a pull-through site we actually fit into, so that's an improvement over last time!  

Much more appropriate location for our RV!

We took advantage of our proximity to Disney to continue to enjoy Epcot's Festival of the Arts.  We completed their cuisine stroll to earn our 'free' cookie and slushie!  We enjoyed a couple of the best part of the festival - 3D Chalk Art!  Unfortunately the time of day and sunny days worked against us so we didn't get the best pictures with the shadows on the art.  We went to see the Disney on Broadway concert for the first time - I thought it was very fun, though Aaron isn't all that crazy about concerts.  They had the original singers for Mary Poppins and Tarzan on Broadway and they sang songs from those shows and a few others.  We also made it to Hollywood Studios but didn't end up going to the other parks as every time we checked the Disney app the lines were crazy long.  The bloggers we follow have commented several times that there is no longer an 'off' season at Disney, and we tend to agree.  This has us rethinking our plans for next winter, but we haven't decided anything just yet...

Rewards of our (eating) labor.


I'm supposed to be taking a flower 
from Groot

And here Aaron is rescuing Hei Hei 
(his favorite character from Moana) - 
unfortunately on this one in addition to the
shadows a storm had washed away 
the intensity of the colors

For a change of pace we decided to go to Gatorland one day - we had purchased annual passes last year while babysitting my sister's kids, and figured we should make better use of them (we hadn't been since then)!  They were doing their gator feeding show again (it was not running last year due to COVID), so we enjoyed seeing that and visiting the more remote areas of the park we hadn't seen with the kids.

The birds were very bold around the 
well-fed alligators!  

Obviously not a real gator...

As I hinted in my last post, the itinerary for our rescheduled cruise (which we were supposed to go on during our second week at Sherwood Forest this time) was changed again.  At least this time they told us on Monday instead of Thursday, so we had a little more time to NOT prepare to be on a cruise.  Aaron was sorely disappointed (I mean, I was too, but he was more so), but we decided to cancel the cruise.  It just wasn't worth paying the extra money for an itinerary they weren't doing, and we figured it was just going to keep getting changed until this phase of COVID passes, so we'll try again next year.  I've set Aaron to looking for a cruise for our anniversary in May, but in the meantime the good news on this was that we'd be in Florida for our twin nephews' birthday.  We joined them for a fun day of games - arcade and board games - good times!

Playing 7 Wonders with my sister and the twins

The bad news this trip is that the dryer part of my washer/dryer combo seems to have died.  Every time I try to run the dryer it spouts an error that apparently indicates it thinks it's overheating.  Unfortunately the unit is so deeply wedged in the RV we don't really think we can do much troubleshooting until we get back to the farm in Princeton where we have a place to do work and lots more tools.  From googling the error, it may be that something hidden just needs lint/dust cleaned, or that some part of a circuit board needs replacing, but we don't have access to any of that without disassembling the cabinet that holds the unit.  So, bummer that I won't be able to dry laundry in the RV anymore, but at least the washing feature still works!  We had some nice sunny windy days that allowed the clothes to dry quite quickly when I hung them outside.  We'll take a closer look when we get back to the farm in West Virginia in the spring.

Monday, April 5, 2021

A last week-ish in Orlando

We just spent our last week-ish in Orlando before heading north for some general maintenance and repairs.  We stayed a second time at the Thousand Trails Orlando RV Resort.  Our stay this time was MUCH better than our previous stay last year.  Last year we made the mistake of taking a pull-through site when it was offered (usually these are better sites!), and ended up in the absolutely worst part of the park in a site where we couldn't put out our window awnings without hitting the RV next to us.  This year we were prepared and told the we wanted a back-in site, and we lucked out and got a spot in the brand new section of the park (new since last year) with wide level concrete pads and ample space between RVs.  Much improved!

Campsite at Orlando RV Resort

The first week we were there we visited Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot in our final 'goodbye' tour.  It seems several school systems were already in spring break, as the park reservations were sold out every day.  Fortunately I had booked the 3 parks months in advance, but we could only sit on 3 reservations with our annual passes, and once we used those three everything was sold out and I couldn't get any others for the week.  In one bright side of COVID-19 restrictions, the park capacity limits meant that the parks didn't actually feel much more crowded, if at all, compared to our last visits in the fall before our Texas trip.


With the Lady & the Tramp topiaries
at the Flower & Garden festival in Epcot


Living with the Land ride at Epcot during the Flower & Garden Festival

Chip inside the Land Pavilion at Epcot

Inside the butterfly garden at the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival

In front of Spaceship Earth


Baby giraffe at Animal Kingdom!

Magic Kingdom!

The second half of our stay we enjoyed seeing my sister and her family, who were there on Spring Break and managed to find an AirBnB on the approach road to our RV park.  Together we visited Hollywood Studios, the first time at Disney World for my niece and nephews!

All of us in front of the Millenium Falcon at Galaxy's Edge.  
Our first time with matching Disney shirts!

We had an awesome day, park open to park close, and the kids had a ball!  My sister's family is planning to move to St. Augustine this summer, so she and my brother-in-law went to look at houses and we babysat the kids at Gatorland!  Our nephews are obsessed with alligators and snakes so this was a perfect option.

Hunting for snakes on the 'Swamp
Walk'



Wrestling an alligator!

After this stay, we'll start heading north to West Virginia to do some semi-annual maintenance on the RV and work on a few more repairs on our repair wish list.  At the moment we're planning for six weeks at the farm before hitting the road again, so get ready for some more 'RV repair' posts!