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!

More Orlando and a Visitor!

We've just wrapped up another couple weeks in Orlando, this time at the Orlando Thousand Trails RV Resort.  I think this is the first Thousand Trails resort we've stayed at *not* in the Encore Trails Collection.  So, some observations here that may or may not be reflective of the type of resort since I have a completely insufficient sample size...

First observation...Orlando RV Resort was HUGE.  We took a walk around the resort, walked for 45 minutes, and still didn't get into all the nooks and crannies.  This wasn't necessarily a bad thing - I don't think I experienced any ill effects due to the hugeness.  In fact, this resort had more scheduled activities (craft fairs, dance classes, bingo, etc.) than any we've stayed at this far, doubtless due to the number of people, and it featured TWO pools instead of the normal one.  Additionally, this had possibly the best run mail room I've seen at a resort - they keep track of all packages as they arrive in a large alphabetized binder, with notes as to where they've stashed the package.  This makes package pickup SO much faster than the places that just toss everything in a pile in a closet.

The second observation...there were a few sections of the resort, including our spot, where they packed you in like sardines.  Most of the resort was actually normally spaced for an RV park, but there were a couple of rows that were crazy cramped.  Although this was slightly off putting, it really wasn't so bad.  Our neighbors were quiet and aside from having no desire to just hangout outside the RV, we really didn't suffer any because of this.

Our spot!  Easy to touch neighboring RVs!

The other major event that happened while we were there was that my sister came to stay with us for a few days (yes, we can entertain visitors in the RV!).  In retrospect I should have taken a picture of our guest setup while she was with us as you'd doubtless find that interesting...but I didn't think of it until just now, so I'll entertain you with highlights of our trip instead.  The main feature was an absolutely perfect day at Hollywood Studios, where we got to ride all the best rides and enjoy lots of great food.

Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar at Disney Springs

Waiting in line for Smuggler's Run at Hollywood Studios

Blue and Green Milk!

Fuzzy Tauntauns and a cloudy Bespin Fizz at Oga's Cantina