Goodbye Orlando!

Our magical winter has finally ended - this Sunday we finally left the Orlando area.  It was a great winter full of Disney, Universal Studios, and the occasional county park full of wildlife.  Our last site in Orlando was Winter Garden (Thousand Trails) - a fitting end as this was also our first campsite in the Orlando area.  We liked our site quite a lot better this time - it was more conveniently located than our first site and we were nestled between two other temporary campers (rather than the permanent residents who flanked us last time).  The site was also very level, always a bonus!

COVID-19 is certainly making big news everywhere and thus far we've managed to narrowly avoid related closures.  My sister's birthday cruise occurred just before all cruise departures were canceled.  Disney World's last day before closure was the day we left Orlando.  The RV park put in some stringent restrictions right as we left.

Activities board at the RV resort

So far we haven't heard of any closures in the parks we've chosen on our trek back north, so fingers crossed our 1.5 week trip is uneventful.  Some of you might have heard that we have been planning a trip to Europe in late spring...of course that is looking less and less likely with every passing day. 

Of course, as with the rest of the country the grocery stores in Orlando have been greatly affected.  Unfortunately I was legitimately out of toilet paper and toilet bowl cleaner when we went to Walmart...I found a secret stash of toilet paper in a corner of Walmart but had to settle for the off brands remaining for the toilet bowl cleaner.  We don't have enough space in the RV to hoard anything even if we wanted to, so it's an interesting conundrum living in an RV during this crisis.  Overall though, spending our time in an RV, hanging out at our fire ring in small campgrounds, seems like a good way to try to socially distance ourselves.

Toilet paper aisle at Walmart

Back to happier (sadder? non-virus related at any rate) thoughts...it was hard to leave Orlando - we've had a wonderful time in the area.  We made great use of our annual passes, and it is strange to think about NOT just deciding to hop over to a theme park for a few hours for some fun.  We FINALLY made it on Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure and it was AMAZING.  We also slipped in a ride on the brand new Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at Hollywood Studios, caught the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival, and rode the rest of the rides at the various parks this week that we hadn't been on yet.  We're debating whether some sort of visit to Florida should become part of our annual plans...time will tell.  Bye for now though Orlando!

Epcot Flower and Garden Festival

Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure

Goodbye Magic Kingdom!

Goodbye Universal Studios!

Goodbye Epcot!

Bill Frederick Park & Universal Studios

We spent a week at Bill Frederick Park, maintained by the City of Orlando.  We picked this park partially because it was available (it's crazy hard to find spots to park the RV in Florida unless you're planning a year in advance) and partially because it was very well rated on Campendium.  I have to say that this is the first park we've been to that didn't meet our expectations.  It was a nice park, nicer than many we've stayed at, but it wasn't as good as we expected based on the reviews.  Most of the sites were extremely unlevel (we would have had to put our rear tires on 6 inch blocks to actually level the RV), and the road through the campground itself was narrow and windy (our tires were off the road around every curve).  There was a nice walking trail but they had blocked access to it from the RV campground.

Example Leveling Problems from a Neighboring RV

On the plus side, most of the sites did have a view of Turkey Lake, and once you did escape from the campground to access the walking path, the path was very nice.  We also met a sweet cat near the children's zoo on site.  The major focus of this park was frisbee golf - every spare square foot of the park not involved in another use was dedicated to it, with 3 different courses.

How many frisbees have been lost in the lake on this hole??

Bill Frederick also had the benefit of being relatively close to Universal Studios.  We had grand plans to 'rope drop' the parks and make it into the Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure without waiting 2+ hours, but two days it was near freezing in the morning, and the day that we did make it at opening time the ride was closed until mid afternoon with mechanical problems.  Still, we made it to the park a couple days and enjoyed the rest of the two parts of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  We'll try for Hagrid's again soon.

Triwizard Spirit Rally

We also made a trip to our favorite restaurant on Universal's CityWalk - Toothsome Chocolate Emporium.  Toothsome has AMAZING milkshakes - each with a separate dessert on top (think cake slice, cupcake, piece of pie), but this time we opted for one of the other massive desserts - a banana cream sundae - which consisted of basically a banana split with a piece of banana cream pie.  Amazing!