Troll,
I just want to tell you how much I am enjoying your trip report. I too grew up going to Fort Wilderness every year, driving down from NH with my parents. I continued to go with them after I got married and began my own family. My kids and husband LOVE Fort Wilderness as much as I do. I am around your age and can relate to so many of your memories! I look forward to reading more, thanks so much for sharing!! Heidi
Hi, Heidi! And welcome to the boards and welcome to the Troll's Trip Report!
The Fort is an addictive place. Once you've been there, you can't help but long to go back. It really helps, too, that we have so many memories attached to it. I've found trip reporting a lot like pictures. When you take a bunch of pictures, it's much more fun to look through them with other people than it is to look through them yourself.
Trip reporting is like that, only with thousands of people! Great fun.
Thanks for the very kind words!
enjoying every bit of your TR.
Glad you're still hanging in there! And I'm glad you're still enjoying the ride.
So we've solved the mystery of the old loading dock thing along the path leading to the Pioneer Hall -- it was an entrance deck to a sample Fleetwood trailer the Fort used to rent. Funny how once a mystery is solved you're kind of disappointed by the answer? You almost want the mystery to remain a mystery.
Kind of like "Lost." When they'd explain why there were polar bears on the island, you'd be like, "Oh."
Yes, I watched "Lost." Can you tell? I really liked that show until the last three seasons. They jumped the shark once they blew up the hatch.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent there.
Back to the show.
Mrs. Troll and I were up at the Pioneer Hall rocking away on the rocking chairs. We did that a lot. Mrs. Troll really likes the porch and the rocking chairs. We could sit there all day and be entertained by the kids on the playground and the tired but happy folks streaming in from the docks. Who needs the Magic Kingdom?
Oh, shnap! Did I just say that?
Never mind.
But we couldn't stay on the porch forever. Zoe was back at camp, and she was probably rousing from her midday nap. I also wanted to browse around the Meadow Trading Post. You see, Daryl, the master fisherman I met who lives at the Fort six months out of the year, had cool Fort Wilderness shirt, and I wanted one. It was one of those button down denim shirts with the FW logo on the pocket.
Here it is, although you can't see the logo on the pocket:
Goes great with jeans.
And not too nerdy.
I was willing to pay $40 for that little embroidered logo.
And Pop would not approve. I could hear him now: "You could buy that shirt at the outlet mall for half the price! You'd be paying $20 for an embroidered logo!"
Exactly.
Mrs. Troll knew I wanted a Daryl shirt, so she checked the Settlement Trading Post. Well, as any veteran Fort goer knows, the selection at the Settlement Trading Post is a bit, well, lacking.
So if there was any chance of me getting a Daryl shirt, it was at the Meadows Trading Post.
So we picked up Zoe and took her along for the ride:
Notice that Mrs. Troll is wearing a windbreaker. It was chilly, especially while riding on the cart. We brought along a Mexican blanket, too, which I'd wrap Zoe in.
So the plan was for me to run in to the trading post while Mrs. Troll stayed back on the cart, watching Zoe.
I took the camera inside, of course.
Now the Fort may have been a bit slow in getting the Christmas decorations up this year, but not the merchandise:
Also noticed that someone arranged a Mickey head out of the checkers on the checkerboard:
Is that person here on the boards, reading this report? Maybe? Or did a friendly cast member do this?
Also notice the Musket Mickey emblems on the checkerboards. Such a nice touch. I didn't notice them until now. Otherwise I would have zoomed in so we could see them in full detail.
These Mickey gnomes are very cool:
And here's one of the rock and mineral table thing:
And this shot is horrible:
Sorry. My camera is not great in low light, and to fill the frame the way I wanted to, I had to zoom in tight, but then the combination of slow shutter, lots of zoom, and a shaky troll hand (claw?) results in an embarrassingly blurry picture.
Suddenly a thought bubble appeared over my head, and an image of a bored Mrs. Troll and an eager scruffy dog sitting all alone on a Kenny golf cart in the Meadow Trading Post parking lot filled it. So I got back to looking for my Daryl shirt.
No dice.
So I asked a cast member. She informed me, interestingly, that the only souvenirs they had with a Fort logo on them were a postcard and a pin.
You read that right -- a postcard and a pin.
A flipping postcard and a $2 pin?!?
Marketing opportunity completely and foolishly missed?!
By Disney?!
As she told me that, I stood there, dumbfounded. My brain got parity error.
Does not compute.
Does not compute.
Error. Error.
Money + Merchandise = Disney -> TRUE
Money + No Merchandise = Disney -> ERROR!
So the cast member could clearly see the confusion on my face and tried to immediately snap me out of my zombie-like trance: "Well, sir! Sir! Hello, sir? They tell us we'll be getting some Fort merchandise soon! That's what they tell us!"
So I finally snapped out of it. "Oh," I said, "OK..."
Not having merchandise for the campground is a bad omen. Very, very bad.
To me, anyway.
So I thanked the cast member and headed back out the door to report the news to Mrs. Troll.
When I did, she fell into the same confused trance.
When she finally snapped out of it, we both agreed that not having a full gamut of Fort merchandise was just plain idiotic and the Disney suits who made that blunder should be tarred and feathered.
Then we decided to drive through the Meadows rec area, since we were in the neighborhood.
And as we rode through, lo and behold, there they were...
Shuffleboard players!
Earlier in the Troll Trip Report I wondered if shuffleboard was even really a game, as I had never witnessed anyone actually play it. Then a friendly Dis board member Polka Dot Suitcase informed me otherwise:
Yep. Pretty darn easy -- you just try to get your discs onto the highest points, and knock off your opponents' discs from doing the same. My grandfather was a bigwig at the Buffalo airport and when we were kids, we could use the hotel pool. Spent lots of time playing shuffleboard. (When we weren't diving underwater to avoid hearing the planes screaming overhead.)
When they encountered their first board, my own kiddos figured out the rules in seconds flat, but they're pretty sports-and-game-oriented.
But despite this assertion, I was still skeptical.
I refused to believe that shuffleboard was a real game.
But then these guys proved me flat wrong and debunked my conspiracy theory:
As we rode up, Mrs. Troll exclaimed, "Look, Norm! There you go! Those boys are playing shuffleboard!"
So I shouted to the boys if they would mind if I took their picture. Notice the one boy is standing at near attention!
Since we were in the area, we realized we were kinda hungry. So we decided to grab some BBQ from the Meadows takeout window. Mrs. Troll agreed to go stand in line while I babysat Zoe.
So I snapped a few more detail shots:
Notice the sheet of metal they attached to the supporting log's outcropping. Good way to prevent wood rot.
And I'm always impressed by the structural engineering of the Fort:
Just imagine how much weight those log trusses have to support!
Here's one using a very shallow depth of field:
And here I tried to capture the water droplets frozen in the air, but it didn't quite come out:
Notice the boy's shirt says, "Master of Disaster"! Funny what you notice
after you snap a shot.
So up next, we eat our BBQ and the Kenny Cart thieves raid the Fort's basketball courts!