Anchors Away! The TCD Gang Has Another Dream (cruise)

[Travisma 1,317]

9 minutes ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

 The reason why your wife hasn't been invited to the party is that she's not a Fort Wilderness Castmember.

TCD

Fort management is just miffed at her because she won't give them access to the 3000 loop!

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

4 minutes ago, djsamuel said:

There is where you broke the code.  There has to be a connection to someone turning  their heads to this. For a cast member to do something like this is taking a huge risk of getting fired, and it happens all of the time (people getting fired).  They watch you like a hawk and will call you in and show you pictures for you to explain (even if it is legitimate).  I am surprised your daughter's ID opens that gate.  If she's worked a lot of OT, they may have expanded her access, but generally they should not.  I know they greatly reduced the staff at Access Control, so perhaps this is now their way of dealing with it.  Makes no sense.

You know, I might be wrong about her ID.  I know that she was able to use it on the day she worked at the Fort.  She had to go in the back gate, go into the Cast building back there, get her costume, and then take the golf cart to the Trading Post.  Maybe her card only worked that day, but I didn't think their access system was so sophisticated.  She could pick up a Fort shift at any time, and I doubt that they update access that frequently.

My daughters know kids who were termed for doing dumb stuff (e.g. putting a sweatshirt over a costume and going out into the MK as a guest during a Halloween party).  There's no way they would show up at a resort on their day off to freeload at the pool.

2 minutes ago, Travisma said:

Fort management is just miffed at her because she won't give them access to the 3000 loop!

LOL

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

As long as we are on the topic, let me bring up one more issue I have with them letting guests get on the buses with their freeloader gear.

How does anyone know what this guy has in that cart?:

Seriously- they have all of these bag checks and even metal detectors at the parks, but here at the Outpost parking lot, an unidentified person can board a Disney bus full of people with a giant cart of who knows what?  A bad guy could have himself a pretty good day here.

How stupid and irresponsible can management be?

TCD

[Travisma 1,317]

18 minutes ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

As long as we are on the topic, let me bring up one more issue I have with them letting guests get on the buses with their freeloader gear.

How does anyone know what this guy has in that cart?:

Seriously- they have all of these bag checks and even metal detectors at the parks, but here at the Outpost parking lot, an unidentified person can board a Disney bus full of people with a giant cart of who knows what?  A bad guy could have himself a pretty good day here.

How stupid and irresponsible can management be?

TCD

Well in the same vein, you could hide an entire surface-to-air missile launcher in some of those RVs or enough weaponry to arm a very large squad.

Lets face it, if a person is set on causing mayhem at WDW, there are too many ways they could and nothing short of armed guards, armed copters, and zodiacs with machine guns could stop them.

[lightbikes 73]

I thought that WaWa started in Pennsylvania.  Then I read some of the comments on this thread, and I wasn't sure.

14 hours ago, lightbikes said:

Wawa is a town in northern Ontario and it's the Ojibway name for the Canada Goose.  

That sounded entirely credible to me.

Then I read the Wikipedia article linked below.

13 hours ago, bhall said:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawa,_Pennsylvania

 

 

Well I guess I have to give it to Wikipedia - but I have to say the Town of Wawa goes back to the late 1800's - and if you go through there stop and see the goose - it's right on the TransCanada Highway - it's one of those roadside "must-sees".

http://www.thewawagoose.com

[Travisma 1,317]

Might be a little outdated, but ut's from their own web page...

 

Wawa Fun Fact Sheet

Did You Know…

• Wawa is the Lenni-Lenape name for a Canada Goose?

It’s true. Over 100 years ago, our original dairy farm was built on land located in a rural section of

Pennsylvania called Wawa, which was named from a local Native American tribe in honor of their

favored game – the Canada Goose.

• The Canada Goose has become a symbol of the very best attributes of our company?

Just like a majestic flock of Canada Geese flying synchronously in "V" formation, we employ the

principles of teamwork, group consensus and encouragement in our company. We think it's the

only way to fly.

• Wawa has over 200 years of history and tradition?

Wawa began in 1803 as an iron foundry in New Jersey; and transitioned to a mill and bleachery in

the mid-1860’s. In 1902, Wawa started a dairy farm and processing plan in Wawa, PA; and in 1964

the first Wawa food market was opened in Folsom, PA. Today Wawa operates more than 650

stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Florida.

• Wawa recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in retail?

50 Years ago, on April 16, 1964, Wawa founder Grahame Wood, opened the first Wawa store in

Folsom, Pennsylvania with a supreme purpose to be a convenience store with a difference.

Revolutionary for the time, Wawa offered fast, friendly service, fresh products, and value prices.

The rest is history! Today Wawa has more than 650 stores (400 offering gasoline) through PA, NJ,

DE, MD, VA, and Florida.

• Wawa is celebrating its 50th store in Florida in just more than two years?

In July of 2012 Wawa entered the sunshine state with its first store located across the street from

Sea World in Orlando. Since then, Wawa has opened 50 stores in the greater Tampa and Orlando

area, and currently has an additional 25 locations under construction!

Stunning Statistics…

• Wawa has more than 22,000 Associates, enough people to fill the Orlando Magic’s Amway

Center and Tampa Bay Times Forum to capacity – and JetBlue Park more than twice.

• Wawa sells more than 80 million built–to-order hoagies annually – enough to stretch between

Tampa and Orlando more than 50 times.

• The 190 million cups of coffee Wawa sells each year could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool

more than 26 times over.

• Wawa used 4,000 tons of ice to help customers beat the heat with frozen blended beverages. Put

on a scale, it would take the weight of more than 3200 manatees to balance out that much ice.

• Wawa serves more than 400 million customers annually, more than 20 times the population of

the state of Florida.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

1 hour ago, Travisma said:

Well in the same vein, you could hide an entire surface-to-air missile launcher in some of those RVs or enough weaponry to arm a very large squad.

Lets face it, if a person is set on causing mayhem at WDW, there are too many ways they could and nothing short of armed guards, armed copters, and zodiacs with machine guns could stop them.

Man, I am helping to hijack this thread pretty good here.  You make good points.  Still, it bothers me that they're letting people transport stuff on the buses.  Stopping that practice would cut down on the freeloading pretty quickly.

Although, I've seen freeloaders unload pull to the side of the road and unload their supplies right at the bridge across from the 1500 loop bus stop, so they'd probably do that if they couldn't bring it on the bus.

1 hour ago, lightbikes said:

I guess I have to give it to Wikipedia - but I have to say the Town of Wawa goes back to the late 1800's - and if you go through there stop and see the goose - it's right on the TransCanada Highway - it's one of those roadside "must-sees".

http://www.thewawagoose.com

Well, that is interesting.  The WaWa store attributes the name to a different tribe.  But, there's no denying that the WaWa town in Canada has a giant goose.

23 minutes ago, Travisma said:

• Wawa is the Lenni-Lenape name for a Canada Goose?

It’s true. Over 100 years ago, our original dairy farm was built on land located in a rural section of

Pennsylvania called Wawa, which was named from a local Native American tribe in honor of their

favored game – the Canada Goose.

Very interesting.  Especially the part attributing the name to the Lenape Indians.  For two years, when I was 15 and 16, I spent my entire summers as a staff member of the Lenape Scout Reservation in Medford Lakes, NJ.  I learned a lot about the Lenape tribe, but not that they called geese WaWas.

TCD

[lightbikes 73]

 

4 hours ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

Man, I am helping to hijack this thread pretty good here.  You make good points.  Still, it bothers me that they're letting people transport stuff on the buses.  Stopping that practice would cut down on the freeloading pretty quickly.

Although, I've seen freeloaders unload pull to the side of the road and unload their supplies right at the bridge across from the 1500 loop bus stop, so they'd probably do that if they couldn't bring it on the bus.

Well, that is interesting.  The WaWa store attributes the name to a different tribe.  But, there's no denying that the WaWa town in Canada has a giant goose.

Very interesting.  Especially the part attributing the name to the Lenape Indians.  For two years, when I was 15 and 16, I spent my entire summers as a staff member of the Lenape Scout Reservation in Medford Lakes, NJ.  I learned a lot about the Lenape tribe, but not that they called geese WaWas.

 

TCD

It's ok TCD your Trip Reports are so good they can handle the occasional hijack!!!!

 

This one was great by the way.

 

[bhall 115]

Check out the wawa that were in my backyard yesterday lol

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

On ‎7‎/‎20‎/‎2016 at 8:57 PM, lightbikes said:

 

It's ok TCD your Trip Reports are so good they can handle the occasional hijack!!!!

 

This one was great by the way.

 

You're right.  What would a TCD TR be without a good hijack?

11 hours ago, bhall said:

Check out the wawa that were in my backyard yesterday lol

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cool.  So, did you harvest a couple and cook them on that bonfire you have ready to go?

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Time for an update.

We left off in the early afternoon of July 4th.

The "feels like" temperature was over 100 degrees, and the sun was blazing.

And, I had just hurt myself trying to get my money's worth at the new Trail's End brunch buffet.

Not the best time to go exploring around the Fort, but I do what I have to do.

So, I left the girls on the bus at the 900 loop bus stop, and headed into the loop.

Those of you who visit the Fort exclusively around the High Holy Days of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas would be surprised by how few folks decorate their campsites at other times of the year, but there are people who still try.

I came across one such site in the 900 loop.  I would be very surprised if this camper isn't at least a lurker here on FF.net- he has all the stuff cool kids are supposed to have, including a Mickey Lamp and one of Warren's signs:

It looks like some princesses live at this site.  Well done, whoever you are.

Here's something that has become a trend among those in the know- a golf cart garage.  I've seen this more than a few times:

I guess that's good, but it seems like overkill to me.  What's the big deal if it rains on your cart?  If you have it parked at the Outpost or Settlement, it's going to get rained on anyway.

Here we are at the bridge in the back of the 900 loop.  I am surprised that so few people know about this, but I guess folks who camp exclusively in the premium sites have no reason to need to know about it:

Alligator Sign Guy has been working overtime at the Fort. He has planted Alligator signs about every 20' along the entire length of the canal that runs from behind the 800 loop, all the way out to where the canal passes between the 1000, 1100, 2100 and 2000 loops.  On both sides.  That's a lot of alligator signs:

I was heading to the 2100 loop for a look around, and stopped to look across at the 2000 loop to the site that I had camped in over the Memorial Day Weekend.  It looked to me like they had cleaned out the canal and removed the home-made bridge that has always been there:

I kept on walking, and just like that, I was at the back of the 2100 loop:

In case you missed it, I posted a bunch of photos of what was going on in the 2100 loop on this thread.  It was newsworthy at the time, but someone posted on another thread that the construction walls are now down and it looks like the loop is about to open.  Maybe by this weekend:

After checking out the 2100 loop, there was something else that I wanted to check on.

As we rode the bus in earlier, I thought I saw something interesting in the pond next to the group camping area parking lot, and I wanted to check on it.  That was a bit of a walk, but I could use a good walk today.  So, I walked all the way back along the canal, and crossed the bridge this time.  I came out here, at the edge of the group camping area:

No one was crazy enough to camp here this weekend:

This pond by the group camping parking area is scummy most of the time.  This is also one of the few places at the Fort where I have ever seen an alligator.  It was just a little one, and that was quite a while ago:

This is the parking lot.  Believe it or not, there are times when this lot is completely full of cars:

I walked over to the area where I thought I had seen something,  And, it turns out that I had seen something.  This is what I had spotted from the bus:

Take a closer look at what's hanging there for bait:

I think those are sausage links.

It's a good thing I had just eaten, or I might have ended up in that trap.

Here's the other end of the trap:

I wanted to try and get a better photo of the red sign you can see on the front of the trap.  I think it says Disney Pest Management at the bottom, and has a phone number.  But, I saw a white van speeding toward me.  Even though I wasn't doing anything wrong, I didn't feel like having a confrontation with one of the geriatric Security Guards who drive around in those white vans, so I stopped with the photo taking and walked away from the trap:

It turns out that it was a false alarm- that white van was just some dummy who was lost.

So I missed out on a photo I wanted. Here's the best I can do with zooming in on the sign that was on the trap:

But, the point is that it looks like Disney owns its own gator traps, and this one didn't look new.  It also didn't look big enough to catch a very big gator.  And, in all of my visits to the Fort, this is the first time I have ever seen a gator trap in use.

It was just as well that the van scared me off.  I was really hot and drenched with sweat at this point, and I needed to get out of the sun and heat.

I headed back toward the group camping area.  There was a golf cart stopped at the side of the road down a ways, and next to it were some deer.  It's unusual to see them out in broad daylight like this:

Here's another site on the 900 loop- look at that giant plant and flag contraption that they have there:

And, here's another site on the 900 loop- this site has not only a Mickey lamp, but also a Pluto and Minnie lamp.  And, I have seen photos of those right here on FF.net before.  This was a Fiend's campsite, but no one was home:

I was thinking some nice Meadow Trading Post AC would feel good right about now, so I crossed over to there.  Right down the road, a bus was stopped to unload and load guests.  I had to wait as some moron in a fast golf cart sped past me toward the bus.  I remember thinking there was no way the driver would have time to stop.  Apparently he had no intention of stopping.  But, then I heard the screeching of tires, and I saw that he did stop.  Barely:

The bus driver had her window opened and was politely reminding the gentleman of all the "Please Stop While Buses Load and Unload" signs that are pretty hard to miss.

The Meadow Trading Post looks best in the summer when all the leaves are on the trees and the grass is lush:

Here's a blurry photo of the Front Porch rocker situation.  I thought about sitting in one, but even in the shade of the porch, it was too hot.  I wanted to get in that AC:

I headed in.

Boy, it felt good in there.

But, what I really needed was to get out of here and back to that cool room at the POFQ and the pool there.

So, I headed out the back.

Bob's Dock was overrun:

You can see that there are new No Fishing signs on the right and left of the dock, but there are none on the dock itself:

You can also see that canoes and kayaks were in the water and that they have opened up the area around the campfire as overflow for golf cart parking.

This picnic table in the shade looked inviting:

It was nice to be in the shade.  There was the slight hint of a breeze coming in off of the water:

It looked like they were raking it in across the pond with canoe rentals:

Let's see if I have this right- I can't fish on this side of the pond because a gigantic man-eating gator might suddenly jump out of the lake and get me, but if I pay $10 I can go in the water on the other side of the pond to paddle a small boat that is known for being prone to tip over:

Man, it was a beautiful day. But, it was so hot!:

While I was taking the break in the shade, I thought about what I would do next.  I wanted to see what was going on behind the 300 loop.  I also thought about heading to the Lodge to get an update on the construction going on there.  But, I was also about to die of heat stroke.  I decided that I would head over to the 1500 loop bus stop, which would allow me to see how things were at the pool on the afternoon of July 4th.  That would surely be interesting. 

And that's where we will be heading first in the next update.

TCD

[Travisma 1,317]

1 hour ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

You're right.  What would a TCD TR be without a good hijack?

Cool.  So, did you harvest a couple and cook them on that bonfire you have ready to go?

TCD

that Loop 2000 Fort approved bonfire you have ready to go

[bhall 115]

14 hours ago, Tri-Circle-D said:

Cool.  So, did you harvest a couple and cook them on that bonfire you have ready to go?

TCD

No, I did not harvest those.  I do not like the taste of goose or duck.  I won't go into how I found out what a goose tastes like but it wasn't from a restaurant/butcher shop.  As for that bonfire, I won't be cooking anything over it.  We added about 25 more 30+ year old pressure treated wood boards to what was already there in that picture and I'm not sure what all nastiness is going to be in the smoke from those boards.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 10:38 AM, Travisma said:

that Loop 2000 Fort approved bonfire you have ready to go

Ha Ha!  That one might actually be small for a 2000 loop bonfire.

11 hours ago, bhall said:

No, I did not harvest those.  I do not like the taste of goose or duck.  I won't go into how I found out what a goose tastes like but it wasn't from a restaurant/butcher shop.  As for that bonfire, I won't be cooking anything over it.  We added about 25 more 30+ year old pressure treated wood boards to what was already there in that picture and I'm not sure what all nastiness is going to be in the smoke from those boards.

Oh boy, that sounds like it's going to be quite an event.  Don't breathe in any of that smoke, though.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Bonus update time.

We left off behind the Meadow Trading Post, with me planning my escape from the heat.

I was determined to hike it over to the 1500 loop bus stop, but I stopped back in the Trading Post for some AC to fortify myself.

I tried to find a place to stand where I wouldn't be in anyone's way, but it was no use.  The place was packed.  I went out front to get a drink from the water fountain, and watched as an Orange bus stopped and unloaded.  A group carrying pool and bbq stuff came marching toward the Trading Post, and walked on through.  I decided to follow them so I could get another freeloader photo.  There they go:

It's possible that that group had boarded the bus in one of the cabin loops, but all of the gear they were carrying suggested to me that they were more freeloaders coming in to enjoy the pool.

The walked slow, so I stopped on the bridge to admire the canal and the new signs that dot it on both sides:

I could see and hear from here that it was another crazy day at the pool.  It was July 4th, after all:

And there goes the freeloaders, about to add to the crowd:

This is a quick look in the other direction from the base of the bridge.  As you can see, no one is fishing in the Fishin' Hole on account of that new No Fishing sign you see over there:

A last look at our freeloaders:

Now, let's have a look at how things looked here.

The splash area doesn't look too bad:

But, the pool was packed and crazy- and note how many guests BYOC'd (Bring Your Own Chair) :

The line for the slide was all the way down to the deck:

While the pool was pretty full, I've seen it worse:

The geniuses in charge decided that 4th of July weekend was a good time to close off the Meadow (without the s) Playground to add mulch:

More BYOC's were enjoying the expansive grass (and soon to be mud) areas provided for their enjoyment:

Here's something I haven't seen- it's apparently now a thing to BYOEZU (Bring Your Own EZ Up) to the pool:

Cool.

Seeing all those EZ Ups got me to thinking- If I drove in that service entrance near the 1500 loop, and around the Tennis Courts, I think I could get my pop-up over here in the grass near the pool.  That would be sweet.

Since freeloading is obviously OK, I wonder if I could just be a day guest and not pay for a site?

That would be awesome.

If I was paying $150+ a night for a concrete slab, I wouldn't be too thrilled about the pool situation.

There have been past holiday weekends where the geniuses in charge made some effort to limit the use of the pool by outsiders.  But, this year, anyone who wanted to BYOC or BYOEZU was more than welcome!

Man that was crazy.

And it was hot.

I needed to get out of there.

So I headed to the 1500 loop bus stop:

There was a nice big hybrid camper enjoying one of the tent/pop-up camper only sites on the 1500 loop, right behind the bus stop.  I myself enjoyed this very spot one July 4th.  If I had any kind of assurance that I could have that site this year, I would have been here too:

I knew that Fiend Travisma was camped right down there on the 1500 loop, and considered walking down there to see if he was around, but I couldn't imagine that he would be, and I was sweating like a pig and did not want to miss the next bus out of here.  So, all I did was look into the loop:

It didn't look too crazy this year.  No freeloaders were parked on the tetherball court.  That's something.

The view from the bus stop:

My wait was short, and I haven't enjoyed an air conditioned bus more than that one.  I took the bus up to the Outpost, got in my car, and hightailed it to the POFQ.

I headed to the room, got into my swim trunks, and headed to the pool to find the girls.  Here's some POFQ scenery I saw on my way to the pool:

I found the girls, and learned that I had missed the watermelon eating contest.  The girls participated, and got a free giant slice of watermelon to eat.  They didn't win, though.  They said it got savage.

We enjoyed that pool for a good long time, and stayed a bit for the patriotic pool games, which didn't really seem to be any different from the non-patriotic pool games that we had seen the day before.

I think there have been character appearances at the resorts for the 4th of July in the past.  I know there have been at the Fort.  But, there wasn't too much happening here that was special:

Despite almost dying earlier of heat stroke, I seriously considered returning to the Fort to see the golf cart parade at 5.  But, if anything, it was hotter, and I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be allowed in the parking lot since I wasn't a registered guest or the freeloading family of a Castmember with special freeloading privileges.

Instead, we stayed in the pool longer than we normally would, and enjoyed some cold drinks in the room.

And we made plans for the evening.

I really wanted to go back to the MK, since I love the July 4th fireworks.

But the girls thought that was insane.

They were right.

We saw that Epcot was offering a special version of Illuminations at 10 pm.

The MK fireworks were at 9.

Hey, one of the girls said- "we could do both."

Now, there was a plan.

MK fireworks at 9.

Epcot at 10.

On July 4th.

We knew that we couldn't watch the MK fireworks in the MK and expect to get out of there alive and to Epcot by 10.

I've heard that there's a decent view of the MK fireworks from the Transportation and Ticket Center.

We could watch from there and then jump on a monorail to Epcot, right?

That was the plan.

So we ate dinner at the POFQ food court, which is a very strange place:

And then we bussed it to the MK.

While we waited for the bus, we saw big dark clouds and heard loud thunder that was obviously nearby, but we didn't get any rain where we were.

We walked from the bus stop to the ferry dock, and got treated to a beautiful rainbow:

We boarded our ferry, and prepared to cross the pond.  The weather was looking good:

I have a load of fireworks photos.

So, I'll need to start an new update with those.

TCD

 

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Wow.  I'm glad I'm sitting in air conditioning while reading your TR.

Looking forward to your fireworks photos.  I've always wondered how they are from the TTC.

[Momof6....aka Marty 769]

Seeing a rainbow from WDW seems extra special to me.  But then every thing at WDW seems extra special to me.  

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

38 minutes ago, CCIntrigue...aka Gwen said:

Wow.  I'm glad I'm sitting in air conditioning while reading your TR.

Looking forward to your fireworks photos.  I've always wondered how they are from the TTC.

The heat really was brutal this year- and I've been at WDW for plenty of July 4th's. 

You're about to find out how the fireworks are from the TTC.  I plan to post some photos this afternoon.

7 minutes ago, Momof6....aka Marty said:

Seeing a rainbow from WDW seems extra special to me.  But then every thing at WDW seems extra special to me.  

Amen.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Let's go ahead and get those fireworks photos out of the way.

We left off on the MK ferry, and here we go, looking to the east- there are some clouds, but no rain clouds.  That's already 100% than last year:

That's where we're heading- across the Seven Seas Lagoon to the TTC- it's interesting that all boat traffic has been suspended, except for the fireworks cruise boats.  We are on the last ferry that will run until the fireworks have ended:

I don't get why people feel compelled to throw coins in weird places, but this is one of those places:

There goes a monorail heading into the Contemporary Resort- still cool after all of these years:

The Grand Floridian is always pretty at sunset:

Here we go:

There goes the last ferry crossing the other way before fireworks:

That pontoon boat over there is one of the many fireworks cruise boats that you can hire.  It would be fun to do that on the 4th:

It's crazy how they wrecked the beach at the Polynesian Resort for the sake of building those ugly bungalows over the water:

As we approached the Polynesian, I wondered where all the people were.  The Polynesian Beach is a great place to watch the 4th of July fireworks.  Long ago, before those bungalows wrecked everything, I watched the 4th of July fireworks from there.  But, no one is on the beach tonight.  I can, however, see a mob of people lined up behind a rope keeping them off of the beach:

Do you see that?

How dumb is that?

One freak accident happens, and now they won't let anyone on the beach.

I'd be so mad if I was in that hot, sweaty mob.

In the meantime, there was not one person out on the balconies of any of the bungalows that block most of the beach views:

I'm sure none of these people minded:

Our ferry parked, and we headed out.

I noticed these photographers were set up on the dock.  They looked like they knew what they were doing, so I found a spot off to the side of them:

The sun was setting and it was getting close to fireworks time:

The view from here was pretty good:

As I stood there waiting for the fireworks, I was pleased that this part of the plan had worked out so well- this seemed like it would be a good spot.  And we could make a beeline right to the Epcot monorail from here.

Unfortunately, that didn't last long.  One of the useless Disney Security Guards came out on the dock and told me that I couldn't stand out on the dock for safety reasons, and that I would need to leave.

I asked him what about the guys with the tripods- how come they're allowed out here?  He said they were guests.  I said, oh, well so am I.  He said I wasn't and that I had to go.  I asked him again how I was a safety problem when the guys with tripods right next to me were not. He didn't have an answer for that.  Because he was doing what these ding-dongs do all the time- make stuff up.  The problem comes when you call BS.  Then they don't know what to say. Then one of the guys with the tripods told me that he was with the press, and that's why he was allowed out there.  Really, buddy?  This is where Disney puts the press?  And if he was a professional photographer, then why was his equipment so crappy? Nope, what we had here was another case of favoritism.  I think these people allowed to stay on the dock were buddies with the security guard, or the ferry CM's, and they got to stay while a paying guest like myself got the boot. 

So, we didn't get to stay in that nice spot.

We had to get behind another mob.

I took a couple more sunset photos on the way to the back of the mob:

Here's where we ended up. Not horrible. But, not as good as the first spot- that blue blob in the middle of the photo is the castle:

I knew it would happen, but I hoped that somehow it wouldn't.  The Kids on Shoulders got hoisted up just before the show started:

And, no one dimmed the lights around us.  It was bright the whole time.  Oh, and the only audio was coming from the EWP boats that were parked in front of the bungalows.  I could barely hear any of the narration or music.

Still, it wasn't bad seeing the fireworks from here. For the 4th of July and New Year's Eve fireworks, they shoot off synchronized mirror blasts from behind the MK and out in the Seven Seas Lagoon.  The effect is lost on guests actually in the MK.  Out here with the common folk, however, it is pretty cool:

The TTC is not an awful place to watch the fireworks, but it's far from the best.

But, it worked for us tonight.  As soon as the last blast was over, we turned and fast-walked to the Epcot monorail, which we could see was waiting in the station and loading guests.  People in front of us were dawdling, and we had to blast past them.  And, it's a good thing we did, because we just made it to the platform as they were calling for no further boarding.  We got in a car, and the doors shut right behind us, and we left immediately.  Awesome.  We would have time to spare at Epcot.

Upon our arrival at Epcot, we noticed on our lap around Future World that the Illuminations viewing spots on this side of the World Showcase were pretty packed.  Maybe we could walk back to Germany or America?

There was no one entering the park this late, so there was no wait at the bag check or turnstiles. 

We had been moving fast on a hot and humid night.  And we were all hot and sweaty.  One of the girls suggested that we cool off in that spot behind Ice Station Cool.  And that's what we did.  That was a good idea.  The air was cranking in there.  But, we didn't have a spot for Illuminations, and the clock was ticking.  The girls finally said they didn't care about getting a close spot to see Illuminations- they would be happy just to see the extra stuff at the end, which could probably be seen from a distance.  We saw that there were a lot of people who had staked out spots near where they put the butterfly garden for the Flower and Garden Festival.  That seemed crazy to me, but I was not about to try to force march the girls around the World Showcase.  So, we grabbed a spot on the grass.

We really couldn't see Illuminations- not the globe anyway- but we did see some of the higher pyrotechnics and lasers:

Just as I was about to conclude that we had made a mistake, the special July 4th finale started.

Wow:

This spot ended up being good for that.  We have been closer for these special finales, and you can't see it all if you're too close.

So, we were successful in seeing two fireworks shows on the 4th of July.

And, since we were ahead of most of the crowd, we were able to zip right out of there and catch the first bus back to POFQ.

TCD

[caveat lector 181]

Wow TCD, you're spoiling us with all the bonus material.

The thing that really sticks out are your pics of the fort pool on the 4Th. To quote Harrey Carey, "Hoooolly cow!" Those crowds are insane.

[Travisma 1,317]

Good photos.  Mine from the Fort had someone standing in front of me the entire time.  The sound and narration were non existent at the Fort also.

[GaDawgFan.....Kelly 799]

2 fireworks shows? I'm impressed sir!

Maybe you need a press pass.

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[we3peas 12]

My dd was recently in Winnie Palmer (ORMC) hospital and we overheard 3 nurses talking in the elevator about the best free place to take the kids to the pool. You guessed it The Fort! They also discussed how much harder it was to get into the other resorts and Fort Wilderness was always open.

[bhall 115]

Great TR. the pics of the freeloaders tick me off and I don't even use any pools.

Here's an update on that bonfire as of 5 minutes ago.

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[Travisma 1,317]

17 hours ago, caveat lector said:

Wow TCD, you're spoiling us with all the bonus material.

The thing that really sticks out are your pics of the fort pool on the 4Th. To quote Harrey Carey, "Hoooolly cow!" Those crowds are insane.

What was worse than the crowds was the water was cloudy.  Either too many people or too much sun screen getting washed off.