I don’t think I was put on this earth to camp.  I mean, I can do it and actually don’t mind it.

And by camping I mean I sleep in a tent, use a real bathroom and have access to food cooked for me.

We camped for one night with the Cub Scouts- and that wasn’t so bad.  But I’m not sure I would have made it for more than one night.

But camping at Disney is exactly by kind of camping.  Except when you add water.

We decided to camp at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground as a “summer is here” treat for our kids and our nephews.

We set up our tent for our family of four and we were set:

The Cook Family tent set up for camping at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground.

I love camping at Disney.  The actual camping site is always close to a bathroom.  And by bathroom I mean very CLEAN bathroom complete with nice showers.

The actual site has power – so we could charge phones, run fans and even plug in my husband’s sleep machine so he doesn’t snore all night long.  There’s a hose for water needs and a place to park the golf cart and charge it.  Super important for my kids – the golf cart is the highlight of all!

The campground is pretty spread out and is basically a bunch of loops that are organized by camping style.  For example, we were on the loop that were basically all tented camping.  There are more loops with the “log cabins” and other loops with RV’s.  You really can’t drive too much around the campground and wouldn’t really want to.  That’s where you can either walk…take the bus which makes all sorts of campground stops…or rent (or bring your own) golf cart.  That’s the best part, just riding around looking at other campsites in the cart.

Chip & Dale warn of traffic all around Disney’s Fort Wilderness.

So aside from all the fun in the golf cart, there are so many other great things to do – if you like being outside.  It’s great for biking- but more on that here.  There was so much to say about that it deserved its own blog post.

Fort Wilderness is home to the Tri-Circle-D Ranch.  Get it…three circle = Mickey Mouse head + D = Disney.  It’s horse galore! There’s an area at the front of the camp and the back of the camp.  You can walk through and see all the horses they use in the parks for carriage rides, parades, etc.  They are beautiful animals and this is a real working environment where you see them care for the horses.  You can pay to do a horseback ride, hay ride and more.  I tend to stay far away from this area because I’m super allergic to horses.  To the point that memories of girl scout hayrides pretty much give me an asthma attack just thinking about them.

Tri-Circle D Ranch at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort.

We had a great time overall.  We arrived on a Friday, set up camp and did the normal golf-carting and swimming.  There are at least two pools at the campground.  There may be more – I only found two – the main pool with water-slide and a quiet pool closer to our campsite.

For dinner we made the Doritos taco camping favorite.  Basically bring already cooked ground beef – heat it up in a crock pot or on-top of a fire.  Take a small bag of Doritos, crush it up – throw in some beef, and top with your favorite taco toppings like cheese, sour cream, salsa, etc.  Everyone was happy.

The campground does a nightly campfire where you can bring your own Smores and a movie.  We didn’t make it Friday night because the boys were too busy playing in the small wooded area behind our campsite and the adults were busy playing cards.  You can also go down to the beach and watch Magic Kingdom fireworks and watch the Electric Boat Show – which is my favorite.  But we didn’t do this either.  We played cards, made the kids shower and went to bed.

Saturday included a long bike ride for me – and then we hit the pool.  After a few hours there, we went canoeing, which was great.  It’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to do there, but just never have.  We had three different canoes of people, and ended up canoeing about 2 miles.  There are other routes you can hit, which is why I want to do it again! Canoeing pictures:

The boys ready for canoeing at Disney’s Fort Wilderness.

Canoeing at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. They almost hit this tree branch. I’m actually shocked these three didn’t end up in the water.

These three finally made it back to land without ending up in the water!

Green swamp area while canoeing at Disney’s Fort Wilderness. It was weird and was full of sticks/branches.

My canoe partner, Patrick. He was very good at canoeing.

Canoeing at Disney’s Fort Wilderness.

This picture was taken right after something jumped out of the water. My husband was freaked a bit, but my nephew here was REALLY not happy.

They made it back!

We canoed, went on another bike ride, this time over to Wilderness Lodge to hit the pool.  We were able to swim for about 10 minutes until a monster storm.  We ducked for cover for about two hours in the hotel, which was actually really fun.  We ate cupcakes, climbed all the stairs and found lots of fun fireplaces and hidden spots in the resort, hung out in the arcade and played chess and checkers in the Train Room of the DVC building of the Lodge.

Storm approaches Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.

But after two hours, we were getting antsy to get back to the campground.  But it was still raining.  We ended up riding our bikes back to the resort as fast as we could in the rain.  We were SOAKING wet – but it was really, really fun.  Perhaps the most fun we have all had riding our bikes.  We were soaked, we saw four deer on the bike trail and they didn’t even really move as we approached and we road as fast as we could and there was no traffic.

But when we got back to camp – we found all of our stuff pretty wet.  It wasn’t soaked, but all of our sleeping items inside the tent were damp.  And that’s where the camping fun ended.  We decided to get dinner and make a gameplan.  The dinner was fried chicken (from the takeout place at the campground) that is the SAME chicken they serve in Hoop-De-Doo – so that made me very happy!!! But as we sat and watched all the people in their panchos stoll by, we decided to pack it up for the night.  We took as much home as we could, slept in our warm beds and returned the next day to pack up all the wet stuff in the daylight and head home to clean.

Lots of wet people at Disney! Ponchos for all!

All in all, a great weekend.  We had a lot of fun and even the rain wasn’t a mood killer.  If it had been a typical Florida storm, I don’t think we would have had a problem.  But the fact that it rained for about 7 straight hours, we just couldn’t do it.  I’m not that kind of camper.  Perhaps if we had driven for hours to get to the campground, we would have stayed.  But if my dry bed is less than an hour away – I’m going to pick my bed any day.

Have you ever been to the Disney campground? What’s your favorite/least favorite part of camping? Are we wimps for not sticking it out?