Fort Wilderness Cabins at Disney World?
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Anonymous
| Anyone stay in one? Pros/cons, anything you wish you did differently, etc? |
Anonymous
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Yes!
I have stayed twice. The first time was in 2015, and it was just me. I was there for the Disney World marathon. During that trip I did not rent a car. I used Disney's magical Express to get to/from the resort and relied completely on Disney transportation during my trip. I ordered about $75 worth of groceries from Garden Grocer (since I was running a race, I wanted to be able to prepare my own dinner the night before the race, and breakfast morning of.) Garden grocer was expensive, but great. My groceries were already in my cabin when I arrived (around 7 pm) with the perishables in the fridge. We stayed there again just last month as a family of 6 (two adults and four kids between the ages of 11-17.) This time we rented a car and I stopped at a grocery store on the way to buy food. It worked well for us. Both times I was in loop 2800, which is nice because it's a 10-15 minute walk to the outpost, where the buses to everything except Magic Kingdom are. Buses/boats to Magic Kingdom are at the Settlement, which is about a mile away, but there is an internal bus system to take. We LOVED the cabins! They are super cozy and private. It's really nice to not share walls with other people. In our case, we had our 4 children share the bedroom (1 queen bed and a set of bunk beds) and then Dh and I took the sofa bed in the living room. The sofa bed was ok, I was able to sleep comfortably on it, but I am not someone who is very picky about my matress. With the camp ground, you are very convenient to the Hoop Dee Doo Review dinner show, which I highly recommend. I was glad we had our own vehicle, because we did end up running out a few more times for extra groceries and one night we even got pizza at giordanos to eat in the cabin. I know a lot of people recommend golf carts, but they are pricey (I think$60/day?) and we managed fine without them. |
Anonymous
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My friends who had four kids, one an infant, said they wouldn't stay in them again until they could ditch the stroller and all four kids could handle the full day at the park. Getting to and from transportation and then getting on and off of it was a lot of work for them and took a long time.
My other friends, who have older kids, always stay there and really enjoy it. |
Anonymous
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Thanks for the replies so far. Three questions:
1. Can you request a specific loop? 2. Is the horseback ride interesting? 3. How are the pools? |
Anonymous
17:07 here 1. I asked to be anywhere except 2200 and 2300, because I was told those were the loops that allowed dogs to stay in cabins. I signed up for the service where they text you your room number, and as I was driving to the airport, got my room assignment in the 2200 loop! I was kind of upset and called as soon as I was through security in the airport, and reassigned to loop 2800. So yes, you can request a specfic loop, but it won't necessarily be honored. If you don't get what you want initially, call back and ask for what you want--but you probably still are not guaranteed. 2. We didn't do that 3. We only went to the Wilderness pool (smaller pool close to the cabins, no slide) because when we were there it was FREEZING and not really pool weather. Really, we only went to go in the hot tub. It was fine, not crowded at all--just us and one other family at the time. But I'm sure that varies by weather. |
Anonymous
| Bump for any other feedback on these cabins. Not OP but we are arranging our first Disney trip and I wouldn’t have looked at a cabin theme but these offer a kitchen which would be so great for our family of 6 (2 in strollers). If we have our own car to drive to the parks, any downside to these? |
Anonymous
I'm a pp at 17:07 One thing about the kitchens, the stove top only has 2 burners and there is not a regular oven--it is a convection oven so you can still make a lot of things that would go in a regular oven. If you do some google searches, you will see where bloggers have stayed in a cabin and tried making several meals, even things like pot roast, and had success. You will want to have groceries delivered (I've had good experiences with Garden Grocer) or use your own car to drive to a local grocery store--there are some basic groceries at the shop at the fort, but selection is pretty limited and it is very expensive. The pools at the fort aren't as "exciting" as some other resorts pools. They have hot tubs, and a pool slide, but there isn't much of a theme to the pool areas, compared to Coronado Springs or Polynesian. We had our cabin in the 2800 loop, which was actually a fairly quick (maybe 10 minutes) walk to the "Outpost" depot, where you can catch the Disney buses to Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Disney Springs. We found that to be more convenient than driving (we had a rental car.) The bus and boat transportation to Magic Kingdom is all the way on the other side of the campground, but we still did that rather than driving. Driving to Magic Kingdom is a PITA, imo. You have to park at the Ticket and Transportation center, then take the monorail or a ferry boat over to the Magic Kingdom. We did that on our check out day, since we couldn't keep our car at the cabin after checkout. It took us an hour and a half to get in the gates of the MK! But it would be like that driving from any Disney resort. |
Anonymous
We stay offsite in Kissimmee and it only takes us 40 minutes to drive to Mk, park, take ferry/monorail, and get to the turnstiles. |
Anonymous
Maybe we just had bad luck, but we waited longer than 40 minutes just for the ferry. |
Anonymous
Yeah that was just really bad luck. |
Anonymous
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If you want a kitchen, you could also look at staying in a DVC property (1BR or 2BR - the studios only have kitchenettes and can't fit 6 people). It will be cheaper to stay in a DVC if you rent points from an owner than if you book from Disney, but renting points needs to be done early and usually has only limited cancellation options.
The FW cabins feel more remote and less Disney-Disney than most of the Disney resorts. That can be a plus or a minus depending on the person. |
Anonymous
Good tip! The ones I priced out looked higher than we wanted to go ($500+) But I’ll look again. Can you tell me more about how they feel remote? Because they are surrounded by trees and you can’t walk to the parks?? I have not been before and don’t have a feel for whether this “remoteness” will be inconvenient... There is a boat to MK and we will have our car to get to the other parks. |
Anonymous
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Remoteness: you likely won't be able to walk to the pool, restaurants, buses/boat to parks, or other resort amenities. Getting to the MK boat will require an internal bus ride first. You can park at your cabin, but not elsewhere at FW, so for those internal trips you'll need to walk/bike/bus/rent a golf cart. https://yourfirstvisit.net/2014/09/17/review-the-cabins-at-disneys-fort-wilderness-resort-3/
I think the cabins are a nice option for someone who wants to spend some time in the Disney parks, with the perks of staying on-site, but doesn't want the in-your-face-Disney resort experience and wants a quiet place of their own to retreat to. If you are looking for a more traditional Disney hotel experience but want to be able to cook, look at the DVC units. You can also look at the family suites at Art of Animation if a microwave would suffice. Or, if you want to save money and aren't attached to Disney resort perks, check out Wyndham Bonnet Creek (renting points from Wyndham timeshare owners). There you can get a full kitchen, laundry, very large unit, and plenty of resort amenities, just not the Disney perks (notably, not the transportation). WBC abuts Disney property, so as long as you have a car you're a quick drive to all the parks. If you're interested in DVC rentals: https://www.mousesavers.com/davids-vacation-club-rentals/ (you can do it more cheaply not going through an agency, but I wouldn't recommend that until you're very familiar with the process) For WBC, the two main agencies I know of for renting Wyndham points are Vacation Strategies and Vacation Upgrades. Just google that + Wyndham Bonnet Creek. I used the former but it was years ago now. There is also a massive Disboards thread whose first posts compile lots of WBC info: https://www.disboards.com/threads/the-we-loooooove-bonnet-creek-thread-part-4.3366139/ |
Anonymous
| Just noticed another of the Disney blogs I follow has a primer on renting DVC points, which suggests a second agency in addition to the one I named at 11:35: http://www.disneytouristblog.com/renting-disney-vacation-club-points/ |