The wildest ride in the wilderness

I promised several friends and family members I would get back to my old stomping ground on my last trip and, true to my word, I made my way over to Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground for a few hours one morning and walked from one end of the property and back. To be fair, I should warn you now that the Fort Wilderness I found was not the Fort Wilderness I expected to find, and a good portion of this article may reflect my heartbreak. Now I understood there had been dramatic changes at Fort Wilderness since my younger years, but what I found did cause a slight quiver in my heart. The last remnants, at least those that I was aware of, of the Fort Wilderness Railroad tracks were gone or paved over, the majority of the underbrush was gone, the majority of the Lawnmower Tree had been removed to stop its growth, and the entire resort and campground had a cleaner, almost sanitized feel to it.

The issue concerning the campground’s underbrush and the addition of ID Cards to the Comfort Stations are both concerns I completely understand. There were criminal activities that Disney was trying to remove, and I applaud those efforts. For those of you that never saw Fort Wilderness as a complete wilderness, here is an image of my sister and me almost twenty years ago and another image of a sign (which I find hilarious) that I took a few weeks ago. If you examine the background of both images, you will see lush ground vegetation behind our tent and clean tree trunks behind the signpost. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, I am in complete agreement as to the reasoning behind this modification, but that does not change the fact that I feel something is missing now.
The little missing details almost took my breath away. Seeing the Lawnmower Tree hurt. I had read that the top of the tree had been removed in order to maintain the visibility of the lawnmower, but I don’t know that I was truly prepared for what it would feel like to see it. A few years ago I wrote a story about the Lawnmower Tree in the middle of the campground I grew up in, it was that distinct of a memory. Now, I try to hold onto that memory over the one I found in April. Seeing, or rather, not seeing, the railroad tracks was a shock. Very few people outside of the Disney community have ever known that there ever was a railroad within Fort Wilderness, but it was a treasured secret, it was the ability to see something and know the history of that place, and it was something special that has been erased from the landscape.

Yet, in the midst of all of these compositional changes, I think the one that caught me by surprise the most, and that hurt the most, was the changes to the structure of family trip to Fort Wilderness. There have always been RVs, trailers, and pop-up campers at Fort Wilderness, but in my youth they were always vastly outnumbered by the number of tents in the loops. Now, you are lucky to see a single tent to every ten RVs. Putting the visual aspect of this aside, the hum of generators and air conditioners all but mute the sounds of wildlife in the area. Now, putting all sensations aside, what was really missing were the tools, skills, and true experience that camping is. There were no fathers and sons with hammers and stakes pinning down a tent. There was very little, that I saw, in the ways of the communication it takes to set up a truly first-rate site. There was no getting back to basics which, in my opinion, is the hallmark of what Fort Wilderness is.

Fort Wilderness has changed, and that, in and of itself, is a fantastic thing. I would rather have change than to see my childhood erased or left to decay, as is visible in River Country and Discovery/Treasure Island. Along with these changes, came some positives as well. I cannot remember ever seeing the amount of flowers and landscaping within Fort Wilderness that I witnessed on this past visit. Mickey’s Backyard BBQ looks to be a fine addition too, though the gates were closed and I could only gain a glimpse around the fence, but it looked simple and rustic while modern and fun at the same time.


And while all of these changes were occurring, I found that some things will never change. The Meadows Trading Post still had the same smell to it that it had all those many years ago, the same wanted posters, though a little more faded, hanging on the walls outside, the same checkerboard, and the same collection of dry goods, souvenirs, and ice cream. I was still able to see families zooming around in golf carts, and remember my own times with the golf carts and all the stories they created. As mentioned prior, the campfire program and Electrical Water Pageant still continue on nightly, and are still the best resort entertainment past twilight. The Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue, Crockett’s Tavern, and Trail’s End continue to provide hours of entertainment and more grub than you can fit in your gullet.It was, in the end, a homecoming. Homecomings, more often than not, remind us of what was and what we left and, more often than not, they remind us that there are reasons we left, reasons for change, and that the old adage is true, you can never truly go home again. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t be stopping by to say hello every now and again for some movies under the stars, some friend chicken, and a stroll down Memory Lane.

I leave you tonight with this little piece of Fort Wilderness in support of you know who: