The only thing more magical than taking a family getaway to Walt Disney World is doing so while RVing. There is no better way to celebrate the joys of theme parks, mixed with the love of the great outdoors. One of the Orlando’s best kept secrets is the fact that at Disney, you don’t have to choose between taking a theme park vacation or camping.
At Disney World, besides the incredible theme parks, water parks, shopping, mini golf, and more, there is also a great RV park you may not know about right on Disney property.
Disney’s Fort Wilderness Campground Resort
Photo Courtesy: Walt Disney World
Most people opt to stay in Disney’s high-quality hotels and resorts (or surrounding hotels) when they’re taking a vacation to visit Cinderella’s Castle. You can ask anyone who’s been and they’ll tell you they’ve had an awesome experience and that Disney’s customer service is unmatched. Yet, staying a few nights in one of Disney’s beautiful resorts can cost hundreds of dollars per night.
What’s the best alternative for families who want to experience the magic Disney has to offer, get to enjoy even more of nature, and on top of that get the biggest bang for your buck? The answer is to stay at Disney premiere campground, Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground.
Fort Wilderness is a themed campground located right the heart of Walt Disney World; specifically in the Magic Kingdom Resort area. It opened in 1971 and has been accommodating happy campers ever since. Fort Wilderness is a beautiful natural playground that’s also part of their official vacation club.
It has a rustic design, lined with tons of trees and looping roads that go on for miles. Besides all of their guests roaming around exploring the facility, they’ve got deer, rabbits, armadillos, ducks, and more roaming throughout the resort’s 750-acre forest.
Fort Wilderness is perfect for groups of all sizes, as they’ve got four different campsites accommodating small tents, to 45-foot RVs, with a maximum of 10 guests per site. Each site is equipped with water/sewage, electrical hookups, a picnic table, charcoal grill, and believe it or not, cable TV. It may be a campsite, but it’s definitely still Disney.
What’s great about this park as well is that you still get plenty of privacy. Each site has privacy enhancing landscape. Other amenities include a large swimming pool, corkscrew water slide, and a whirlpool spa. They’ve even got a water play area for the kids!
If you don’t like traveling without man’s best friend, you’re in luck, Fort Wilderness welcomes furry friends as well. As long as they meet the requirements, of course.
A stay at Fort Wilderness can’t possibly be complete without taking a stroll through Tri-Circle-D ranch, where you can actually meet Cinderella’s ponies or the horse that inspired the look of Angus, from the movie Brave. Don’t just look, though, you can take horseback trail rides, while the kids go on pony rides.
Fort Wilderness contains about six different places to eat as well, including a casual dining restaurant, quick service food stops, and two dinner shows!
Perhaps the greatest part of booking a stay at Fort Wilderness is that unlike their extravagant hotels, staying at the campground with an RV and a couple of tents starts at just $74.00 per night.
Furthermore, instead of paying a dealership hundreds of dollars to rent an RV for a few nights, consider renting from RVshare, the world’s largest peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace. They offer hundreds of selections of high-quality rigs to help you get the most out of your Disney Trip. Rates start at only $10 per night.
With Fort Wilderness and RVshare rates, you’ll be saving hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on accommodations, opening up a lot more opportunity to use your money on the more important things, making memories.
Visiting Disney Theme Parks
Getting to the theme parks from the campground is made easy. You can take a short boat ride from Fort Wilderness to the Magic Kingdom.
Photo Courtesy: Walt Disney World
It’s important that you’re saving as much money as you can on your RV rental and accommodations because entry into the theme parks isn’t quite as inexpensive.
For the Magic Kingdom, prices are as follows:
- One day: starting from $97.00
- Two days: starting from $202.00
- Three days: starting from $290
Those rates are for one park, for one person (age 10+). Disney’s rates mix and match depending on which parks you want to visit, if you’re a Florida resident or not, etc.
If you did want to expand your trip from just the Magic Kingdom area, leave your car or motorhome at the campground, because parking costs about $20.00 per theme park, per visit. Instead use their complimentary transportation to get around Disney property. Besides the boat that takes you from the RV site to the park, there are busses, monorails and ferry rides that come and go every few minutes.
Transportation is located at the front of each park, with big signs to differentiate where each vehicle goes. Depending on the park, there are multiple ways you can get there, so your family can choose which unit of transportation they want to use. It’s all part of the Disney experience.
Wrap Up
If you’re an RVer and you’ve never been to Disney before, following this quick guide will provide you an easy way to save as much as possible on the essentials, so you can have even more to spend on tickets, dining, and Mickey Mouse Ears. If you have been before, then this guide is all the more valuable because you know first hand how expensive it can be to visit Mickey’s house.
Whether you’re a newbie or a Disney World veteran, going as an RVer is an amazing experience that adds a whole new perspective when visiting the happiest place on earth!
