Going on an Adventure!

Guest Writer Wednesday

 
Going on an adventure!
By: Gaylin


One of the best tours I have gone on at Disney World is the Wilderness Back Trail Adventure Segway Tour. This tour is held at the Fort Wilderness Campground and is well worth the $95.85 cost to go on it.

The tour is held twice a day, 8:30 and 11:30 a.m. I picked the 11:30 time so I could sleep in a bit that day. It is easy to get to the Campground Resort, you take a bus to the Magic Kingdom and get on a boat (the docks in front of the main gate at MK) and it takes you the dock at the campground. At that time of the day, you may be the only one on the boat - I know I was! It was a lovely quiet trip, there was a captain and one other cast member but they did their jobs and I enjoyed the view!

Once you get to the dock, you walk past the store, etc and look for the signs to Mickey's Backyard BBQ. I got there early so I could go in the store, buy a few small things, have a snack, check out the area and then find Meadows Bike Barn where the tour starts from.

Once you see all the Segway's lined up, you know you are in the right place. There are two guides, no more than 8 people on a tour and you have to sign a waiver, get safety instructions and a helmet and then learn to ride a Segway. If you have taken a Segway tour before (and I had) they let you play around a bit, as long as you stay out of the way of the beginners.

See, I look like a total expert Segway driver, don't I! If you look in the background, you can see the top of Space Mountain, the Contemporary Resort and because this in 2008, you can see the construction of Bay Lake Tower. This photo was taken once we were underway.
The leader of our fearless troop was Ron and he had a mic on and a small speaker hanging off the back of his belt. He was telling us all kinds of information about the indigenous plant life, Disney land management processes and the campground. Fort Wilderness has 770 campsites and while we toured around a couple of the areas, I couldn't take photos and drive the Segway at the same time.

Then we had a break at the Tri-Circle D Ranch. This is where the horses used at the Magic Kingdom are stabled. Other animals are kept and take care of here as well.

This is Ron, telling us all about the ranch. He was a very nice man, a wonderful tour guide, hopefully he is still guiding these tours.

This is me and my buddy Charlie, he wouldn't fit in my carry-on luggage so I did have to leave him behind!

And finally, a couple of hidden Mickey's at the ranch.

The tour from here followed the exercise trail from Fort Wilderness Campground to the Wilderness Lodge Resort. It was a lovely and quiet trip. It was great to get to use the Segway with no one else around (having taken the tour at Epcot, dealing with crowds on a Segway is not fun). On the way to the Wilderness Lodge, Ron told us more about Disney land preservation as this trail is on land that is set aside to never be used by Disney and it will stay green and wild. When we turned around to head back to the campground, we were told that Ron would now stop talking and we could go 'wild'. Okay, you can't go very wild because the Segway's are speed limited but I did hang back with the other guide and we let the rest of the group get ahead of us and then we careened all over the place going the full speed of 3 miles an hour and generally being goofs.

As I said, this tour was a lot of fun. We had 7 people in our group, I was there solo and that didn't hold me back from having a great time.

If you can fit it in your schedule and budget, I highly recommend this tour. As Mickey would say: