It’s a short drive from Tampa to Disneyworld, but once you get here you’re a thousand miles from the real world. Which is as it should be, I think. The goal of being here is to escape the real world and live somewhere perfect for a little while. We’re here snuggled into a spot in Disney’s campground, called Fort Wilderness.

“Snuggled,” I say because the campground was designed in the 1960s and the spaces and roadways are a bit tighter than they would design today for the larger RV’s that are common, like ours. It took a couple of passes for us to make it into our spot, which is saying something considering that we have backed up our Airstream on the order of 600 times, into some pretty tight spaces. It’s a rare campground that makes us take more than one pass, but this spot took three tries.

“Wilderness” is a bit of a Disney-esque turn of phrase. Yes, it is a heavily wooded campground with lots of shade, little creeks criss-crossing the park, and pine cones everywhere. But there are no mosquitoes to be found, something that is pretty peculiar considering we are surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of forest and swamp. It is like a state park but without warnings about ravenous raccoons, dangerous snakes, or ravens that like to pick at the sewer hose.

And of course there are full hookups at every site, nightly sing-alongs and movies, swimming pools, golf cart rentals, fast and free bus transportation everywhere, clever little gift shops, a ferry boat, and the Hoop-de-doo Revue.

We’ve been here before so it wasn’t a mad rush for us to run around and see everything as soon as we arrived. We settled in, had lunch in the Airstream, and considered our options.   Most people run off right away and go hit a theme park, but one of the nice things about Disneyworld is that you can have a fairly impressive time doing “nothing”.   So we went off and rode the ferry across the lake to the Contemporary Hotel, browsed a bit, then took the monorail to the Grand Floridian, people-watched for a while, then rode the monorail and the boat back across the lake.   All the transportation is free to guests at any Disney resort (which includes Ft Wilderness), and the weather was absolutely perfect. It’s “low concept” entertainment but it worked for us this afternoon.

The Disney people gave us sites all together, so we’ve rejoined Adam and Susan for dinner this evening.   They have been having a wonderful time on their own so far.   When we talked via phone this morning they were at Magic Kingdom, and this afternoon they were at Animal Kingdom (Susan got soaked on raft ride), and apparently they’ve been taking in evening concerts as well.

Tonight we’re all hanging back at the campsite for a group dinner by the grill and then, at 9:40 pm, we’ll take in the Electric Water Parade, or whatever they call it, by the boat dock.   It’s a good first day away from reality.