In the end, I convinced everyone to stay in Fort Wilderness for the day. We had the pool to ourselves for quite a while.
The Trail's End Cafe at Fort Wilderness has a very good buffet. It's basically the same food you get at the Hoop De Doo Revue (in the same building, cooked in the same kitchen), plus a big salad and sandwich bar, and some additional entrees. We ate well for our last table service, because we knew we wouldn't be getting anything on the airplanes.
The most unfortunate part of the trip happened on our way out. As I said, we were scheduled to board a Disney Magical Express bus at 2:50 PM to head to the airport. The bus (#3215) was 5 minutes late, driven by a young woman. As soon as she pulled away from the bus stop, she made a wrong turn and headed into the campground instead of to the highway. Now, this is a 45' bus; you can't just take those into narrow campground roadways! Oddly enough, the DME driver who took us in told us about other drivers that had made that very mistake.
She did manage to get the bus turned around, and in the process told us that it was her first trip on this run. Oh, goodie. She then missed the bus stop locations at both of the Pojrt Orleans resorts, and had to pull out and come in again. She didn't know how to handle the luggage, and there was a huge crowd at Port Orleans Riverside waiting to board. The bus only had three stops to make, and it took an hour before we were on the road and rolling.
Once we got rolling, she pulled out her cell phone and started playing with the camera. I assume that she received a briefing about good driving practice with a busful of passengers, but apparently it didn't stick. She drifted out of her lane and nearly hit the center divide before she put the cell phone away.
So, finally we get on the freeway to the airport. As we're approaching the Orlando Airport exit, I notice that she is in the left lane, making no move to take the exit. Sure enough, as we passed the exit, I heard her mutter to herself in unkind terms that she missed the exit. Now, this is rural Orlando. It's 5 miles to the next exit, and of course, 5 miles back. When we got to the airport, she had no clue which airlines were in which terminal, and she had not written down which airlines her passengers actually needed.
Our pickup was at 2:50 PM. Our flight was at 5:40 PM. Plenty of time, right? We did not escape from the bus until 4:50 PM. Two hours travel time. The bus driver is fortunate that security was easy that day.
