Disney’s Fort Wilderness Segway Tour 6/29

Rumored for months, Fort Wilderness finally started it's Segway tour last week.  They'd run it for a week or two with cast members, and quietly opened it up for guests around the 19th.  (and it's still quiet!)

A Segway tour was not my personal first choice of tours (probably last!), but I've been often asked about it – and that was what won this months poll.   When Fort Wilderness opened this one up for booking, I jumped on it.  And it was fun! 

The Segway tour is in a test phase right now, currently running on Tuesday, Friday and Saturdays at 8:30am and 11:30am. And to answer a couple of questions so far – they provide bottled water, and there isn't a pin as of yet (I didn't ask about one, but the tour isn't considered even permanent yet).

I actually took the 8:30 tour, but shadowed (by foot) the later tour as well (not always keeping up, of course!)  The photos I took are spliced together in order of how the tour went – as best as I could.

I arrived nearly an hour early to Fort Wilderness, getting through Orlando traffic before rush hour.  I walked the 20 minutes from the parking lot (Outpost) to the Settlement.  There are buses as well.  There was supposed to be a tropical wave coming in today, so I'm glad the weather held up until after both tours!

 

The tour met at Mickeys BBQ:

 

And just in case you weren't aware :):

 

I wasn't quite sure where to go, but the tour meets inside the gates (which were still locked when I arrived), and around the back:

 

I filled out my paperwork absolving Disney of responsibility of lacerations (and worse!), and wrote out my nametag:

 

We watched a short safety video, and Ron (one of the tour guides) also went over some safety rules and opt-out options.    We had the BEST tour guides in Ron and Robert – they are a lot of fun to hang out with, and were very careful about safety.

In the latter pictures, Ron was helping another guest with her hands positions for getting on and off the Segway.

 

 

After learning about safety (stressed many times, for good reason), there are cones set up to learn to navigate obstacles.   We first learned to do a 180 (which it seems some of us had a problem realizing a 180 was only "half way".  By "us", I also mean me!).  Then we did 360's – which are very easy to do between the cones.  There is no need to learn to reverse these particular Segways.  I didn't time the safety/learning part, but it wasn't much more than 30 – 40 minutes for us.