So in response to my plans above, went to load and inspect the RV 6 days before departure for Fort Wilderness... turned on electricity and the furnace immediately started running even though the heat and water turned off. Dug around to discover that I had forgotten to dump the hot water heater after winterizing and it froze solid! It expanded and cracked and was leaking because of a day of warm weather!
Long story short, canceled the RV parks and will drive and stay at hotels instead, which in the end is a lot less stressful and now allow lot more flexibility. As example of perhaps why RV'ing is struggling, replaced Ft Wilderness with a 1800 square foot, 3 bdrm, 3 bath hotel in Kissimmee for same price. I mean, KOAs are now $180/night! The days of when I could care less about cost of campground because it was always a fraction of hotels are gone.
As another example of how bad RV market is, called the local huge RV service center to repair the RV, and was expecting a 3-6 month wait. They told me to drop it off and they'll work on it next week... but I dropped it off yesterday and they started working on it today. When I was there, not a customer soul to be found in any department.
We've done this 2500 round trip RV trip to Ft Wilderness 7 out of last 8 years. I've never had any issue with the RV going on 9 years but I think my luck has run out. Starting with this water heater, which apparently also broke the motherboard on the furnace (why is the furnace below the water heater?). Then when I unhitched at the service center, the electric tongue jack just died right when it cleared the ball. I'm seriously considering dumping RV until kids are gone and reconsider a small one for retirement. But I wonder if I can even sell it for a decent price.
