Disney Isn’t Expensive Enough?

OK, so after only 3 weeks at Su’N’Fun, we headed out in our RV for 5 days in Disney World. Cool, huh? Sure, it is kind of an expensive place to visit but we have good friends from New York who come down here a lot and we have a great time going to the parks with them. So we carefully listed all of the things we needed to have and got them loaded into the RV, which had been thoroughly cleaned and emptied of nearly everything. Anyway, we thought we had everything covered and we headed out with plans to stop at the Camping World on I-4 to spend a $25 gift certificate we had and to help out a friend by returning something she had bought there.

All went well until we got ready to leave and the parking break on the RV would not disengage. The good news is, Camping World has a great service area. The bad news, it’s Sunday and their service are is closed. Ugh!. Oh, more good news, we have Good Sam Emergency Road Service. So we call, and they dispatch a repair company from Orlando, about an hour away. They get the service to us, but we are pay for their work (a minimum 2 hour charge) and their return to their location (another hour).

While we waited, we unpacked the stuff we had brought to the RV in boxes but just put on the bed. While we were doing this, Ellyn discovered there was a key part of her CPAP machine that she did not pack. Oops. Fortunately, it is a part which wears out easily so she could order one online and have it shipped to the campground in Orlando. A pain but problem solved.

When they arrived, I was immediately worried. It was two guys in their personal car. I had expected a marked truck with lots of tools and possibly even parts on board. These guys had some wrenches and a voltmeter. But they assured me they are competent to diagnose the problem and set to work. About and hour and a half later, they felt they have traced it to a pressure switch under the dash, but there was no place open to get the part so I took the part and made plans to get a new one the next day.

So now, what to do for that night. We could boondock in the Camping World parking lot, but instead we opt to take the car and drive back to Sun’N’Fun, about an hour away, for the night. A pain but at least we would have air conditioning without having to run the generator all night. We grabbed out all our medications so they wouldn’t have a problem with the A/C off and headed home. There was one bright spot in our return to Sarasota; we got to watch the latest episode of “The Walking Dead”. We also got to retrieve the part for Ellyn’s CPAP machine and she had it to sleep with on Sunday night.

The next morning we headed back, but Geoff had considered the results of the emergency repair guys and decided he was not comfortable with their diagnosis. When we got back to Camping World, we turned the problem over to their service area. They were able to look it over and bring it in. The brakes actually did release this time after being held for about 30 seconds and we were able to move the coach into their repair bay. They decided that the problem was that the rear brakes were mostly seized up and need to be removed, cleaned and lubed. When they got them off, they also decided that some of the parts needed to be replaced. This meant going to find the right parts, but they were able to do this, so we were closer to having this fixed in one visit.

Ellyn took Jordy and the car and headed for Disney to spend the day with our friends and Geoff stayed with the RV for the duration, which turned out to be all day long. After everything was finally put back together, they tried the parking brake release and, you guessed it, it still did not work. Finally a call to Spartan, the manufacturer of our chassis, revealed that there was a valve in the system which was probably the fault. It was determined that the problem they fixed with the rear brakes was probably the reason the valve broke. However, they had to order that part. They were able to get the system working by bypassing the valve, but we would have to go back on our return trip to get the new part installed.

Things are not over yet, though. We found out when we finally got to Disney World that Ellyn had forgotten some of her medications so we had to get a prescription sent to a local drug store and, since it was too early for a new prescription, the insurance would not pay for these pills. Ugh! At this point this trip has cost us about $2000 more than we anticipated, and there will still be a bill for the valve replacement on the return trip. The good news, we spent 5 days in the “Happiest Place on Earth”.