Dump Disney! Ride To Revolution Adventures
This Authentic Outdoor Adventure Is Just 30 Minutes From Disney World
Your kids have been begging you to go to Disney World, but you think they’d get a lot more out of time in the great outdoors. It’s understandable; exposing kids to nature – and all the cool sports they’ll find there – goes a long way toward raising good adults. But a kid wants to see Mickey Mouse. And sometimes you gotta suffer a little to make your children happy.
There is, however, a place where both you and your kiddos can get your way, and it’s only half an hour from the theme parks.
Meet Revolution Adventures, a 230-acre outdoor adventure center about 25 miles west of the Magic Kingdom in Clermont, Florida. Inside you’ll find what’s effectively a theme park for the outdoors, where your family can ride ATVs, shoot sporting clays, fish for largemouth bass, and hunt each other with foam-tipped arrows, all without leaving the property.
A Rally Car Driver’s Dream Come True
The old cattle and citrus farm in rural Lake County was nothing but a sawmill and moonshine still when former rally car driver Kevin Jowett showed up. The UK native had dreamed of opening an off-road track where regular people could experience the thrills of rally cars, but couldn’t find anywhere in his home country that worked. Then he came to Florida, and, like Walt Disney flying over Interstate 4, he knew he’d found his spot.
Revolution Adventures offers 15 miles of off-road courses winding their way through Central Florida wilderness, past deer, hogs, and turkeys, and through refreshing mud puddles. Yeah, a trip to Revolution is going to get you dirty, but that’s kind of the point. You can attack the course on guided trips in either traditional two-seat ATVs or side-by-sides, in tours ranging from 75 minutes to half a day. Youth ATVs are available for kids 9-15, and anyone over 48 inches tall can ride side-by-sides with drivers over 21.
To get the full experience, opt for a Mucky Duck tour. The Mucky Ducks are a little like open-air civilian Amtraks – track vehicles that can traverse land and then move through the water. The tours take you along the off-road course, then into the park’s 70-acre lake. The feeling’s a little surreal when you drive right in and don’t immediately sink, but as soon as you get used to being on the water you won’t want to leave.
And yes, there are alligators in the lake, though a jet ski escort keeps them away while you’re Mucky Ducking. The aquatic part of the adventure isn’t long, though, and if you want to spend more time on the water, Revolution rents jet skis too. You can combine them with an ATV rental for a total land-and-sea experience.
Get Your Kids Ready For Hunting Season
The motorized stuff will get you and your kids’ adrenaline going, but you can also sharpen your shooting skills before or after your ATV rides. Revolution has a small sporting clays course, where $125 gets you an hour with a 12-gauge over-under and all the ammo you need.
If bow hunting is more your thing, hit the archery range where you can take in some target practice and your kids can take a lesson. Or, for something completely different, try Archery Tag. It’s paintball meets laser tag, where you split into teams and shoot foam-tipped arrows while dodging behind obstacles.
The private lake is also meticulously maintained, and since the only people fishing it are Revolution’s guests, the largemouth bass population stays stocked. You can’t swim in the lake because, ya know, alligators. But book a morning fishing trip and you can have a complete outdoor trifecta of fishing, shooting, and off-roading all before lunch.
The drive from the parks is pretty easy, a 30-ish minute trip mostly on country roads. GPS can miss the place since it’s set so far back off the highway, so keep a lookout for the signs as you get close on CR-474.
If your kids insist on dragging you to the so-called Happiest Place on Earth, make them a deal: Agree to a day of outdoor adventure and it’s off to Florida you go. It’ll give you a nice break from shuffling through theme park lines, and might just get them to rethink what “happy” really means.