Gem Mining Experience: A Fort Wilderness Hidden Gem!
Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort is one of the best places to be if you’re planning a resort-only day, and the L&B Gem Mining Co. Experience is an amazing addition to your Fort Wilderness activity itinerary. This is truly a “hidden gem” of an activity that doesn’t get much attention, but it’s so unique (and a perfect fit for anyone that collects gems, fossils, arrowheads, shark teeth, or rocks)! The tricky thing about this activity is the location - it’s located at the Meadow Recreation Area inside Fort Wilderness. That’s simple to get to if you’re staying at Fort Wilderness and have a golf cart, but if not, you’ll need to build some extra travel time into your schedule. Gem mining does not require a reservation, and it’s available to walk-up guests all day during Bike Barn operating hours (currently 9:00 AM-5:00 PM daily). To get started, you’ll head to the Bike Barn.
At the Bike Barn, you’ll need to buy a bag of mining rough that’s been enriched with gems and fossils from the Cast Members there. They have several different sizes - “Paydirt” for $10.49, “Emerald Strike” for $16.99, and “The Motherlode” for $32.99. The larger your bag, the bigger the included gems are likely to be. Sharing bags is allowed, and the Motherlode size is definitely shareable. You can also tell the Cast Member if you’re more interested in gems, fossils, or a mix of both, and they can give you a bag geared toward your interests. They will also provide you with a wooden sifting tray to borrow while you’re panning for treasure and a gem identification card to use after you’ve discovered all your gems. Additional sifting trays are available upon request if more than one person will be panning at the same time.
Next, head over to the Assay Station, where you’ll find a tall water sluice running down into a long trough. There are workstations at various heights along the trough, and there are benches built into the lower section of the sluice, so everyone should be able to set up camp at a spot that’s just the right height for them. Then start mining! Pour some of your mining rough into your sifting tray, then dunk it into the water.
Shake it around and let the water sift out the sand and dirt, leaving a pan full of beautiful gems and fossils! With two kids panning carefully, it took us about ten minutes to get through an entire bag of The Motherlode. We would rinse a few handfuls of mining rough at a time, and once we uncovered all the gems and fossils in that batch, we fished them all out of the pan (some are TINY!) and collected those in a pile on the side of the trough. Then we’d dump in some more mining rough and keep going until we used it all up!
Our bag had a mix of both gems and fossils, so we discovered a lot of treasures! We had gems of every color, quite a few fossils, and even a couple of arrowheads. Once we had gone through the entire bag of mining rough, we went through our pile of the good stuff and rinsed those again in the clear sluice water until they were all nice and clean. Then we were ready to start identifying everything we found.
Along with the identification card we were given at the Bike Barn, there were also several signs posted near the Assay Station with identification info. The kids really enjoyed looking closely at each piece and trying to figure out what it was. There was also a big map showing us where each type of gem came from, and we had gems from all over the world!
After we finished identifying everything, we packed the gems up in our bags and returned our sifting trays to the Bike Barn. For anyone planning to do gem mining, I suggest bringing a towel - you don’t get terribly wet during this activity, but the gems are wet and so are your hands, so a towel will come in handy. It’s also a good idea to bring a clean Ziploc bag to take your clean gems and fossils home in (luckily we had one in our backpack). And one last thing to keep in mind is that carrying a bag of rocks around after this activity makes your backpack significantly heavier, so I wouldn’t plan to sift through the largest bag of rough and then go straight to a park where you’ll have to keep carrying it around for the rest of the day.
If anyone in your party really loves rocks and gems and is still looking for more, don’t forget that the Fort Wilderness Trading Posts and many other gift shops around Walt Disney World have rock stations where you can purchase specific favorites like break-open geodes, amethyst, rose quartz, pyrite, agate slabs, and more for only $5.99 each.
Gem mining is such a good time, and it’s a unique activity full of surprise and discovery. If you have a free evening during your vacation, I highly recommend heading over to the Meadow Recreation Area - do gem mining just before the Bike Barn closes, then stick around for a few hours to eat dinner, play games, roast marshmallows at the campfire, meet Chip ‘n Dale and hang out at their Campfire Sing-A-Long (Wednesday through Sunday only), then end the evening by watching the Movie Under the Stars!
L&B Gem Mining Co. Experience | Daily from 9:00 AM-5:00 PM | Meadow Bike Barn
*Activity dates and times listed here were accurate at the time this review was published. Resort activities and activity schedules may change month to month, so be sure to check the current My Disney Experience for updated times/dates when making plans to participate.
