A'Questing We Will Go! - Jan 2026 TR

[Araminta18]

Hi everyone! I'm back with another trip report full of way too many photos. This was our trip to Festival of the Arts (it's become a bit of an annual trip and I am not sad about it!) this year, enjoying the cooler weather and all the beautiful Disney art! This is my last trip report for the time being - we don't even have a Disney World trip planned right now, due to some upcoming life changes (job changes, etc), but hopefully as soon as all those kind of shake out, there will be more Disney trips.

If this is your first time joining me on a trip report, I go SUPER extra with the photos #sorrynotsorry - I used to use imgur to host 30 photos per post but I got burned when that whole thing went weird, so now I just upload directly to disboards, but that means each post only gets 10 photos. So that's why you'll see days broken up into like 10 (or on our first day at epic, more *cough cough*) posts, cause ALL the photos.

The details:
who: me and my husband Trevor
when: Sat Jan 17 - Sat Jan 24th
where: Boardwalk, water view room + one bonus night at Port Orleans Riverside

Introductions:
I'm Tiffany, I'll be your ghost host for this trip report. I'm 38 and while I'm a librarian by education, I currently do records management, since records management is where the pay is, and I gotta pay for Disney! Favorite princess is Sleeping Beauty, but I also love Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel. Favorite rides are Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise, Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind, Expedition Everest, Tower of Terror...I feel like I should stop before I just list all of them.

My traveling companion is my husband Trevor. He's 40, and loves Star Wars and Marvel, but has grown to love Disney--his favorite characters are Boba Fett, Vader and Stormtroopers, and on the non-Star Wars side, Grumpy. I recently turned him into a roller coaster fan (after him not riding them for our first several trips), so now he likes Cosmic Rewind and Everest...I think Rise of the Resistance and Star Tours are his favorite rides though.


Ok, let's get started! After my trip last September, I booked a couple bounceback offers for January, 'cause I figured I'd definitely want to go back for FARTS. They finally announced the dates for FARTS and more importantly the schedule of Broadway singers, so we settled on the dates - Sierra Boggess (the original Ariel on Broadway) was coming and I definitely wanted to see her! We planned to arrive on Saturday and then leave Friday night, but then they announced the artist signing schedules, and there was one artist whose first day was that Friday at 5 pm. So, we (well, me ) decided to stay one more night and leave Saturday instead, but there was not a lot of availability on Disney property so we booked an airport hotel with points. Obviously if you read the above you'll know we didn't stay there but you'll have to wait and see how it turns out!

I was excited for this year not just 'cause of the art and the food, but for the Lorcana! Lorcana is like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering but with Disney art - I love the art so while I don't play I do collect the cards, and was very excited for the quests at FARTS this year.

Work was crazy as always, so I was super excited when that Saturday dawned and it was time to head to Disney!

 

[Araminta18]

Table of Contents

Disney Springs Miscalculation (Again) - Saturday Jan 17, 2026 (part 1)

 

[diznynut]

Can't wait!!!

 

[Araminta18]

Disney Springs Miscalculation (Again) - Saturday Jan 17, 2026 (part 1)​

All right! Our flight was at 12:45, so we slept in a bit and then did last minute packing. Just like last trip we'd done most of the packing the night before but gotta grab those toiletries, etc. It had been SUPER cold at home so we were VERY ready to be down in Florida with the warmer weather, but of course right as we called for the uber it started snowing!

I may have started panicking a little bit - it wasn't sticking but I didn't want to take any chances with us not being able to get down to Florida!

We made it to the airport super smoothly, and same with security - no issues. The only bad thing was at Dulles some gates (specifically a lot of the United ones) you have to get to by way of this mobile lounge/bus type thing. It's such a pain, but what can you do.

Besides taking a selfie to commemorate it.

At the gate we validated that it exists, consolidated our bags so that the artwork I was bringing with us to get signed could be safely carried onboard as a personal item, and then got food. As has become a bit of our tradition, we got Potbelly which I took a picture of but also not really:

LOL not my best picture but I'm nothing if not a dedicated reporter.

We boarded on time, and unfortunately it was a full flight, but we at least had economy plus. Looking out the window, we saw this cool looking plane:

Not sure if that's original or painted that way to look old-school, but it was neat!


Finally at 12:34 they closed the boarding door and we were off!

Nearly 3 hours later we were on the ground - huzzah! Sunny and no sign of snow; I needn't have worried. There were some very unhappy babies on our flight but my noise-canceling headphones did their thing and it was quite a pleasant flight. We also landed at a gate close to the fake monorail, instead of the furthest gate which is usually where we land. Small piece of luck but I'll take it!

Trevor waited at the baggage carousel while I went to pick up our rental car: we decided to try doing the outlets again like we did in November, hoping that since it wasn't Black Friday it wouldn't be super crowded at the outlets or Disney Springs (foreshadowing...). We also were returning it to the Swolphin (instead of the Disney car care center), and by the time I figured out that we could return a car there the only cars left were pickup trucks. So...that's what I got. I was hoping we could swap it to something else but when I got to the rental car counter I did hear them say to the group ahead of me that they were out of cars unless you had a reservation so...no luck. But I got the car quickly and made it back to Trevor only to find that the carousel hadn't yet even turned on.

We finally got our bags at 3:45, and then twenty minutes later were finally leaving the garage with our pickup truck. It was definitely not what I was wanting but it worked! We headed right to the I Drive outlets and indeed it was less crazy than it was on Black Friday - well, at least from a getting there and parking standpoint. The store itself was more crowded than it has been previous times we've gone, including on Black Friday! But they had some fun things, including the light-up Winnie the Pooh Christmas sweater that caught Trevor's eye back in November but he passed on. He didn't pass on it this time.

It was about 5:30 when we were done, so we decided to get Del Taco as a snack and then decide as we drove towards Disney if we wanted to go to Disney Springs directly or to the hotel first. Gotta get Del Taco! Even if the drive thru was SUPER slow and like 10 minutes long. But eventually, tacos acquired!

Apparently the theme of today's food pics is they're of wrapping and not actually the food. Oh well.

Soon enough, we were pulling onto Disney property! We'd decided to go to Disney Springs directly.

It routed us a weird way so we didn't get to go under the big sign but we got a pic of the little sign!

However at Disney Springs, the lime garage was closed for refurbishment and the signs said all other parking was full. Woof. It looked like it too - the pedestrian bridge we waited on on Black Friday had tons of people on it, so we decided to go to the hotel first, check in, and then take the bus back to Disney Springs. That way we wouldn't have to deal with parking and that long line. It did mean we would get to Disney Springs later than we wanted but our dinner reservations were decently late and the only two things we really wanted were Gideon's cookies and I wanted to check out Pandora jewelry. We forgot this was a holiday weekend (MLK Jr day)...poor planning on our part! Oops! We weren't even planning to go to the room at all - just check in and drop the bags and head out.

There was a bit of a line to turn into the Boardwalk and get past the guard gate, but that meant Trevor could get a picture!


Yay Boardwalk! We were very excited to be back here - we loved staying here back in 2018, and were super excited to be back with a water view room. Though last night I'd done some research, spending some time on Touring PLans room finder feature, and I discovered that there are SEVERAL rooms classed as "water view" that face the main courtyard. Which, in my opinion, does NOT count as a water view, and I was not going to be pleased if we got one of those. I didn't realize how many of the water view rooms on the Inn side are blocked for club level - there are basically 17 true water view rooms on the Inn side that aren't club level. So I was paying attention as we checked in and what did we get? One of those courtyard view rooms classed as "water view". Womp womp. I was proud of myself for speaking up: I asked about changing rooms and they said they didn't have anything else available for tonight, but they'd be able to move us tomorrow for the rest of the stay. So I figured that worked - sucky for tonight but since we wouldn't be back til late and then leaving kind of early (gotta rope drop FARTS) it was ok. And at least we could get a better view tomorrow.

We unpacked a bit (had to get my ears and such; Trevor had to get his Baymax -- fun fact, literally the MINUTE he put on his Baymax a CM passing by was like "I love your Baymax!". It's definitely our most popular accessory ), and then parked the car before heading back to the bus stop to catch the bus to Disney Springs.

10 min til the Disney Springs bus - there were a LOT of people at the stop and they were all waiting for Disney Springs. But it came on time and by 7:40, we were at Disney Springs!

 

[Araminta18]

Can't wait!!!

yay thanks for reading!!

 

[VAtink]

Joining in! Can't wait to read more!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

I am here to read along!!!

 

[WWhitehead]

I am also here to read along. I love all your pictures! I'll have to write a trip report after my trip in May with my daughter.

 

[Araminta18]

Joining in! Can't wait to read more!

Yay! welcome! I'm enjoying your TR about your stay at GF club level...it really is such an awesome club level.

 

[Araminta18]

I am here to read along!!!

yay!! welcome!!! thank you for joining!

 

[Araminta18]

I am also here to read along. I love all your pictures! I'll have to write a trip report after my trip in May with my daughter.

yay!! thank you! You definitely should write a trip report - I love reading about mother/daughter trips