PTR: 2026, Or The Year of Adventure

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Hi all!

I have not done a Trip Report or a Pre-Trip Report in a hot minute so please bear with me.

First of all, let me introduce myself - or reintroduce myself to those who have been here for a while!

My name is Elle!



I'm almost 38 years old and work as a middle school English teacher and Drama teacher in MA.

Back in November I made a spur of the moment decision on my last day of my trip and decided to bridge my Park Hopper into an Annual Pass. I hadn't planned to, but I already had a trip booked for June and knew I'd be back in the fall so it just made sense. I used to have an AP until a few years ago, so having it back is like having an old friend back.

And then I got a Thought. Which was a Dangerous Thought.

What if, in 2026, I went to all the Festivals of Epcot? Flower and Garden has always been my favorite, but I've never been to Festival of the Holidays and I want to finally check it off my "Bingo" card. And why not use it as an excuse to stay in some new-to-me hotels and finish up that "Bingo" card too.

Soo....

2026 went from a year with a tiny sprinkling of Disney to The Year of Adventure!

Here's the Plans so far:

February 2026
- February 13-17
- Staying at the Dolphin & Yacht Club
- Festival of the Arts
- Traveling with my mom

My mother is my Ride or Die Disney travel partner. She was the one who encouraged me to get an Annual Pass again ("you're happier when you can go to Disney" was her biggest argument). Originally this trip was a short trip - go down Friday night, go to Festival of the Arts Saturday, come home early Sunday. I wanted to go this weekend specifically because of the announcement that Susan Egan and James Monroe Iglehart will be performing that weekend. I've seen James Monroe Iglehart perform before but I love Susan Egan and really want to see her. I invited my mother with me and she was initiall cnfused about why I would want to go for a weekend. Once she realized WHY I was going, she was all in.

And then she realized that we would be gone for the start of my vacation week, and gently encouraged me to stay an extra couple of days. I'd already booked the Dolphin and couldn't change it, so she found us a good deal (shockingly!) on a room at the Yacht Club, so we can just walk over to drop our stuff off. So now we have 3 park days and will be gone Friday night to early Tuesday afternoon.

April 2026
- April 17-22
- Staying at Coronado Springs
- Flower and Garden Festival
- Solo Trip

I used to always do a week long solo trip in April. This year I'm cutting it down to the first half of the week. This is mostly to do a staycation at Coronado because Gran Destino Tower is my parents' favorite hotel and I keep booking Coronado and then either changing to a different hotel or canceling the trip for one reason or another. This year will be the year I actually stay there! I haven't bought plane tickets or anything yet, but my plan is a later arrival on the 17th and an early flight home on the 22. On solo trips I usually stuff my Kindle and find someplace to sip a drink, eat a snack, and vibe in between rides and I'm very excited to spend a few days at the pool and in the parks relaxing.

June 2026
- June 25-30
- Staying at the Poly
- No Festival, Just Friends
- My close friends

This is the trip that started it all. My dad offered to book a room at a hotel for my friends and I to do a staycation because we loved it so much last summer (and he admitted that my friend J and I are much happier when we have Disney planned than when we don't). So my friends H, J, K, and I are going in June. We may end up adding a day at the top, but if we do we'll probably do a night at Art of Animation. For the most part we are doing a Staycation where we explore the resorts and Disney Springs and enjoy all the non-theme park things Disney has to offer. We're planning to do the Magic Kingdom After Hours event on the 29th and then do a 3 park day earlier in the week (either Sunday or Monday) and we're hoping that they'll have the Check In Day Water Park perk again to take advantage of (this summer as we got to the bus it started downpouring and then our room was ready so we decided to find our room, have our bags brought from Luggage Check, and ended up going to Disney Springs, being able to move our dinner reservation up and go to the Contemporary that night to watch HEA with some friends which was a great change of plans but I'd like to go to a water park at least once lol).

Coming Soon...Fall 2026
I plan on doing Food and Wine and Festival of the Holidays as weekend trips, but haven't planned out when yet. My mother and I usually go in October so maybe then, and once in December just for a quick weekend trip specifically for Festival of the Holidays. We'll see!

So that's the plan! Come along for the ride with me and see how everything plays out! I plan to make Trip Reports as well this year, because I miss talking Disney with people and having a creative outlet. I'll be updating this as plans come up and sharing things here so my friends don't get sick of me lol!

 

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Chapters

February
February: The Planning
February: ADR Time!

April
April: Airplane Drama

June
June: Oops, We Added Another Day

 

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Following

 

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Following along. Looking forward to reading more

 

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Good luck!

 

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February Trip: The Planning

Okay so for February I am going with my mom.



My mom is a retired middle school teacher. She and I have very similar Disney styles and she loves that I will do the "adventurous" rides and restaurants that my dad won't. She also just lets me do whatever I want in terms of planning because she trusts me to make decisions.

Which is great, but I still check with her constantly, because I don't want her to not like something.

Of course, I did plan this trip "last minute" (for me). I'm the type of person who likes to have a lot of time to figure out a plan of action, and instead I have slightly more than 60 days.

This has been me this week:

Throw in work, holidays, and everything else and I feel just a teensy bit behind.

Honestly, I thrive in crunch time in this kind of scenario. This past weekend I sat down at the kitchen island, computer in hand, and made a plan.

Admittedly this plan was how my mother "convinced" me to stay an extra two days (it took very little convincing).

Here's our plan of action:

Flight Out:
We'll be leaving out of Manchester, NH on a 4:30 pm flight on Southwest. I work until 2:30, which is cutting it close, but Manchester is easy to get to from Central Massachusetts and specifically my school. My hope is that I will be able to leave a little early so I don't need to take a half day.

My parents will be picking me up so we don't need to worry about leaving a car at the airport (which also means my amazing father will have to drive me to work early that morning). The hope is that we'll be landing in Florida by 7:30 so we'd hopefully we'd be able to get to the hotel and get something to eat at the hotel and turn in early.

Flight Home:
We're leaving at what my father calls a "respectable" 10:30 in the morning (aka we don't need to get up at 4 am, which is my normal work wakeup). We should be back in Manchester by 1:30 pm, if everything goes according to plan. We're flying Jetblue home because it was a cheaper flight and wasn't as early in the morning. If all goes according to plan we should be back home by 3:00-ish.

Next Steps:
So my next big things are figuring out how we are transferring our stuff from the Dolphin to the Yacht Club halfway through our trip (honestly I kind of just plan on walking) and figuring out dining. I can start making reservations on Tuesday so I need to figure out what we'd like to do. I think we have 3 figure out so far - either Le Cellier or Via Napoli for the FArts dinner packages (leaning toward the former since it's been years since we've been and when we went to Ale and Compass in November it made my mother nostalgic since it was our "celebration" spot when I was younger. I also suggested Cake Bake Shop from breakfast on Sunday since it has a lot of both sweet and savory options my mother likes. I figured we could walk our stuff over to Yacht Club then take the boat over to the Boardwalk. We're planning on starting in Magic Kingdom that day and do a pretty relaxed day so time isn't a big issue for us.

Monday? Giant question mark, who knows? Also, knowing my mother, we will add a bunch more because her feeling is that we should eat well if there are good places to eat.

 

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Woof, the last few days have had lots of random updates to each trip so I'll split this into three separate short posts so I can easily put them into each trip's PTR more easily. Also any and all weird format errors are blamed on dogs because I am trying to do this on the couch and all three of them are also trying to fit onto my lap with the computer as well.


Let's go chronologically by trip, so starting with February:

February: ADR Time!

Our ADR day was Tuesday, the 16th. Which of course meant it was the Tuesday of the last full week before vacation (we also had Monday and Tuesday the 22nd and 23rd and testing on the 17th and 18th because why not?). I managed to get the ADRs my mother and I wanted though I had to finagle a little bit.

So, here are our ADRs - well, for now. I know my mother, she likes to add things lol.

February 14 - We got an ADR for 4:50 pm at Le Cellier. It was the only ADR you could get at Le Cellier for the concert package and that is our plan. We'll be going to the 8 pm performance that night which will be a good end to the night.

February 15 - We are moving hotels this morning, so we are doing a 9:40 breakfast at Cake Bake Shop. Quick tip if anyone ever wants to try it: go for ADRs on OpenTable because the choices for ADRs are limited on the Disney site. I was only getting ADRs from 9 pm onward on the Disney website but there was full availability on OpenTable.

February 16 - we are doing lunch at Tiffins because it was a non-negotiable for my mother. It's her favorite restaurant and it was a nice relaxing time in November just the two of us so she wants to do it again. I'm happy to eat anywhere anything so I'm up for it.

We'll see what else we end up adding. I'm sure there will be a dinner on the 15th at some point lol

 

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Now, on to the April update


April: Airplane Drama


Oh, my god.

So, I live in an area where there are three international airports and two regional airports all within an hour/hour and a half from whee I live. Gotta love Central MA. I tend to fly out of the two regional airports, mostly Manchester recently. Worcester is actually much closer to my house but it only has one flight a day which makes it less than reliable unless i'm going during the summer.

Welp.

Jetblue changed my flights on Christmas Eve.


This happened to me for our November trip too. They changed them three separate times during our November trip and led me splitting our airports just to make it work.

I didn't want to have to do that again.

But the most annoying part was that they had put me on a flight that left the morning of the 18th, instead of a flight on the 17th, the day I am planning on flying down. It honestly looks like Jetblue cut all flights from Manchester that day.

They also changed my flight home, but the time wasn't horrible. However, changing everything at 9 pm on Christmas Eve is annoying.

I ended up changing my flights to Worcester, which sucks because I'll either have to take a half day or a full day off but at this point the only other options are the International airports. I don't want to drive to Boston the Friday before the marathon and Bradley and Providence weren't great options for flights home for the timeline I needed.

On the plus side, I'll get to Florida earlier. Now I'll be getting to the hotel just after 5 so I'll even have time to go to Disney Springs for a nice meal at one of the QS places.

Hopefully this is the only change, fingers crossed!

 

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And Finally, a quick June update


June: Oops, We Added A Day

Speaking of flights and such, I've been monitoring flights for our June trip. We are planning to fly out of Boston for that trip mostly because H lives about 20 minutes away from it and from their house we won' be getting into the city the same wa\9u

We'll also be flying SW for this one. Mostly because J has a lot of points with them and honestly of the airlines we opt into using everything is pretty much within the same price range for the type of seat we tend to buy.

The biggest trend we've been noticing is that if we wanted to leave on Thursday the 25th as we planned and not spend an arm and a leg we'd have a pretty long layover and basically lose an entire day. If we leave on the 24th, because it's a Wednesday we don't get hit with weekend prices and while we'd still have a layover in Baltimore but we'd be in Florida by noon.

We couldn't afford to add a day to our Poly reservation since we'd rented points so instead we chose to go to All Star Music in a family suite for a night. It's super cheap split between us, we'd get two full bathrooms, and we figure it gives us some freedom to figure out what we want to do both Wednesday and Thursday. We were planning a water park our first day and now we have some wiggle room with that makes our staycation a lot more relaxing than coming in on Thursday.


Don't get me wrong, we haven't actually bought our flights yet - that's a February problem lol - but now we have a better plan!