Review and report of the ABD Wyoming trip, August 17, 2025

[Eastridge]

Summary / TL;DR

This is a review and report on the Adventures By Disney Wyoming trip, August 17, 2025.

This is the 20th anniversary season of Adventures By Disney, so it felt appropriate to do the first itinerary ABD offered, the "Quest for the West": Wyoming. We booked this because it was the only week in the summer my family was available and it was a destination that wouldn't be too hot in mid-August. While there are many reports, the itinerary has evolved and the last reports I see are from 2017.

Reasons to go:

• Brooks Lake Lodge. This is the primary reason to take this trip.
• Lots of physical activities
• Scenery in two national parks
• Domestic trip
• This trip has remained popular. Disney is doing something right.
• Two historic hotels.

Issues to consider:

• If you aren't willing or able to do the activities (whitewater rafting, hike a couple of miles at high elevation with significant climbing, horseback riding, fishing, bike 8 miles) then I don't think it is worth the expense.
• All locations are at high altitudes, from 7000 to over 9000 feet.
• Day 2 has only one activity.
• We had very few bugs but in June there are a lot of insects.
• This is a "digital detox" trip. There is no WiFi at the Old Faithful Inn and weak phone reception with Verizon.
• Yet again, I couldn't get my flights through the ABD Air department without paying a much higher price than I could book myself, through the airline directly. It is getting frustrating to see higher prices at ABD Air. I would rather book through ABD to ensure full refunds if ABD cancelled the trip, but I don't want to pay hundreds or thousands more for that.

Other comments:

• The humidity is low. I was using lip balm constantly. Prepare as if you are going into a desert.
• The weather was perfect, with highs in the 70s to low 80s, and lows down in the 60s. I think it got colder overnight but we were in hotels by then.
• Bring hiking boots.
• This was the first adults-only trip I've been on. There were 27 guests, which is the smallest ABD group I've experienced. We could spread out on the bus. There were about 10 young adults, some of them former Junior Adventurers on previous ABD trips.
• For us, a prenight would not have been worthwhile and we were glad we didn't book that.
• Could you do this trip on your own? It is nice to take a guided tour of Yellowstone and let Disney handle the logistics and fight for parking spaces, but with advance planning you can visit Yellowstone yourself. The real reason to do this trip is Brooks Lake Lodge. ABD buys out the lodge for most of the summer, and even when you can get a room at the lodge on your own it isn't much cheaper than going there as part of this trip.

 

[Eastridge]

Guides

Our guides were Lili and Eileen. As always, the Adventure Guides are the best part of the trip and this was no exception.

Lili (left) and Eileen (right)​

There were three pairs of guides covering Wyoming this year. Lili and Eileen have been with ABD 1 or 2 years, but Lili has extensive guiding experience with other companies and Eileen worked at the Disney Cruise Line previously.

I learned there are about 65 US-based ABD guides, and that new guides tend to be assigned the domestic trips before guiding international trips, unless they have some cultural background or language skill that makes an international trip a better match.

 

[Eastridge]

Wort hotel (room)

The first hotel is the historic Wort hotel, in central downtown Jackson. It is at a prime location, next to the downtown park and shopping areas.

The rooms were nice. I think they have only ~50 rooms so Disney must reserve a significant fraction of their rooms. The chairs were uncomfortable, though.












You take a photo that makes the cover of the magazine, just before the mama grizzly charges and eats you.

The suites had elaborate wooden carvings on their doors:

 

[Eastridge]

Wort hotel (common areas)

State of the art slot machines​

Buff​

Max​

Melvin​

 

[Eastridge]

Day 1: Wyoming Welcome (welcome dinner)

The only activity on Day 1 is the welcome dinner, held in a meeting room in the Wort. Alcohol was included from a small bar. Dinner was a buffet and was pretty good. A guitarist provided background music.









They handed out the Day 1 pin:

Interesting that Chip and Dale are colored differently. This wasn't a mistake, as this was the case on all the pins. I haven't seen that on other Chip/Dale pins.​

 

[happily single]

Following along

 

[Nicnicnic.nic]

Fun read so far and great pictures!

 

[DeeBee3]

very interested in the rest of the trip!