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

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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:

 

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Wort hotel (common areas)

State of the art slot machines​

Buff​

Max​

Melvin​

 

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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!

 

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Day 2: Western Majesty



Day 2 has only one activity: whitewater rafting. We were asked to meet in the lobby at 11:30am and we were back at the hotel by 4pm. Lunch and dinner are on your own (all meals after that were covered by the Mouse).

This is the weakest day of the trip, due to the lack of activities and the late start time. It's hard to make effective use of the "on your own" time for any lengthy activity. In previous years, this trip included an activity at the Jackson Hole Playhouse.

Anyway, we enjoyed sleeping in, and we got around the lunch by treating the included breakfast as a big brunch. The guides said we could order whatever we wanted in the hotel restaurant. And they stuffed us full of snacks before departing the Wort.

The whitewater company picked us up in a bus. It's not the nice Disney bus, but something that reminded me of third grade school buses.



It took us to their office, where we picked up helmets and other gear. You could get waterproof booties and those were recommended if you didn't have water shoes. It was too warm for wetsuits but those also come free if needed.



Their bus is not exclusive to the Disney group, and they took a few other guests to the rafts. However the two rafts we used were exclusive to our group. Life vests were at the starting point on the Snake River.



We piled in and off we went







Only the Disney group wore helmets, because Disney actually cares about our safety. Or more likely, Joe from Legal insisted on it.

 

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Whitewater rafting

This had better scenery than the whitewater rafting on the ABD Costa Rica trip. However, these rafts were bigger and the overall experience was less thrilling, but still a lot of fun. If you didn't want to paddle, you could sit in the middle. There were opportunities to change where you sat.

We saw eagles, osprey and a beaver nest.

The power company is not happy that the osprey failed to read the notices that you can't build on top of their power lines.​

The rafting guides said there are two beavers living in this nest, named Justin and Hailey Beaver.​

There was a section that was calm where guests could get out and float, if desired. But the water was cold. One guest immediately climbed back into the raft, while another said something like "I can't feel my arms." So I stayed in the raft.



Ok, but what about the rapids? The rafting guide said these were class 2 and 3 rapids. Most weren't very big. But there were two that did drench the rafts. I sat in the back and didn't get too wet. Actually, I've been through worse on Splash Mountain and Tiana's Bayou Adventure. But remember, I was in back. If you were in the front half of the raft, that's a different story. People who really wanted to be soaked "rode the bull" by sitting on the front and hanging on. You did run the risk of falling off the raft that way, but it was more likely that the water would push you back into the raft instead.

 

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Whitewater continued

The ABD Costa Rica trip included the professional photos and videos, but in Wyoming we had to pay to get those on our own. It's a minor thing but it would have been nice to not incur an additional charge for those.





At the termination point, they asked guests to help load the rafts back onto the trailer



Then there is a short hike up a trail to meet the bus. I estimated it was about a 100 foot elevation gain.

View of the Snake River from the top of the trail​

 

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Note: One of the rafting photos is an animated GIF. But you must be logged in to see the animation. Otherwise you see a static picture.

There was a float trip offered as an alternative, if you didn't want to do whitewater rafting. I don't know the details.

 

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Jackson (on your own time)

After returning to the Wort, we were on our own for dinner.

The central part of Jackson is small. It's not hard to walk from one edge of town to the other. There are a few main shopping areas and it didn't take us long to cover that. Compared to the Canadian Rockies trip, Banff is much larger.



There is a small park virtually adjacent to the Wort, famous for its antler arches. At first I thought those arches were the trophies from some great elk massacre, but the elk naturally shed their antlers so people use them for art.



What to do? Most days, there is a free Western shootout show held near that park at 6pm. We skipped that.

The shootout is performed by actors from the Jackson Hole Playhouse. They offer a dinner theater musical. We also passed on that.



We had dinner at a restaurant called Bin22, which had good tapas and wine. Then we walked to the southern edge of town to take a gondola up to the top.





During the summer, they (Snow King Mountain) offer a zipline, alpine slide, alpine rollercoaster, ropes course and other stuff. They had just changed from peak summer hours so these attractions weren't open when we arrived in the evening. I had considered arriving a day early to spend a day here, but decided against it because a prenight at the Wort would have been over $1600 and Snow King wanted over $200 per person for a day pass. Hm, at those prices I can go to Disneyland instead...

Snow King annoyed me because they wanted not just my name, but also insisted on a birth date before they would deign to sell me gondola tickets. Why? So they got a date. Somebody else's birth date...

And then when we got to the top, there were no good views of the town. Everything was blocked by trees or buildings. So the only good view I got was from the gondola itself:



You can see the Grand Tetons in the background, and the photo gives some idea of how boxed in central Jackson is, by the mountains and the elk reserve on the top right of the picture. I've heard there is a big housing shortage in Jackson.

I don't recommend the gondola.

The ABD guides said there was a stargazing activity that evening, for $175. At least two guests did that and liked it. But I wanted to get enough sleep before the early starts the rest of the week.

 

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Day 3: Trail Blazers

Today, we left the Wort and headed towards Yellowstone. Bags were out at 7am and we were on the bus at 8:15am.

The breakfast yesterday was good, but service was slow. So I was glad ABD provided a buffet breakfast this morning, in a meeting room.

The Day 2 pins (for yesterday) were handed out at breakfast​

Our bus driver was Wade. He drove every ABD Wyoming group this season and won a safety award. He also had eagle eyes in spotting wildlife. As usual, the Disney bus was first class.





The first stop was at the Grand Teton park sign.

 

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Mormon Row

The first activity today is a bike ride. They divided us into two groups. Our group went to Mormon Row first, a historical set of buildings from Mormon homesteaders who settled in this area in 1895. The photo of the Moulton Barn with the Grand Tetons in the background is considered an iconic shot of Wyoming.





On the way to the starting point for the bike ride, Wade spotted pronghorns in the distance, so he stopped the bus and I put the telephoto lens to work. Pronghorns are the fastest land animals in the Western Hemisphere.

You can't catch us​

 

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Bike ride

The biking company matched us to our bikes based on height, and they included a free, filled water bottle that you could keep. One of the guides explained how to operate the bikes and went over safety instructions. In particular, they told us to not take photos or videos while biking. There were stops where we could do that.

A guest on a previous Wyoming trip didn't heed those instructions, tried recording video with his phone while biking, ended up crashing and was sent to a hospital. So follow the directions.





Except for a short section of road to get to the bike trail, the entire bike ride is essentially straight and flat. My watch said there was a 67 foot elevation difference. Total length is 8 miles round trip. It's not a challenging ride and the bikes were easy to control. Most of the time you could stay in the middle of the road, except when there was oncoming traffic or you passed a jogger.







It was a nice bike ride, although there wasn't any scenery that you hadn't already seen from the bus. Unlike the ABD Canadian Rockies and New Zealand trips, you didn't have the choice of stopping in the middle of the ride. The van carrying the bikes could not meet you along the bike trail, so if you started the ride you pretty much had to finish it.

In previous years, I think the ABD Wyoming trip did something around Jenny Lake instead of this bike ride.