Sibling Trips all year long 2026 -- Our January Trip (Updated 2/20)

[Becky2005]

This is the year of trip reports for me! I have never gone to (or planned to) go to Disney so many times in one year I know I am super, super lucky to even be able to do this & it is definitely a once in a lifetime year for me. I was going to do a year-long trip report and then realized I am a talker and it would have been *way* too long.

Therefore I am breaking it up into each trip and will do a report on each one as we get back.

This was the first one of the year!

Background:

This year all came about due to the Military 250 special year-long pass. My sister qualifies for it. My brother has several timeshares in FL that he uses quite often as well as frequent flyer miles. I am the youngest and tend to get "told" I am going on vacation with them. The catch in this is my siblings are retired & I work part-time that I have to keep reminding them of that, so they do go more than I can.

The running joke is that my sister speaks “Dad” and my brother speaks “Mom” and somehow I can speak both so I mediate quite a bit (which you will see happens on this trip!). However, just like all siblings we have our share of bickering with each other and these trips are a team effort to make sure it doesn’t go too far with the fighting. Somehow by the end of it, we all still end up on speaking terms and keep on planning trips together.

The main characters of the trips are:

ME (youngest) – The original Disney fan of the 3 of us. If I had my way, I would stay on site in the Disney bubble and be willing to pay more for the things I deem make the trip better rather than penny pinch. However, I am also practical and know I don't have unlimited funds to make that happen. I can’t decide if Magic Kingdom is my favorite or Hollywood Studios. Although, if I could choose only 1 it would be Magic Kingdom.

K1 (older sister & oldest of the family): – She is a fan but not like I am, although I think that might be changing a bit after a few trips she has had. She is more a penny-pinching personality that is slowly seeing that sometimes cheap is expensive depending on what it is. Magic Kingdom is her favorite park.


K2 (older brother & middle child): He is not a Disney fan yet, somehow, he is the one who keeps instigating several of these trips. His favorite park is Hollywood Studios (Galaxy’s Edge specifically).


K1 does not live local to us, she is on the East coast. If we fly, she usually does a connecting flight with Chicago being her connection airport. We then all get on the same flight to go to FL. If we are driving, then that’s on each of us to figure it out. Makes for some interesting travels at times! We usually have some sort of saga each trip!

Our plan this year (so far with all 3 of us going and it seems to keep changing!):

January -- activate the military tickets and not even sure why we picked the dates we did but the airfare was cheap and we were able to make it work with everyone.

March -- I somehow got talked into this one as I wasn't going to be able to go as I thought I might be going to CA which fell through. Change of plans!!! I cancelled our All Stars reservation as K1 was on the waitlist for Shades of Green and it opened up today, so she booked it. Hurray! We now get Deluxe perks and each of us can have our own beds.

May -- I already had a trip planned with my friend (which I have a PTR for) and they decided to crash it!!! So this trip will be with my siblings there but not really a sibling trip. We may or may not run into them after we get dropped off at our hotel. My brother is our ride home so I think he will be stuck at our airport for a few hours as they are taking an earlier flight than we are.

June/July -- we have nothing booked but my brother was attempting to get us to book something. I don't think this is going to happen as I don't have enough vacation time to make this work and we already have an August trip on the books. However, you never know with us, so stay tuned on this one!

August -- We have a semi sibling trip planned. We went last year as a big family group and we are going again but not quite the big family group. At this point, we aren't sure who all is going. I know K1 is bringing her entire family so they are going to drive. K2 isn't sure of who all is going from his family and none of my family can afford/wants to go again this summer. I was just trying to figure it out and I think at this point DH is going to come with me & we will go $$$$$$$ due to our last adventure with him (he has mobility issues so uses a wheelchair there & we were at Ft. Wilderness since he wanted quiet...he said next time Contemporary).

After that we don't have anything on the books as this pass does expire December 18 and there are some black-out dates. I would like to get 1 more quick trip in probably late September/October but that will probably not be a sibling trip, it might be my daughter & I or maybe even me going solo???

Now that I wrote a novel *just* for the background and introduction -- next up will be our arrival day!!!

 

[DLo]

Wow ! Following along. Looking forward to reading more .

 

[Becky2005]

Throughout the trip report I don’t necessarily remember 100% the order of things so things do get jumbled especially toward the end of the trip & since much of this is from memory.

I have a notebook that I started with our 2011 trip to help me with trip reports and it has been invaluable. We usually drive and there is typically 5-6 years between trips so this is a great reference guide as to where we stopped along the way, gas prices, the hotel we stayed at & what time we got there, etc… At some point, I just decided that all Disney trips get put in this notebook from whatever time we start the vacation until we get home.

I always take a park map and cross off the rides/attractions we have done while in the park. I did this as a way to make sure I didn’t forget anyone’s top rides when first went and we were a family of 6! It is a habit I have kept up. Then when I get back to the hotel and winding down from the day, I write all the stuff down. I do attempt to do it in the order we did the things to see how much we got accomplished. I add any notes that I might want to add for future trips on things that worked or didn't.

Arrival Day:

Traveling for us always involves something going wrong one way or another (especially flying as we typically drive). On our end, it was a slight parking issue at the airport. Each time we fly we learn a little more of making it smoother! Amazingly, I made it through TSA without any problems whatsoever. I try so hard to do everything I can to get through smoothly and it always seems like something happens where I am the oblivious traveler. Thankfully, I have always gotten kind TSA agents who I think take pity on me at times. I was a bit impressed that didn't happen this time.

We flew out in the afternoon. K1 was supposed to have a 3-hour layover and be at the airport when we got there. On my sister's end things going wrong involved a very long delay for her flight into Chicago due to a pipe bursting. We were really wondering if she was going to make the flight. We were monitoring it closely, however, there was nothing we could have done if they delayed it anymore as we our flight was not delayed. She did make it to the gate about 20 minutes before they started boarding!!! Whew!!!!

Our plan was to get the rental car, get to the hotel and then possibly go to Disney Springs once we got settled as our tickets needed to be activated.

We did manage to get our bags and to the rental car section, we ended up with a minivan (not what was reserved but it worked out). That took us a bit to get it all figured out.

We had a bit of our first meltdowns between us as we missed the exit we wanted to take and ended up getting a toll (oops!). We generally don’t do tolls at all but it was dark and by the time we saw the sign that said it was the last exit before toll it was way too late.

We finally get to the hotel, did our Wal-Mart run and decided that was it. We were in for the night and we would just activate the tickets at Magic Kingdom the next day.

Next up -- Magic Kingdom awaits!

 

[Becky2005]

Day 1 - Magic Kingdom day!

This was our longest day as we figured things out due to some issues K2 has and we figured out how to navigate things. K2 was also our driver for this whole trip.

We got there in what would still be early entry. I don’t remember exactly as we did have to stop at Guest Services before we got into the park to get our tickets activated so that took a while to get that all taken care of.

We did end up getting the special Memory Maker that K1 qualified for, I believe it was $99? We did find it is only for 30 days unfortunately. Would have been awesome if it was for the whole length of the special ticket but alas still a good deal compared to the normal price.

Our first stop was a castle photo of course! K1 & K2 are not thrill riders so I skip those when I go with them.

K1’s favorite ride & must do is Small World, so that is where we head first.

We rode the following before lunch:

Small World, Mad Tea Party (I did not ride), Haunted Mansion & Hall of Presidents.

Had lunch at Columbia Harbour House. We all had the salmon. K1 & I did had the kid's meal version and it was enough. It was busy there & we thought maybe the upstairs wouldn’t be so busy but it was packed. We had mobile ordered and then found a seat. We got lucky as there happened to be one right as we walked up the stairs and we grabbed that one.

We had some issues with ride photos when I was not the one with them. We tried to figure out how to have the phone pick things up via bluetooth/location but we never did. I had a Magic Band so mine were fine. We ended up over at the Photopass place near the entrance of the park (where Mickey Meets) and got their pictures added.

After lunch we did the following rides:

People Mover

Laugh Floor

Pirates

Country Bear Jamboree

Jungle Cruise.

We did intentionally see the Cavalcade but then ended up seeing the Starlight Parade also, not necessarily intentionally. We were getting ready to leave but the parade was coming soon (we were in Frontierland), so we decided to go ahead and watch most it before heading out.

This is where we found out K2 doesn’t do well with night driving after a long day. We had a bit of an issue getting out of Magic Kingdom! Tempers were already flaring a bit between all 3 of us as we got to the car due to a tram issue. We had people cut in front of us once the tram got there from other lanes & then there was not enough room for all 3 of us on the tram! We just ended up walking to the car rather than wait for another tram.

Then we somehow took the exit to EPCOT and thankfully they do have a couple lanes open to go through. Our GPS told us to take a road that would basically u-turn us, there was a construction truck blocking the way! It was a bit of temper flaring 2nd meltdown of the trip but we managed to just go through EPCOT parking and exit it as if we had parked there. We somehow made it back and still managed to be talking to each other the next day.

 

[Becky2005]

Day 2 – Hollywood Studios

This was the first time I have been since they changed the opening procedure to hold you at certain areas. Our goal was to get to do the Star Wars stuff for K2.

We went the Toy Story way because it was the way I knew how to get there! I have a tendency to get myself turned around easily in the parks so I go the way I know. Once they allowed us in and we got to Galaxy’s Edge, we still had to figure it out as it was a bit farther than I thought. It was a long wait but knew this was probably the longest line we were going to wait in (so we thought!).

The interesting part about this is something must have happened because we ended up skipping a bunch. We ended up going down a hall that had nothing. It was K1’s first time & I had ridden it before so I knew that wasn’t normal. We didn’t even stop in the room with the storm troopers, we just kept on walking quickly through. It was definitely bizarre.

We then went over to see Beauty and the Beast and the Villians show. It was the first time I saw the Villians show and Hook won (IYKYK) .

Lunch at Pop Century. This had 2-fold reasons, I am going with a friend in May and staying there, so K1 decided we should take the skyliner to check it out and there K2 needed to get some food. We had a bigger dinner planned so K1 & I didn’t really plan to eat anything much. We did share a tie-dye cheesecake. It was good.

We did consider doing the lunch later in the week but then realized the Skyliner was going to go down for refurbishment (which we of course, forgot about later in the trip when we were going to use them again! LOL!).

We got back and also amazingly enough the skyliner didn’t bother me too much (I don’t particularly like heights). I am old enough to remember when they had these at almost all amusement parks and they were the opened type and I *never* liked them then and still not necessarily a fan now but it is a quick trip and I think the fact that it is enclosed helps.

We were with a couple other people on the way to Pop Century and being the talkers that we are – we were talking to them which probably helped make the trip faster.

We headed over to watch the Indiana Jones stunt show but we were in that in-between time. Too early to go get seats but not so early we could leave the area for too long. We decided to go watch Vacation Fun before going to see the show.

After Indiana Jones we decided to go do Smuggler’s Run. Amazingly, that line was longer than Rise almost the entire day. I thought we should have done this first and then Rise after seeing it never go down in wait time, etc… But we knew K2 wanted to ride it but he had K1 so freaked out about being a gunner in the line (and remember we had a long wait so he was messing with her throughout the line. Sometimes you never know if he is messing with you & he is a rascal!). I had to mediate between those 2 and convince her she was *just* pushing a button that was it when she really DID get the gunner position!!!! He had her convinced it was more like Buzz Lightyear and she had to use a gun to hit targets, if she missed it was a big deal. AFTER she got off the ride, she enjoyed it and thought it was fun. K2 & I ended up being the pilots.

After that we went on Star Tours and saw the Frozen Sing Along.

We had reservations for 50’s Prime Time as K2 loves the pot roast there. Now, we didn’t get a server that really played the part (I did notice she didn’t on other tables either so I think that was just her personality) but I can’t fault her either.

She came over to take the drink order and K1 basically blurted out asking if she could get an adult portion of mac & cheese before the waitress even had a chance to say much. LOL! This is what we did here before and K1 was convinced she wouldn’t be able to do it again. As soon as she knew she could do that, she ordered. I ended up with chicken tenders and fries. Yes, we do eat like 5-year-olds! LOL! We also ordered the Jell-o dessert that is on the kid’s menu (maybe stained glass they call it). I forget what it is called but we are older and growing up we called it broken glass cake (did anyone else ever call it this?), so that’s what I know it as although ours was always in a graham cracker pie crust. This is the filling part that they serve. I was explaining it to K1 they had that as a dessert and so then she wanted it as it is a favorite of ours.

I think we might have been a little hangry too as they were running behind about 15 minutes. It really wasn’t that big of a deal but let’s just say the food got inhaled a little quickly.

Our original plan was to stay to watch Fantasmic since I have never seen it (somehow things always happen and I never get there -- which is still true!). We could tell K2 was not doing well and as it was already dark again, we decided to scrap that idea.

We went and did Mickey & Minnie’s Railway ride and then decided to call it a night.