Sibling Trips all year long 2026 -- Our March Trip (Updated 3/17)

[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. The background is a repeat from the past trip report but I know not everyone is going to read every trip report, so it is here for context.

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 have gone MORE than I can go!

The also 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 how to do things without extra costs too. 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. -- Trip Report Link from our January Trip.

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. -- THIS Report is for this trip!

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!!!

 

[Becky2005]

March Trip

Arrival Day

We are the type that get to the airport early and wait vs. last minute. That would stress me out plus somehow, one of us always has some sort of issue at TSA. This time it was K2 who got pulled out for some reason.

We stayed at Shades of Green and I know that isn’t open to everyone but I’m going to give the details/my opinion for those that it could be helpful for.

Our plane arrived about 10 minutes early. We used Mears to get from the airport this time as it was a very short trip and we convinced K2 that we did not need to rent a car! It went smoothly for us. We had a short wait before we loaded the bus and I expected it to take a bit as I know there are multiple drop-offs. We were the first ones dropped off. I think overall from the time our plan landed until we were at the hotel was about an hour & half. Which I didn’t think was too bad.

We did get there around 12:30 pm which is several hours before check-in, so our room wasn’t ready. Not surprised at all about that, so dropped off our bags with bell services and headed off to Disney Springs. This was our plan all along as I wanted to go to the World of Disney and we planned to have lunch at D-Luxe burger (that tends to be our go-to lunch place there).

Shades of Green bus drops off by Cirque du Soleil, so it was a hike before we even got to security.

As K1 predicted, as we were eating lunch, she got the call that the room was ready. We had predicted it would be about 1:30 pm when our room would be ready. I remembered to take pictures this time (at least day 1) of food just for those who enjoy that. We are *very* basic eaters -- I ordered a bacon cheeseburger plain. The person taking our order was new as it was a little confusing since she didn't know how to input it in & then said fries comes with the burger. They do not there but we knew that. We know their burgers are huge (at least for us), so we got a 1/2 order of fries to share between all 3 of us. It doesn't look that big in the picture but it is.


We made our way over to World of Disney where I bought the Steamboat Mickey Mouse I came for and then just looked around. I saw Mickey Mouse measuring spoons and then I remembered my DH said we needed new measuring cups since a handle broke on a *very* old set we had. He never said it couldn’t be Mickey themed! LOL! I found some and bought those.

We also tend to do matching shirts. We hadn’t planned on doing it this time but apparently it is ingrained in us so much that we ended up buying matching t-shirts while we were there.

Went into a couple other stores but wanted to head back as the Shades of Green bus only comes on the hour for Disney Springs and tomorrow was an early morning.

We ended up with a great room – 2130. It was a long walk when they first gave us the number but it ended up being at the end of the hall by itself which made it really nice as it was quiet. We did see if there was any easier way to get to the room and alas, there was not. You just had to make the long trek down several halls but it wasn’t too bad. I don’t know if this is offered at other hotels but we noticed in the bathroom you can get a sharps container for your room which was extremely nice to make the trip a little easier for us as my K2 uses insulin. That is the first time I have ever been at a hotel that offered it (or at least made it known they offer it).

We just explored the resort a bit, found a ping pong table and went to Evergreen’s which is their pool area bar/restaurant and got a pizza for dinner. Just took pictures of the drinks too for the fun of it. It was pink lemonade & coke zero. I had an ice tea, which I also have a picture of but it is just a basic glass of iced tea. The pizza was edible but it reminded me of Chuck E. Cheese pizza. We didn't expect gourmet though considering it is basically a pool bar type situation. Did it hit the spot for us that night? Yep. Would I go out of my way to get it? Nope.



I then promptly forgot to take pictures of the food mostly for the rest of the trip!

Up next, can we make Early Entry AND Deluxe Extended Evening Hours in the same day?

 

[DLo]

Following along . Looking forward to reading more .

 

[Becky2005]

DAY 1 – Magic Kingdom all day long….and then some!

Magic Kingdom hours were 9:00 AM - 10:00 PM today with Extra Magic Hours for Deluxe resorts and Shades of Green gets the deluxe benefits.

Shades of Green busses aren’t quite as frequent as Disney busses. They run on specific schedules and they drop you off in the charter bus area by TTC, so you still have to take the monorail or ferry over. This makes it trickier for Early Entry in my opinion.

We got up at 5:00 AM (which is *early* for us but my normal life is on CST vs. EST, so that made it even more ugh) or we set our alarm for that time anyway (we then promptly hit the snooze for about 30 minutes), so that we could be functioning humans to get on the bus that left at 7:30 AM. We did have time to grab a chocolate croissants & blueberry muffins from their Express Café which is open from 6 AM – 1:00 pm before loading the bus.

Shades is *very* strict with their ID check so you do have to make sure you have your ID and they give you another piece of paper that says you are staying there. Everyone has to show ID every time you get on the bus but only 1 person in your party needs that paper but we each got one, so we could split up.

Due to having to deal with the TTC still and this was the first time I have done early entry where you go to your choice of ride first, I felt we were a bit behind. We went straight to Peter Pan and the line already looped around by the Tangled bathrooms as the que itself wasn’t open yet. It was the first time my sister had done early entry as we typically don’t stay on site and she was not impressed. I was quite shocked at how long the line was myself. Even once they opened the que, by the time we got up to where you could see the wait time it listed 35 minutes and it took us about 20 minutes from the time they opened the line to get on the ride. I can't tell you how many people walked past us, and then turned around and walked back once they realized that "yes, the end of the line DID go pretty far back". I don't know if they thought the other lands were open or if they were trying to see where the end of the line was for sure.

At that point, I told them we should do Haunted Mansion since it would be open and would have a low wait time. It was still at 13 minutes when we got there, so that was good.

We were also trying to do things that would not be open later tonight at Extended Evening as well as making sure we did all the must do’s just in case things went sideways later.

We managed to get in Hall of Presidents, our time was off by a bit for this as we did have a bit of a wait but not really long enough to go do anything else. So we were a bit stuck.

Went over to the Country Bear Jamboree and then started doing a bunch of stuff in Fantasyland.

Small World, Philharmagic, Under the Sea, Mad Tea Party (I did not do this as I don’t trust my siblings to not make me sick!), People Mover and then Carousel of Progress.

We ended on Carousel of Progress as that is our traditional ending before we leave as this is not open during the extended evening hours,

We took the bus to Pop Century because K2 likes the stir fry bowl there for lunch, however, K1 did not realize how long of a bus ride it would be since the only other time she went there we used the skyliner. I could have told her it was a long ride but she didn’t ask me, she just told us this is what we were doing.

We managed to get back to the hotel around 4:15 for a rest break because we are older and both my siblings fell asleep. This is where things get wonky. K2 tends to be “done” once after he eats lunch & takes his meds. K1 told me to wake her up at 6 so we could go over to Hollywood Studios for Fantasmic which was showing at 8:30 & I have never seen the show yet. K2 said to NOT wake him up and we had a whole contingency plan for him (which he apparently didn’t listen to us for).

I was supposed to also take a nap but I wasn’t sleepy. I never really am the first full day – the following days, I will be out but day 1, I’m a ball of energy.

Anyway, I went to wake up K1 and she was definitely sound asleep because she woke up almost in a panic and freaked out on me a bit. She was so confused when I told her it was 6! She had no idea if it was 6 AM or 6 PM or where she was at, etc… Once she got her bearings about herself all was good. We had planned to possibly do some shopping and/or maybe a ride or so before the show. That did not happen at all due to K2 but things always work out just not necessarily how you plan.

We get on the bus to Hollywood Studios and it is combined with Animal Kingdom. We were on the last bus pick-up for Animal Kingdom and there was a person there asking the bus driver to wait for the rest of her party! EEK! One thing I do know about these busses when they say a time, they don’t mess around. Luckily, they were only a minute or two behind her because I don’t think he would have waited too long since we still needed to be dropped off at Hollywood Studios.

This is the part that K2 didn’t listen to us! We had told him about the times and he texted us that he woke up & was feeling good, so he was going to go to MK! The problem with this is that it was around 7 PM! Fantasmic didn’t even start until 8:30 and then it would take us a bit to get over to MK. We were still on the bus to Hollywood Studios when we got the text!

I managed to call him once we got to HS and he was just at the TTC, so we told him to get on the resort monorail and take a bus from the Poly over to Hollywood Studios so he could watch with us! We were having a heart attack waiting for that bus to get there as it finally arrived at 7:45. I was a bit freaked out as I know it was the only showing and even though the theater is huge, it can fill up.

To be far, the running joke is that something always happened beyond my control which always ended up in me not seeing the show. I would have been almost laughed if that happened again (would have been annoyed but also figured this is how it goes for me). Luckily, we did manage to get into the show! Getting out was a bit of a nightmare but to be expected. They take you *way* around backstage to get to the front of the park exit.

I wasn’t 100% sure if park to park busses were still running then but they were, so we took that bus to Magic Kingdom and then it dawned on me that we were going to be in the sea of people leaving after the Fireworks. Yikes! It worked out although I was trying to get as far off Main Street as quickly as possible.

We started with the tea cups and I actually rode this time but in my *own* teacup without the siblings as once again I knew they would try to make me sick.

We did Under the Sea, Haunted Mansion, we decided to go do It’s a Small World and call it a night. However, we were trying to figure out dinner as I thought most things were closed. I did look up Casey’s as I thought that was the one place almost always open for late night things and on the app it didn’t list extra hours on there earlier in the day.

We were walking by it and saw that it was open so decided to get something to eat because otherwise it was going to be goldfish crackers & granola bars. LOL! We got finished around 11:45 so out of the park we go.

Then we had a bus issue. Normally they run 20 minutes to MK but they had announced the last bus was going to be 1:20 AM when we arrived this morning. There were many people waiting and I was wondering if they had meant 1:20 AM was going to be the *only* bus they were running for extended hours since they do not run busses for any of the extra paid events. Finally, someone who had been waiting when we arrived called them and it did seem from hearing the 1 side of the conversation that the front desk didn’t seem to be aware of the extended hours as they said the last monorail was at 10 PM which definitely was not the case. That did prompt a bus to come pick all of us up but I’m still convinced if there hadn’t been a call, no bus would have come until 1:20 AM.

Up next -- Can we do Hollywood Studios early entry on only 5 hours (more or less) of sleep?

 

[hardcorestitch]

DAY 1 – Magic Kingdom all day long….and then some!

Magic Kingdom hours were 9:00 AM - 10:00 PM today with Extra Magic Hours for Deluxe resorts and Shades of Green gets the deluxe benefits.

Shades of Green busses aren’t quite as frequent as Disney busses. They run on specific schedules and they drop you off in the charter bus area by TTC, so you still have to take the monorail or ferry over. This makes it trickier for Early Entry in my opinion.

We got up at 5:00 AM (which is *early* for us but my normal life is on CST vs. EST, so that made it even more ugh) or we set our alarm for that time anyway (we then promptly hit the snooze for about 30 minutes), so that we could be functioning humans to get on the bus that left at 7:30 AM. We did have time to grab a chocolate croissants & blueberry muffins from their Express Café which is open from 6 AM – 1:00 pm before loading the bus.

Shades is *very* strict with their ID check so you do have to make sure you have your ID and they give you another piece of paper that says you are staying there. Everyone has to show ID every time you get on the bus but only 1 person in your party needs that paper but we each got one, so we could split up.

Due to having to deal with the TTC still and this was the first time I have done early entry where you go to your choice of ride first, I felt we were a bit behind. We went straight to Peter Pan and the line already looped around by the Tangled bathrooms as the que itself wasn’t open yet. It was the first time my sister had done early entry as we typically don’t stay on site and she was not impressed. I was quite shocked at how long the line was myself. Even once they opened the que, by the time we got up to where you could see the wait time it listed 35 minutes and it took us about 20 minutes from the time they opened the line to get on the ride. I can't tell you how many people walked past us, and then turned around and walked back once they realized that "yes, the end of the line DID go pretty far back". I don't know if they thought the other lands were open or if they were trying to see where the end of the line was for sure.

At that point, I told them we should do Haunted Mansion since it would be open and would have a low wait time. It was still at 13 minutes when we got there, so that was good.

We were also trying to do things that would not be open later tonight at Extended Evening as well as making sure we did all the must do’s just in case things went sideways later.

We managed to get in Hall of Presidents, our time was off by a bit for this as we did have a bit of a wait but not really long enough to go do anything else. So we were a bit stuck.

Went over to the Country Bear Jamboree and then started doing a bunch of stuff in Fantasyland.

Small World, Philharmagic, Under the Sea, Mad Tea Party (I did not do this as I don’t trust my siblings to not make me sick!), People Mover and then Carousel of Progress.

We ended on Carousel of Progress as that is our traditional ending before we leave as this is not open during the extended evening hours,

We took the bus to Pop Century because K2 likes the stir fry bowl there for lunch, however, K1 did not realize how long of a bus ride it would be since the only other time she went there we used the skyliner. I could have told her it was a long ride but she didn’t ask me, she just told us this is what we were doing.

We managed to get back to the hotel around 4:15 for a rest break because we are older and both my siblings fell asleep. This is where things get wonky. K2 tends to be “done” once after he eats lunch & takes his meds. K1 told me to wake her up at 6 so we could go over to Hollywood Studios for Fantasmic which was showing at 8:30 & I have never seen the show yet. K2 said to NOT wake him up and we had a whole contingency plan for him (which he apparently didn’t listen to us for).

I was supposed to also take a nap but I wasn’t sleepy. I never really am the first full day – the following days, I will be out but day 1, I’m a ball of energy.

Anyway, I went to wake up K1 and she was definitely sound asleep because she woke up almost in a panic and freaked out on me a bit. She was so confused when I told her it was 6! She had no idea if it was 6 AM or 6 PM or where she was at, etc… Once she got her bearings about herself all was good. We had planned to possibly do some shopping and/or maybe a ride or so before the show. That did not happen at all due to K2 but things always work out just not necessarily how you plan.

We get on the bus to Hollywood Studios and it is combined with Animal Kingdom. We were on the last bus pick-up for Animal Kingdom and there was a person there asking the bus driver to wait for the rest of her party! EEK! One thing I do know about these busses when they say a time, they don’t mess around. Luckily, they were only a minute or two behind her because I don’t think he would have waited too long since we still needed to be dropped off at Hollywood Studios.

This is the part that K2 didn’t listen to us! We had told him about the times and he texted us that he woke up & was feeling good, so he was going to go to MK! The problem with this is that it was around 7 PM! Fantasmic didn’t even start until 8:30 and then it would take us a bit to get over to MK. We were still on the bus to Hollywood Studios when we got the text!

I managed to call him once we got to HS and he was just at the TTC, so we told him to get on the resort monorail and take a bus from the Poly over to Hollywood Studios so he could watch with us! We were having a heart attack waiting for that bus to get there as it finally arrived at 7:45. I was a bit freaked out as I know it was the only showing and even though the theater is huge, it can fill up.

To be far, the running joke is that something always happened beyond my control which always ended up in me not seeing the show. I would have been almost laughed if that happened again (would have been annoyed but also figured this is how it goes for me). Luckily, we did manage to get into the show! Getting out was a bit of a nightmare but to be expected. They take you *way* around backstage to get to the front of the park exit.

I wasn’t 100% sure if park to park busses were still running then but they were, so we took that bus to Magic Kingdom and then it dawned on me that we were going to be in the sea of people leaving after the Fireworks. Yikes! It worked out although I was trying to get as far off Main Street as quickly as possible.

We started with the tea cups and I actually rode this time but in my *own* teacup without the siblings as once again I knew they would try to make me sick.

We did Under the Sea, Haunted Mansion, we decided to go do It’s a Small World and call it a night. However, we were trying to figure out dinner as I thought most things were closed. I did look up Casey’s as I thought that was the one place almost always open for late night things and on the app it didn’t list extra hours on there earlier in the day.

We were walking by it and saw that it was open so decided to get something to eat because otherwise it was going to be goldfish crackers & granola bars. LOL! We got finished around 11:45 so out of the park we go.

Then we had a bus issue. Normally they run 20 minutes to MK but they had announced the last bus was going to be 1:20 AM when we arrived this morning. There were many people waiting and I was wondering if they had meant 1:20 AM was going to be the *only* bus they were running for extended hours since they do not run busses for any of the extra paid events. Finally, someone who had been waiting when we arrived called them and it did seem from hearing the 1 side of the conversation that the front desk didn’t seem to be aware of the extended hours as they said the last monorail was at 10 PM which definitely was not the case. That did prompt a bus to come pick all of us up but I’m still convinced if there hadn’t been a call, no bus would have come until 1:20 AM.

Up next -- Can we do Hollywood Studios early entry on only 5 hours (more or less) of sleep?

I’m sure you’ll be able to do DHS on limited sleep-Joffrey’s alert juice is your friend!