Trip Report The cold never bothered me anyway!!!

DISNEYWORLD FIRST TRIP OF 2026!
TRAVEL DAY

Hello all!
It's time to start a TR on the first trip of 2026 (hopefully not the last) that occured in the very brisk month of January.

But,I lie, it was really chilly! Though a cold day at Disney is better than... fill in the blank.

The particulars-
Who-Seth and me.
When-January 13-17th.
Where-Bay Lake. As a DVC member I had originally booked Saratoga as that was all that was available but then wait listed Bay Lake and it came through! It was funny because I got an email from Disney but ignored it as it was right before Christmas and when I logged on to the site for something at the beginning of Jan. it said welcome to Bay Lake, that was a very fun surprise!

Let's get started. I have been avoiding Southwest for a variety of reasons but found they started a direct flight from Sacramento to Orlando once a day, so that was a no brainer. 5-ish hours vs 8 or 9.

Aleisha told me she would take me to the airport, and anyone that read my report from last years March trip and the crazy that occured the morning of that flight, would know I didn't hold out much hope. With that in mind I told her I needed to be picked up earlier than I really needed and jokes on me, she was early and I ended up at the airport with way more time than necessary.

I checked my bag at the curb and breezed through TSA. I went to a restaurant and had a nice breakfast/early lunch as I figured the bag of 6 pretzels we were going to get on board weren't going to tide me over with a 5 hour flight.
I bought a mini package of cheese/pepperoni snacks before boarding and ended up eating that about halfway across the US.

I left Sacramento at 11:50am pacific time and landed in Orlando 7:50pm east coast time after an uneventful flight.
My Uber (Seth) picked me up at the airport and we stopped at a Publix for a few groceries for the room.
Then we were travelling under this wonderful sign, my time stamp says 9:30.

We were pulling into Bay Lake shortly after.
This photo is from a different day, but this the entrance.

My only request for rooms was a high floor and it was so nice we did get that. We were on the 7th floor and interestingly we think it was the same room (but a slightly lower floor) than the one that we stayed in for Gary and my 30th anniversary.

This was the view from this years room and the following photo was from our stay in 2013.

I really like the rooms on this side. You get to watch the marina, and the comings and goings at the Contemporary.
That bridge connects Bay Lake to the Contemporary and is a very nice feature. It ends up on the main floor at the Contemporary where the stores, Contempo Cafe and Chef Mickey's are.

Daytime view.

And a fan favorite, the nightly Electrical Water Pageant!

We have a family joke about this parade that began back in 2013 when every single night, like it or not, the parade hits this part of the lake pretty late, maybe around 10 pm and doors don't matter, you can hear it inside!
Aleisha had headed back to her home a day or two before Seth, Gary and I that trip and we made a short recording of it and sent it to her and her response was from the Jim Carrey Grinch movie, "suffering snorkelblatz, they're relentless!"

So everytime we have an opportunity to send her a clip of the parade, that is her response and tonight was no different!

On the next post I will show some room photos as the resort has been renovated and it is quite nice.

 

[belledream]

I’m a little behind, but just wanted to say that I LOVE your Starlight photos!

 

[MickeyCB]

I only ate there once but I swear we only had a choice of maybe 3 sides for the whole table?

And I definitely remember we each got to order one-there was no tray of them!!

My aunt still puts up those lights every year. They are my absolute favorite!! I refer to them as the “old fashioned Christmas lights”. I love them so much & you don’t really see them as often anymore!!

I think this waitress was being very kind to us, but I don't know if their policy on sides and desserts has changed?

Yes, I agree they are old fashioned. But, we just found last year a modern version of them that doesn't overheat and are not the acid colors of a lot of LED's.
BUT, they are really expensive. I am waiting for the costs to go down on them.

 

[MickeyCB]

I’m a little behind, but just wanted to say that I LOVE your Starlight photos!

Ty, and it's nice to have you following along.

 

[MickeyCB]

AK/HS DAY WINDING DOWN

We started our stroll out of the toy story area and as night had fallen the lights were really pretty.

I liked this picture a lot as it was both pretty and caught the chaos of the area!

We were a few minutes early for our LL so strolled around the lake a little.

Finally it was our time to ride!

I think it's a cute but slightly crazy ride. Which I assume was the plan.

I think I have a little pack rat in me because I love sparkly, pretty things!

And the last photo of the Minnies for this season!

After that we made our way out of the park and I was proud of myself that I limited my number of swear words on the hike back to the car.

After we got back to the hotel we walked over to the Contemporary because Seth was looking for a specific spirit jersey. I wandered around, saw a bunch of things I would have liked to buy, but restrained myself.

I did see this neat print. I sent a photo of it to my stepdad that I mentioned earlier because he is a retired fireman who worked at the Pittsburgh Airport most of his adult life. (One of the reasons he's not super into flying!)
He's also not into Mickey but appreciated it anyway.

I have a cute photo of Aleisha and him when she was probably 3 or 4 with them up in one of the fire trucks. She thought it was the best thing ever!
He never had any kids of his own but got stuck with us and has been the best stepdad/granddad ever.

After we went back to the room, we went to bed reasonably early because we were going to have another long day tomorrow starting out at Epcot.
And no last full day in the parks could happen without a teensy bit of drama.

 

[Minnesota disney fan]

AK/HS DAY CONTINUES

We got to Rise and we had a LL and got shuffled past all of the pre shows, through the CM, janitor and I don't know who else's empty hallway, but did get dumped out into this!!
It was great fun, especially because we got held up here and were able to take a few unhurried photos!
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You know, a very random thought I had.
I wonder if someone has to dust these guys?
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And then something that was so fun for me!
This guy was messing around with us and I asked if we could do a selfie, and after a moments pause with a stern face he nodded yes!
I think the people behind us were jealous!
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We had so much fun despite missing the preshows.
After that we headed towards Toy Story Land to round us up some barbecue!

LOL, Had to laugh at you wondering if they have to dust those guys?? That sounds like something I would wonder about Loving your trip report!

I also love their old fashioned tinsel decorations. We used to have those too. Never appreciated them when we had them, but love to see them at HK.

 

[MickeyCB]

LOL, Had to laugh at you wondering if they have to dust those guys?? That sounds like something I would wonder about Loving your trip report!

I also love their old fashioned tinsel decorations. We used to have those too. Never appreciated them when we had them, but love to see them at HK.

Inquiring minds and all that!

And yes, My whole family is into vintage stuff.
We pride ourselves on finding old things at flea markets, etc. and compete to say I only paid X for that cool old piece!
Our joke was we did our Christmas shopping at Trader Jacks (a fun flea market back home in PA.)

 

[MickeyCB]

EPCOT DAY!

I'm going to apologize before I start to say there is a lot of text in this post as it was Lorcana day (woohoo) at Epcot and I will try to explain how it all went,. Hint, it was confusing and lead to one melt down.

We were up reasonably early with a set destination in mind.
Seth likes the Lorcana cards and collects and I guess plays the game sometimes. I had heard of them but not much more than that.

I had picked this as our Epcot day as it was the first day of the Arts Festival and I don't get to see it too often.
But Seth told me, after I got to Florida, it was also the release day for some of the Lorcana cards and a bunch of other stuff.
(I honestly didn't understand what all he was talking about, but told him I wanted him to have this day and I would go along with things.)

We decided to take the monorail over with the idea of doing what all we wanted to do there and then come back to the hotel, get his car and go to Disney Springs for a dinner meet up.

On the ride over he explained to me that there would be chaos near the area where they were handing out cards. Why I innocently inquired?
He explained that there were two parts to this whole thing.
You get a book and a pack of cards.
In the book are pictures of 4 cards that you have match from your pack to redeem this book for more cards (or something) it was all a little blurry here.
And apparently people all stand around trading with each other to get those 4 cards they need.

Then there is a second part where in the book again, there are empty spots that have to have a sticker of a Lorcana card that you can only find by circling World Showcase and matching the correct sticker with the poster (of a card) in each country.
Once the stickers are all in place it can be redeemed for something else.
Here's a photo of one card in the UK as an example.

As he had us bolting for the card/book give away I grabbed this as we went past.

We also, sort of, saw the Jammitors as we blew past.

They were handing out the books and cards on the bridge on the way to World Showcase.
Easy to find with 100 people all yelling do you have this one, I have that one!
We get in line, it wasn't too long and as a CM is handing out the book and pack of cards she keeps saying to everyone, you only get one!!
No one was asking for two lady, but maybe a bunch of people had tried? She seemed annoyed at someone.

As we exited the line a woman came up to us and asked what we needed. She said she actually had her 4 matched up and was just helping people. So she had some we needed and we traded with her and a few other people and within maybe 5 minutes we each had the 4 cards we needed. It was a little bonkers. I wasn't interested in any of this but the cards were free and I gave mine to Seth.

After that excitment we got our picture where they had a photo op set up for the card trading people.

There was some kind of limited edition box set that you could buy in the stores right at the IG so we got into that line with 50 of our best friends.
We had a LL for Remy that I was hoping we would make. The line did move reasonably quickly.
While we were in line Seth noticed that the woman in line in front of us had her phone open and he saw a photo she had of the Lorcana stickers from around WS.

He started chatting with her, and she said she had stalked someone on line who had already found out which cards were in what country and she shared that with Seth so he would be able to get more cards without the international trek.
He took a screen shot of her stickers in her book and without traveling the world our stickers were placed while waiting in line!
I feel zero guilt about this.

So he bought the box set he wanted and we hustled over to Remy.
Neat shot along the way.

We rode Remy and even with the 3D thing gone I still find it to be an ok ride, glad to do it but wouldn't cry if I missed it.
I grabbed this photo on exiting and thought it was really neat with the sun behind.

This is where it went off the rails.
I don't remember the timing of it all but we had an 11:30 reservation for the new Geo lounge and it was around 10:45 as we were leaving France.
To do the redemption thing Seth headed us over to The Land pavilion as he thought that was were we needed to be. Just short of there he realized he was incorrect and we needed to be back over I think at the Odyssey building.
So we turned around and hustled all the way back over there (the long way.)
It took some time to realize that the line for redemtion was all the way in the back and it was wrapping around the building.
It was confusing because I think they were handing out the Figment popcorn buckets so two lines.
At this point it's 11:10.
I said can we please go to our reservation first and then come back to redeem these things? He put up a big fuss because he was concerned they would run out of the redemption items, and you said this could be my day mom.

So naturally it's about 20 minutes past our reservation time when we finally enter the lobby of the lounge and the woman said they had just put us in as no shows. (I had been trying to call Disney Dining the entire time we were in line to let them know we were running late but no one answered.)

We were late, no question but here is where I get annoyed.
Initially the reservation was for 3 people but as Jake couldn't come there were only 2 of us.
She said she would call upstairs to see if they could seat us. She said because there were only 2 they could fit us in a few hours later.
I said wait a minute, if there were 3 of us now you could still seat us? She said yes. I asked could I just buy a 3rd drink as if there were 3 of us, nope, and she wouldn't budge on it. So a waiter upstairs lost out on at least a 3 drink and snack order instead of them seating 2.
If someone understands this better than I do please feel free to explain.

Anyway, we left there and while I was still pretty hot I realized we needed to sitdown and eat so we ordered from Creations and sat in the back basically looking at Guardians.
Seth got our food while I found a table. As a sort of truce he got us each an AP drink cup that was really cute.
We both chilled, made up, and then headed to our LL at Guardians which was nicely just steps away.

Loading zone area.

We got Everybody wants to rule the world, and were actually singing our heads off on the ride. That was fun!
Ride photo, never flattering but still love it.
I didn't know we were posing but also not sure if I would have been able to pull it off!

We got a few photos outside as they had a PP photographer there.
Love this one.

After that we headed back over to the Land.

 

[Skibum1970]

I'm definitely going to have to give the Starlight parade another try. I tried to stay near the corner of Main Street by the Confectionery and people were just so rude, I had a hard time making myself even stay for it.

Go to Frontierland, closer to Tiana. We arrived 15 minutes before, had a great place (could sit on the curb), and we weren't hemmed in by crowds at all.

 

[cgersic]

Oh my! That sounds like a LOT with the cards and confusion, but glad you all were able to make up quickly. I haven't been to Geo-82 yet, so I've got no response on that other than "seriously?".

 

[Minnesota disney fan]

Iv'e got to say that You are a wonderful Mom to do all of that - a lot of running around and standing in lines.
No wonder you got upset that they would not seat you at the restaurant. I would have been hangry about then. I have low blood sugar and get upset easily if my sugar is low. Just glad you had a good day and your son got the cards he wanted

 

[MickeyCB]

Oh my! That sounds like a LOT with the cards and confusion, but glad you all were able to make up quickly. I haven't been to Geo-82 yet, so I've got no response on that other than "seriously?".

Yeah, it was a bummer. We did want to try it.

 

[MickeyCB]

Iv'e got to say that You are a wonderful Mom to do all of that - a lot of running around and standing in lines.
No wonder you got upset that they would not seat you at the restaurant. I would have been hangry about then. I have low blood sugar and get upset easily if my sugar is low. Just glad you had a good day and your son got the cards he wanted

You're probably correct that the hangry's were part of it all.

 

[MickeyCB]

EPCOT DAY CONTINUES

After our very fun ride on Guardians, (and a by the way) one of my favorite parts is in the preshow when Drax says first there was cake, now there is toast!

Anyway, off to the Land where we saw this sort of randomly placed along the pathway.
It's kind of cool, it puffs out smoke periodically.

We rode Living with the land which we always enjoy. Even though we have ridden it multiple times there always seems to be something new to see.

Seth and I laugh every time we remember my granddaughter trying to dive off of the boat when she saw her parents on the Seeds tour on their last trip here.

I'm pretty sure we went on Soarin but I don't have any photographic evidence.

It was turning out to be a pretty day despite starting out at 30 degrees! I forgot to mention at the beginning of this day that when I came out to get a cup of coffee Seth had told me it was only 30 degrees. By the end of the afternoon I was taking my jacket off.

We had a LL for Spaceship Earth and hopped on that.
Saw the cool computer lady.

And I was missing my head (again.)

We headed for the park exit and the monorail back to the TTC to catch the resort monorail back to the hotel.

Pretty view from the resort monorail.

And welcome home!

We hurried up and dumped our days loot in the room and then got in the car (with what we thought would be plenty of time to make our dinner meet up.)

 

[MickeyCB]

EPCOT/DOWNTOWN DISNEY DAY CONTINUES

It will always be downtown Disney! Do you remember sitting on the bus at night and the announcer would say something like, sit back, relax you're on your way to Downtown Disney! Core memory.

Anyway, we headed for our dinner meet up.
I don't know the garage colors but Seth does, and when we were almost there he realized that the one he wanted to park in that would have got us closest to our restaurant was closed. So we had to drive on a few more minutes, wrestle our way to a top floor spot and then walk all the way back to our meet up.

We were meeting @riverside and the rest of her family at Terralina!
So excited to see them all. They're my Pittsburgh Pals!

It was such a nice evening. They ordered this amazing antipasti tower, it was huge and very tasty.

I didn't get a photo of everyone's meals but this was mine. A wonderful wood fired pizza.

The amazing @riverside herself!
And I forgot to take a photo but she brought Seth and I a greetings from Pittsburgh candy bar from our most favorite of all chocolate shops, Sarris Candies.
We like it so much that everyonce in awhile (weather permitting) I order some sent to Sacramento.

We had a really nice visit with them all and then parted ways.
Seth and I went to World of Disney to do some more shopping for the girls and they were off to their hotel (to hopefully get their delayed grocery delivery!) See @riverside TR for the details.

The girls are obsessed with Spidey and His Amazing Friends on Disney+ and we found them the cutest 3 pack of spider toys that zing along and when I gave them to them, they immediately decided they were their new pets.

After that we headed back to Bay Lake to pack most of our stuff as we were going to load it all into his car and spend the morning at MK before I had to get to the airport.

I took a few last room pictures that I had missed earlier.
A very colorful print and a neat photo of the Contemporary construction.

I love love finding old photos/postcards etc. of both Disney World and Disneyland in the early stages.

Seth noticed this on the cook top.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it is quite clever if so.

After that we hit the hay to be up and ready for some last minute fun in the morning at MK!

 

[riverside]

That was such a fun evening!! We all had a great time!! I’m so happy we were able to get together!!

 

[MickeyCB]

MK MORNING AND LAST DAY

Anyway, fun first cry later.
We were up reasonably early and had a last cup of coffee on the chilly balcony.

We packed up and carried our stuff down to Seth's car and walked over to the MK.

We headed up Main Street and it wasn't too crowded.

I had booked only one thing for today, a LL for my all time favorite ride and we headed there next.
Seth reminded me I had not taken his "on the wall" photo this trip yet, so we stopped for that. This photo on the wall has been taken every trip since he was 3 1/2. Big tears.

We continued our trek up the back way to Fantasyland.
So pretty in the morning light.

Love love this ride!

The theming is sooo good!

We started to head out but ran into a few characters that were roaming about.

We got the side eye from this one!
They were cute.

I ran out of photo room here so I will finish up on the next post.

 

[MickeyCB]

MK MORNING AND LAST DAY

We decided to stroll through the Emporium on our way out. It wasn't horribly crowded because it was early.

I love this sketch. I have one of the originals of this Mickey Charlotte Clark doll and Minnie too. They are quite threadbare with their stuffing falling out but I love them!
If anyone knows anyone who can help me get my fingers on this picture when they take it down let me know!

I really like this decoration too.

All of a sudden I hear my name and it's wonder woman, @riverside!!!
No meet up was planned just sheer coincidence. Crazy right?!

We said our goodbyes and Seth and I finished up shopping.
I actually found the shirt I had tried on at AK in a better size and they not only had the pink one, they had a grey that the Mickey had a shimmer to him. Very cute, took home both.

We walked back to Bay Lake, got in the car and Seth drove me to the airport and dropped me off.
Sniff.

Anyway, that's the end to our adventures this time.
A chilly, packed with activity but great fun January trip!!
Thank you all for following along, it's very appreciated!

 

[riverside]

Thank you for sharing such a great TR!!
And what were the chances of us running into each other that morning? Crazy!! Actually, we have my niece to thank. She noticed you!!

 

[Swissmiss]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us!

 

[Tiggertoo56]

Thank you for sharing this trip report. I love the fact that you have recreated the photo of Seth on the wall every trip too!
I'm so looking forward to 8 days time when I'll be able to see the sights and sounds for myself again.