The Log Dog Blog: WDW May 2026

We had a great weekend trip to WDW to celebrate C's birthday! We flew down on JetBlue on Friday night and flew home on Sunday night on Southwest, and we stayed at the WDW Dolphin. This was our first time staying there, because, despite having the words "Walt Disney World" in their names, both the WDW Swan and the WDW Dolphin are actually Marriott hotels. As such, we've never considered them Disney resorts and didn't include them on our checklist of stays at every single WDW resort. However, we have some hotel benefits on a couple of our credit cards, so we decided to use them for a few of our WDW trips (this one and two other trips later this year).

The Dolphin is a beautiful hotel, but it doesn't feel like a Disney resort to us. It just feels like a very nice Marriott hotel with a conference center. One of our two trips later in the year will be a stay at the Swan, and I'm predicting we'll feel the same way - beautiful, but missing that Disney magic. I guess we'll see! The location, though, is incredible...a super easy walk to both Epcot and DHS, as well as access to the skyliner! So we certainly don't regret staying there, but after the two upcoming trips that are already planned and paid for (thank you, credit card benefits!), we probably won't stay at Swan or Dolphin again when there are so many Disney resorts to choose from!

the moon looked super cool as we
were landing in Orlando!

our room was nice, but most definitely
lacked any Disney theming

we did have a pretty nice view
of Boardwalk from our room

we had a late dinner at The Fountain,
which is a restaurant in the Dolphin

on Saturday morning, we met up with my beloved former fifth grade
student who happened to be at WDW, too...not only did I get to
hug her AND her mom, but I got to meet her daughter and
I am just so incredibly proud of her