Summer 2026 Update

In this week's episode, Jared shares with us details of his latest trip to Orlando and all of the ride changes and upgrades!

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In this week's episode of A Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared shares with us his summer 2026 updates as well as the improvements being made to the parks. Welcome to this week's episode of A Dryer Dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared Dryer, and today we are giving you our summer 2026 update. It has been a long time since we've done a podcast for you guys. We have been very busy here in Louisiana mostly with work and school, and you guys know how life gets. But we had a chance to get out to the parks recently and wanted to give you guys some updates of some of the cool things that we did. So that's what we're here to do today, and we're here to talk about some of the changes going on down in Orlando specifically. So before we dive into that, wanna give you guys a quick update on some few, on a few things. So first, if you guys heard on a couple episodes ago we have gotten rid of our Etsy page, so no more I Could Do This All Day gear out there. Unfortunately we didn't see a lot of sales there, so we went ahead and shut that one down just so that we didn't have to maintenance that any further. But we are still on Patreon, so feel free to find us at A Dryer Dose of Disney on Patreon. The link is down in the description below, and you can support the show there. And then finally, probably the biggest offer that we have is we have the Dryer Dose of Disney condo down in Orlando. This is just south of the parks in ChampionsGate, and it is a great three-bedroom condo to stay at when you're down there visiting Orlando. All of our friends and family are using it. In fact, we are pretty unanimously booked out on this right now. We are booking into December and into 2027. But if you have a trip planned in the future, it's gonna be less expensive than the hotels. You're gonna get some awesome decor, and you're gonna get three bedrooms, which is really nice, so you can take more than just your family if you'd like. But you can find that also down in the podcast description below. So this trip though was an interesting trip down there to Orlando. In fact, it was a trip we wanted to do it to get updated on some of the things that were happening down there with some of the new rides, which we'll talk about in a second. But right before we left, we had our dishwasher break down in Orlando. So as you can imagine, being a remote owner from a different state, to have an appliance go out becomes a little bit of a hassle. You have to get that scheduled to be installed. You have to get that replaced. And it just so happened we already had a trip planned so we were able to coordinate the install for that while we were out there. Now, I will say I'm gonna give you a review real quick on what happened. I absolutely love Lowe's. We do a lot of shopping through Lowe's and Home Depot throu- for both our house here in Louisiana as well as our condo in Orlando. And I ordered a dishwasher through Lowe's, got a great price, got a great unit, was so excited for that to get installed. But they outsourced that to a third-party company, which was a pretty terrible experience. In fact you guys know us, we wanna get to our parks for rope drop, so I scheduled that install very first thing as the sun was coming up on that first morning we were there, and they didn't get there till about noon or maybe a little bit later, despite being scheduled multiple hours in advance. So I have been arguing with Lowe's trying to get some money back on that install, and if you know me, you know that I will get that, and we got it all finally taken care of. It just took a really long time. But we have a great new dishwasher there now. So again, if you wanna go out there, you're gonna get to experience that. But that day we were able to start out our day at Hollywood Studios. As you guys know, Hollywood Studios has updated two of their rides, and we were able to ride both of them both Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, as well as the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, and we started our day at the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. Now, if you've gotten to know me over the years or know me personally, I grew up watching The Muppets, so I was very excited about this change, and I was actually sad to see the loss over there at The Muppets area of the park where they had Muppet*Vision 4D, which was a decent show, but more importantly, I was really sad that we lost Pizza Rizzo. Pizza Rizzo was a really great quick service restaurant, and if you've listened to my other episodes this was a great place to work remotely from the parks if you went up to the second level. It was often not used. They have really clean bathrooms up there on the second level, and we really liked that restaurant for those reasons specifically. And that's now gone. But in the future, you guys know that they're gonna be making this into Monstropolis, and I anticipate they're gonna have a great facility in there. They will probably even keep some of the same buildings and just re-theme them, but we'll get to see what happens when that is all said and done. But going back to Rockin' Roller Coaster. This was a really fun ride. We did it in single rider, which if you've heard my other episodes, we talk a lot about single rider. The line was not very long. It only took us about 20 minutes to get in on single rider despite the ride being over a 60-minute wait time at that point in time. What I really loved about it was the pre-show was very similar to the old Aerosmith pre-show but obviously done with the Muppet characters, which was a lot of fun. But what I absolutely loved was the color of the ride vehicle. So they took it from the old blue limousine look to the very multicolored look of the car that the Studebaker that they drive in A Muppet Movie their first feature length production. I encourage you go back and watch that again. But they did the rainbow type car from that, and that was really cool to see. Now, again, much of the ride and the mechanics are identical to what they were before, so not a lot of changes there, and the music was a lot of fun. But then towards the end of the ride when you're coming off, you get to see the two grumpy old men in an RV off to the side. They're telling jokes. That was a lot of fun as well. So all in all, I will say that this is a m- needed upgrade and actually kinda took this ride up just one little notch. I'm not gonna say it went up a whole lot but it did go up just a little bit due to it being themed with the Muppets, the colorful car, and some of the a- added antics that they put into the ride. So we thought that this was a lot of fun. Both my daughter and I absolutely loved it, and again, we will continue to ride this every time we go out that then takes us to our second ride that was upgraded,

and that is a Millennium Falcon: 6:02

Smugglers Run, and I will say this is a big upgrade. Now, if you look at it on paper, it doesn't feel that big, and I totally understand that. But once you get into the ride, it is a significant difference, and the reason is you now have multiple endings, multiple places you can go to. And the absolute best part, especially for those of you riding single rider, which we do all the time and we did in this instance, is more often than not, single rider is gonna be put into the engineer seat. The engineer seat traditionally has been the least eventful and probably one of the least chosen seats to sit in when you're riding the ride. Now, this time, however, I wasn't feeling bad about being put into the engineer role, and the reason is I knew that one of us would be able to select where we were going to through this new ride mechanic with The Mandalorian Grogu. So Grogu's playing with all the buttons. He comes up on the screens. That's a lot of fun. But then what ends up happening as you're going through the ride is you get to choose which different place you go to. So this is gonna give you variety, and if you're in the engineer seat, you get to control that variety, which I absolutely love. We actually chose Endor for our first ride on that, and I'm not gonna spoil it for you guys other than to say you don't end up on the moon of Endor where you get to see the Ewoks but you do go through a battle sequence there, and it was a lot of fun. Now, this definitely makes me wanna go back and ride Smugglers Run multiple times in a row to choose the different locations that you can go to, and I will be doing that again in the future. From there we had some great food. We had a great time at the park, but we went over to Disney Springs, and we ended up having dinner over at Paradiso, which is one of our favorite Mexican restaurants there, and that food was fantastic. Now, we were a little disappointed'cause we missed the window of Six Ravens opening up just barely by a few days, and Six Ravens, if you haven't heard, is the new, what I would call hot pocket spot next to Gideon's Bakehouse. So this was set up by the Gideon's people, and they have these new like meat pies and these hot pockets there that we have heard are actually pretty good. And so we will review those on our next trip out, so I commit to doing that for you guys. The next day though, we did get up bright and early, and we were able to hit rope drop. We started our day at Epcot. Though there were no festivals, we wanted to ride the new Soarin' Across the America ride, and so we wanted to make sure we hit Epcot, and so we got there first thing in the morning. And we got there early enough, we were at the very front of rope drop. Because of that, we decided, hey, let's go ahead and do Cosmic Rewind, get over there and do Guardians of the Galaxy first thing in the morning, and try to shorten our wait for that, which was great. And I'm glad we did that. Our wait for Cosmic Rewind was somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15 to 20 minutes at rope drop, and the posted wait time was close to 75. But keep in mind that was because we were at the front of the crowd walking towards the ride. So we were able to get on very quickly. Now, in this instance, this one case was the first time we got there and the pre-show was broken. So they actually walked us around the pre-show. And for those of you who have done the pre-show a dozen times or more that is not a bad thing. It is a fun pre-show. There's a lot of great information on there, and if it's your first time riding it, you 100% wanna see it because it's one of the better pre-shows out there. However, if you've ridden this ride more than a dozen times, you will agree with me that the pre-show goes through multiple rooms, multiple stages, and it's rather long. So don't get me wrong, it's entertaining, and it's a lot of fun, but if you've gone through it multiple times, it takes up a lot of time, and it is a time suck. So a lot of people have been asking for a way to bypass this if at all possible, and Disney has not come up with that yet because they don't want you flooding the secondary queue when you're getting onto the ride. But this day it happened to be down, so we were able to go right around it and get on the ride, and we had a great time. We got September again, which is the, probably the most frequent song that we've got. But we had a wonderful time riding this ride. From there, we cut across the park over to Soarin', and we did Soarin' Across America, and this was also a great upgrade. In fact, I will say this took the, the notches of the ride up quite a bit. So if you've done Soarin' in California at California Adventures you know you're doing Soarin' Across California, and they take you down the rivers. Yosemite. You see the orange groves, and that is a really great version of the ride. Over in Orlando, you're doing Soarin' Around the World, and you're going from everywhere from Fiji, to the Taj Mahal, to Paris, and you're seeing some major landmarks around the world, and that's really cool as well, especially with the smells that they pipe in there. But on this one, you're doing strictly just America. Now, doing America you get to see the great places around the country, including the bayous of Louisiana, which is where we live, and that was really cool to see and nostalgic for us as well. But it was very patriotic. They had a lot of great sights and sounds in there, and then they even incorporated a couple of the smells like they normally do. But we really love this version. It was very patriotic, and we are diehard patriots of this country. We absolutely loved it. Now, some of the complaints about this ride are that the wipes, the transition between scenes, aren't as smooth or as fun as the others, and we would completely agree with that. You don't have, the kites flying in front of you or the plane flying in front of you that's gonna change the scene. They're a little more abrupt in their changes but I'm guessing in time they could fix that and improve upon it. And overall, we really did love seeing Across America. So this is definitely a must-do if you go back to Epcot anytime soon, and it's there for the 250th year anniversary of the United States. We don't know how long it's gonna be there for but we definitely would encourage you to go see that. From there, we made our way through the World Showcase. We had a great lunch. We went over to Nine Dragons in China, and our review of that was the food was very good. But we have also done the quick service right outside of that restaurant, and our recommendation would be you are better off doing the quick service. It's gonna be the same food. It's a little bit cheaper, and obviously it's gonna be a lot quicker for you rather than burning some time going in the restaurant. So if you want Chinese food, please just right outside of Nine Dragons, you can go and do the quick service, and that is gonna be our recommendation for you there. Once we got through the whole park, we, for the first time ever park hopped from Epcot to Magic Kingdom by taking the monorail. So we came out to the monorail station. We rode to the Ticket and Transportation Center and then got on the other monorail to go to Magic Kingdom, leaving our car at Epcot. Now, being an annual pass holder, yes, we could totally leave and just go to the other one, but we would end up at the Ticket and Transportation Center anyways. So we said instead of wasting time doing that, let's just try the monorail and see how that works, and it actually worked pretty well, and you're already through security, so that was a nice little feature. Towards the end of the day, we had to do the same thing. We had to go through both monorail stations to get back to Epcot, but it was very easy to do, and so it's something I would recommend if you like park hopping. Now, over at Magic Kingdom, there's been some changes there. We rode the new Buzz Lightyear, and I will say this is a huge upgrade. The guns are no longer stuck to the carts you can pull the guns out and use them, but the downside is you lost the high value targets that are out there. Now, I have read a lot of reviews online about the new Buzz Lightyear structure, and I've seen a lot of people break the million points for the s- becoming a Space Ranger or an honorary Space Ranger with Buzz Lightyear. I've done that in the past. I've been I've made it all the way up to a million points where I maxed out at nine-nine-nine-nine-nine across the board. This time though, I wasn't able to do that. I got close. We did ride it twice, and in doing so, I did have some key learnings. So the first learning was online people were talking about you wanna shoot the rainbow targets. It took me until the second ride to realize really what was going on. And what is going on when you see rainbow targets is both you and your partner in the vehicle are shooting the same target, which gets a little rainbow circle going around. I found that doesn't give you any more points than if you're shooting the target individually, which just gives you the one color going around. So that way you get an idea of who is shooting what target. The key to getting the targets are hitting the lit up targets that are white. Those give you point multipliers for the next few seconds, and so you both wanna be shooting at those. So if you can hit both at a white target and then get it going rainbow, you're both earning those points. And then after it's ei- it's either five or ten seconds those point multipliers go away, and then you wanna find the next one and go after that. Now, here's the best part on that. You may see a white target out there, and you may see that someone else shoots it. It is my understanding that even if they shoot it, you can get the points for the next few seconds as long as you're shooting at it. So I would encourage you guys to try to do that. But know that it's not shooting the target at the same time to get that rainbow ring going that gets you the points. It's shooting the white targets out there that get the multipliers versus both of you shooting the same one. So that is a great tip for you guys. From there we went through Magic Kingdom. We had a chance to see most of the park, ride most of the rides. The one we did not get on that we wanted to do was Thunder Mountain. Now, Thunder Mountain has gone through a refurb and an upgrade there, and from my understanding, it's more similar to what at Disneyland now. However, the ride due to whether it was weather or it was mechanics was up and down most of the day, and then every time it would come up, it would spike again, so we decided to go ahead and skip it this turn, and then we will get to it on our next visit out there. But we were able to secure a reservation for Beak & Barrel over by Pirates of the Caribbean, so we were able to do that for the first time. Our experience there was good in the sense of this is a little fun atmosphere, pirate-type bar. The wait staff, the cast members are fantastic, and there's a little parrot that comes out above the bar and tells some jokes or, does some funny stuff and kinda runs around. But overall, they want you in and out of this restaurant very quickly. They do have a couple appetizers in addition to the drinks you can buy, and it is a bar, meaning this is more geared towards adults. Now, we did take our daughter in with us, and she got a non-alcoholic beverage, and we did get a couple appetizers. But I will say, by the time we were done in the bar, it was only about thirty minutes total time, and we didn't feel like we had a, an incredible experience, meaning the food didn't knock our socks off. The drinks were just okay. In the end, it was probably a little overpriced for what we got but it's a fun experience. So if you love Pirates of the Caribbean, I'm gonna encourage you to check it out. If you're not a huge fan of that type of stuff or you don't love a bar atmosphere or drinking at Disney, then I'm gonna say skip it. There are lots of other great food places around Magic Kingdom that are better than Beak & Barrel, and the entertainment value isn't there as much as it is at some of the other restaurants. So we're gonna tell you to definitely skip that then before we left on Sunday, so we stayed through the entire weekend, we had about a half day at Universal. We were able to get early park entry with our annual passes. We did VelociCoaster, and then we did single rider at Hagrid's, as well as we got our butter beers. We had some food. We took our time working our way through the parks. We did both parks. We rode pretty much every single ride we normally ride, and it was a really great time. So all in all, we had a wonderful trip, and we were able to knock out a lot of the really cool upgrades that have all happened. Now, we're very excited because there are some huge upgrades. As you guys know we spoke earlier about Monstropolis coming to Hollywood Studios. At Animal Kingdom, they're doing the full refurb of Dinosaur Land and ta- changing that into Central America, which is gonna have a new Indiana Jones ride. They're gonna have Encanto over there. And then at Magic Kingdom, you've got some huge changes with the new Cars Land and Villains Land coming in future years. So we're very much looking forward to that. Now, we keep hearing little rumors about a fifth venue, a fifth park out there. I can tell you from my research, I'm not getting any of that confirmed. I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. But I wanna say don't take it off the radar completely, just because there is some buzz happening out there. And obviously, you have Universal Studios that just opened up their new park and Disney is getting some pressure down there. Now, Universal has confirmed that they are gonna be expanding their new park, and they're gonna be adding some new rides. So we haven't heard any specifics on that, so we don't wanna report too much other than we know that an expansion is coming over there. And as soon as we get that information, we will report it out to you. Before we close out today, I wanted to show you this new T-shirt that I got here in Louisiana. I don't know if you can see it, but it says Crew of the Mouses. And for us in Louisiana you guys probably know Mardi Gras and parade season is a huge deal out here. And with the parades those are put on by krews, and that's krews with a K. So there are dozens of them throughout the Southeast Louisiana area. We went to a handful of parades this year, and it was a lot of fun. But I did end up picking up this shirt, Crew of the Mouses, and it's got Mickey and Minnie on it because that's my crew. People out here, I can wear this to parades, and they know that I'm part of the Disney lifestyle, and I'm a D- a Disney adult. Really love this and wanted to point this out to you guys today. So with that, though, we wish you a magical week as you're planning your next Disney or Universal vacation. We encourage you to check out our episodes. We have over 100 episodes out there. And again, like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, if you have a, a need for a place to stay while you're out there, we encourage you to check out the Dryer Dose at Disney condo. It is cheaper than the hotels and very close to the parks, and you're gonna have a lot of fun there, and you're gonna have a lot more room than you would at any other hotel room. So with that we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.