About All Around the Mouse
Welcome! We're a husband-and-wife team, and All Around the Mouse is the site we wish had existed before our first Disney trip: the park problems nobody warns you about, and the cheap, boring gear that fixes them. A dead phone by noon. A $6 bottle of water. The afternoon downpour you didn't pack for. Feet that quit on day two. Every video and every guide here takes one of those and shows the fix.
Our story, briefly
We joined Disney Vacation Club in 2004, back when that felt like a slightly insane thing for two adults with no kids to do. Twenty-plus years later it might be the best travel decision we ever made. What started as an annual trip turned into a way of traveling: the same membership has taken us through more Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris trips than we can honestly count, six Disney cruises (yes, we've had a Castaway Cay cabana — worth it once), and six Adventures by Disney trips across three continents — from Machu Picchu to the Norwegian fjords to the backstreets of New York with a Broadway cast.
Along the way we became the people friends text before their first trip. This site is the longer version of those texts.
By the numbers
- Disney Vacation Club members since 2004 — twenty-plus years of trips on the same membership
- More WDW, Disneyland & Disneyland Paris trips than we can count — several a year, in every season and every kind of weather
- 6 Disney cruises on Disney Cruise Line, Castaway Cay included
- 6 Adventures by Disney trips across 3 continents — Machu Picchu, the Norwegian fjords, New York City, and more
- Every EPCOT festival, repeatedly — Food & Wine is our annual tradition; we've done the Festival of the Arts in sweater weather and Flower & Garden in June heat
- One runDisney race — the medals are real and so was the 4 a.m. start
What makes this site different
Everything we recommend has been field-tested the hard way: carried into a park, in August heat, in pouring rain, across 25,000-step days. The photos on this site are ours, from our trips — when a video uses AI-generated footage for ambiance, we keep it generic and we disclose it. And we'll tell you when something isn't worth it, because a recommendation only means something if "skip it" is a possible answer.
How we pick gear
Only functional gear we'd actually carry into a park: chargers, water bottles, ponchos, anti-chafe balm — the unglamorous stuff that saves a day. No bootleg merch, and nothing recommended just because it pays. When a product solves a real problem, it goes on the list; when it doesn't, it doesn't.
How we make money
The gear links on this site are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one, Amazon pays us a small commission at no extra cost to you. That's what keeps the videos and this site free, and it never decides what we recommend. Details on our affiliate disclosure page.
Sharing & reposting our videos
Short version: please do. If one of our videos would help your followers, you're welcome to repost or embed it — on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, a blog, a trip-planning group, anywhere. Two small asks: keep it intact (don't crop out the captions or the branding), and credit All Around the Mouse with a link back to our channel or this site. A tag or an @mention is plenty. You don't need to email us first.
Want the original file for a feature or collaboration, or want to reuse a clip in something of your own? Reach us at hello@allaroundthemouse.com and we'll usually say yes. The only things off-limits are passing our work off as your own and anything that breaks a platform's rules.
One honest note
All Around the Mouse is owned and run entirely by the two of us — no guest posts, no sponsored placements, one consistent voice. We're an independent fan project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Walt Disney Company, and we don't use Disney's characters or artwork. The tips are ours; the magic is theirs.
Questions or a gear suggestion? Leave a comment on any of our videos on YouTube — we read them all.