This article recommends a handful of Disney World road trip podcasts that we’ve personally listened to.

Slowly step away from self-improvement and career-focused podcasts — this is the start of your Disney for couples trip, and your audio content should be on-theme.

When you’re embarking on a Disney World road trip, the last thing you want to do is add stress or engage in anything that feels like work. Even the start of 20+ hours on the road is technically part of your vacation, and the podcasts you choose to listen to should be entertaining.

This isn’t the time to feel bad about the to-dos you left on your list for when you return, what you haven’t yet achieved at work, or how you really, really need to do more strength training.

Leave that all behind. 😌

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5 Disney World Road Trip Podcasts To Add To Your Feed

These road trip podcasts are crowd-pleasers, focusing on topics that are interesting to just about everyone.

Criminal

Criminal is an interview-style show that dives into any and every topic related to criminality you can think of, including chats with criminals, law enforcement, mob experts, fiction writers in the crime genre, and on and one.

Episodes rarely exceed 40-ish minutes, so you can binge a lot of these during your Disney World road trip. The general vibe of the podcast and its host is calm — whether the stories are fun, touching or dark, they’re all told in an even-keeled and thoughtful way.

Grim Grinning Hosts

Cover art for the Grim Grinning Hosts Disney World road trip podcast.

Grim Grinning Hosts is a pop culture podcast with a smattering of hosts who chat with one another about their theme park opinions and experiences. A lot of their content is focused on Disney parks, but they also chat about Universal Studios and Halloween Horror Nights.

The episodes are long and can tend to drag, with most of them between 1-2 hours. This is a good podcast to pop on when you want to half-listen and be involved in the world of Disney (or Disney-adjacent theme parks) without having to pay super close attention.

Stuff You Should Know

If you like to learn anything about anything, then you need to listen to Stuff You Should Know, which has more episodes than you’ll probably be able to listen to in a lifetime. Hosts Josh and Chuck have been working together forever, and their rapport is familiar and laid-back.

You can learn about pretty much any topic, from history and true crime to questions that plague us all, phobias, pop culture, nature, the human body…truly anything you can think of.

Succession GIF with a quote about being smart.

Regular episodes are about 45 minutes long, and the Short Stuff series covers mini-topics in about 10-15 minutes.

💡 Pro Tip: Don’t skip the topics that you assume will be a bore — there is rarely an episode that’s not worth listening to.

This Is Actually Happening

Covert art for the This Is Actually Happening podcast.

This Is Actually Happening is a storytelling podcast with a new guest each episode. You’ll only hear from the host at the start and end of the podcast, as most episodes are first-person-only retellings of events or experiences.

Episodes are about an hour long, with each episode name starting, “What if…” Topics are generally on the darker side, like:

  • What if a masked man appeared at the foot of your bed?
  • What if you fell hard for the scam?
  • What if your mom believed she was a good witch?

Some of the episodes are true crime-related, while others aren’t. Every story I’ve listened to is compelling, with great audio quality and guests who have excellent speaking skills (two things that can make or break a podcast).

Wild Ideas Worth Living

Wild Ideas Worth Living has a few years’ worth of short-form episodes built up by this point, making this a perfectly binge-able road trip podcast choice. Host Shelby Stanger, an outdoor lover herself, talks to all sorts of people who had an out-of-the-box idea and ran with it, sometimes literally.

If you like any combination of the following, you’ll love this podcast:

  • Adventure travel
  • Career changes
  • Community and/or teamwork
  • Finding yourself
  • Following your dreams
  • Inspiring stories

Each episode is snappily edited and moves at a good pace without feeling hyper or rushed. And by the end, you’ll have dipped your toe into a topic that you can explore on your own if it speaks to you.

Wrapping Up

Once you get closer to Disney World, you may want to switch over to upbeat music that gets you ready to park-hop like the Disney adult you are. Put on this Disney playlist when you’re bouncing in your seat with excitement at the end of your road trip.