How Crazy At Christmas?

Bamaclan4

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jan 9, 2018
Our family of 5 adults will be traveling to WDW December 26-Jan 2 of 2020-2021. We have been a few times at Christmas but we left the 24th to come home one year and the 26th on another year. Between 1 college student, 2 teachers , 2 other jobs, and family Christmas these are absolutely the only dates that we can go. We handled the other trips very well. We went early and took mid day breaks, then had a TS dinner and hit the parks again. We saw all we wanted at least once and most several times. My question is with this same method, will the parks be doable. We stay onsite, so can split up if we want, and only the college kid and the married couple will care to ride anything in SWGE. TIA for your help.
 
I’ve done 12/29-1/3’ish the last few years, can’t speak to Christmas specifically. But from my perspective your prior pre-Christmas trips have been good prep and you have their right mindset to tackle that time of year. For all of the fear of large crowds around the holidays, there are always positives.... gobs of open park hours, tons of CMs/ride capacity, etc. NYE has a special/fun vibe that’s hard to articulate.

I’d say do what you do and go have fun.
 
After our Christmas trip this past year, definitely go early. People really don't come until much later. We also oddly had great luck with getting 4th and more fastpasses so make sure to look-we had a group of 8 and had very few issues, went a lot better than it has on several past trips in late January. It seemed like there were not as many Disney savvy people there at Christmas.
 


Preplan as much of your day as you can. If you plan on getting to the parks at rope drop, I would set your first FP to begin at least an hour after you enter, and then focus on as many attractions as you can before that first FP. Plan your dining in advance. Consider a TS breakfast in the park for the last seating, and then a TS dinner, with snacks to fill in. QS dining can be very, very busy and having those two scheduled meals means you know for sure you will eat at regular times. Plus, it gives you a couple mini breaks from the crowds without leaving the parks. If you plan on doing things like the Candlelight at Epcot, it’s a good time to splurge and get the dining package with the reserved seating section. Keep your expectations reasonable and expect the occasional hiccup. At least the crowds seem to be in a good mood over the holidays!

I have been at Disney a few times during Christmas week, and although I am not a huge preplanner in general at Disney, I found that the preplanning really helped a lot to make the crowds feel more manageable on those very busy days. It’s the only time I do things like dining with show reservations packages because it’s busy enough for the value to really be there for me.
 
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We prefer not to go early in the day Christmas/New Years week. We find the lines for buses, security, getting through the tap-styles, etc....soul crushing. Lol.

We prefer to sleep in, cruise in early afternoon and avoid those security/entry lines. Then we stay late and refresh for extra fp’s. :)

We just preplan our 3 fp’s. We eat counter service, but we make sure we eat at off hours to avoid crowds.
 


Expect insane busy crowds. IMHO there is a huge difference (manageable the week before) vs. Christmas week. It helps to know what to expect. It's really too much for us these days, but many say anytime at WDW is great. The five Christmas weeks we have done were all to be with extended family who like you had the time off. We just popped in for a short time to see them (maybe four nights, three days) and for DH especially the crowds were way more than he could handle (he after experiencing them on one trip one year opted forevermore to skip going to any theme park except SeaWorld which is super busy too, but is much more manageable than anything Disney and really festive for the holidays). Due to that for our short three day on our future Christmas trips, we'd usually plan for our time there that the group does SeaWorld one day, a resort day the next day, and one Disney theme park day where DH stays at the condo, read, relax, etc. while most of us go to a super crowded park.

Resorts that are at capacity (no vacancy) are practically empty as everyone is at the parks, so quite pleasant at the resorts this time of year (but although lovely, people typically go to Orlando for the parks, not to hang out at the swimming pool, play tennis, etc.). Traffic, 30 minute waits for dining even when you have a reservation, etc. are all power for the course. It's a time too that I don't want to drive or go anywhere just for the heck of it to explore etc., due to crowds. I only move and go somewhere when there is a specific need to go from point A to point B.

People are different though in their tolerance with crowds. All in my extended family have a pretty high tolerance compared to my family. They were at the MK for the millennium from rope drop till 5 a.m. when they could finally get out and thought it was so cool, amazing and totally worth doing, for example.
 
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Went last Christmas and there were crowds but it wasn't unmanageable for some reason. We left the 26th though and didn't stay the week. There was a late night at MK on the 23rd and at the end of that it was practically empty except for Space Mountain, which my brother waited quite awhile to ride. Definitely avoided Magic Kingdom on the 25th and went to AK instead.
 
If you are arriving the 26th you will miss the surge of Christmas crowds, but you may encounter the NYE crowds if staying until the 2nd of January. I would note crowds still exist and having hopper tickets provided options to change parks or take a break somewhere outside of the parks...on property and check-out the wait lines on line to determine the park you might visit during the evening hours

We also did MK on Christmas in 2018 and around 11am the crowds were crazy...like a river of people pushing their way to the castle. We had Afternoon Tea ADRs for 12:40pm at the GF. From basically the ice cream shop (left 11am) on Main Street to the GF Tea we ended up with 10 minutes to spare for our ADR. Travel times become very interesting and very slow.
 
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It’s busy, for sure. But like other people have said CM’s, ride capacity, busses... they are all running at full speed. A couple of years ago we went the week between Christmas and NYE and over Spring Break. I would take the week between Christmas and NYE any day. Spring Break, we seemed to wait much longer for busses, rides, etc... just because things weren’t running at full operating mode. Saying that, though, we took full advantage of extra magic hours, which meant we were getting on one of the first busses, if not THE first bus going to the parks in the morning... rolled out of bed and staggered over to the bus stop in the dark... stayed at the parks until maybe lunch and then headed back to the resort to swim and nap. Then we didn’t venture out to the parks again until after dinner. But it was nice! We had great weather so we did happy hour by the pool everyday. Sometimes my kids just wanted to stay by the resort at night and play trivia in the lounge, or watch the outdoor movie. We hit things HARD in the mornings, planned our fast passes to start maybe 10:30ish am when the crowds picked up. Don’t try to go to Magic Kingdom Christmas Day. Everyone and their mother wants to be there. That is the one day we didn’t try to go to the parks in the morning. We slept in, opened presents and had a nice brunch at the hotel. Then headed to the parks later in the day when the families with little ones were clearing out. We saw a few families heading to the parks in their Christmas jammies, which I thought was really cute, but my teenage kids were not interested in hahaha! It really was a blast!
 
I have done Christmas week twice. Since you are all adults, my best advice is take advantage of late night hours. Lots of rides can be had after midnight in the MK. I have never tried MK on Christmas. The last visit we did AK on Christmas Day which did not seem crowded at all. The first trip, we made Christmas Day a non-park day and resort hopped.
 
Thanks so much for all the encouraging comments. I know it will be crazy but maybe with it being 5 adults and staying onsite it will be doable. Please keep any experiences you have with this particular week coming. Hope all of my follow Disers have a Blessed Day.:flower1::sunny:
 
Sounds like you already have a good idea of what to expect, and a good plan to handle it. With that in mind, go and enjoy all you can. Good luck!!!
 
Went last Christmas and there were crowds but it wasn't unmanageable for some reason. We left the 26th though and didn't stay the week. There was a late night at MK on the 23rd and at the end of that it was practically empty except for Space Mountain, which my brother waited quite awhile to ride. Definitely avoided Magic Kingdom on the 25th and went to AK instead.
How was AK on the 25th?
 
I've been at WDW on Christmas week as a CM for over two decades so I know exactly what it's like and I will never be there as a Guest. There are much better times to go during the Christmas season.
 
Fast passer I would love to go early in December but that’s the only time we can go. Been there through the 26th before just no later. Just hope it is manageable.:crazy2:
 
Some in our family / extended family are now getting a condo offsite at Cypress Pointe from Dec. 14 - 21 (much better this week than the next for crowds overall and crowds at theme parks). For the three of the six days they will be doing chill out /nature things. My nephew lives in Orlando, owns kayaks and a boat and has tons of favorite nature places to go. For three of those days (we are in the theme park capital of the world), some in the group will hit the MK one day, SeaWorld (whole group one day) and Gatorland (whole group one day). Then for the 21st - Christmas day we are going to get a big rental house and mostly chill out (tennis, pool, hot tub, family visiting, and movies) -- have more family coming in throughout the week up to and including that weekend. It was actually cheaper even with the house rental to all fly into Orlando and meet vs. all flying to someone's house (family from Idaho, Chicago, St. Louis, Connecticut). We are all flying back on Christmas due to the very low airfares (like $82 to fly back to Chicago, like $111 to fly back to St. Louis, etc.) Plus some in the family like me have burned up our PTO at work, and I have to be back in the office on the 26th.

As said in an earlier post the time between Christmas and New Year's is the very busiest time of year in Orlando and at the parks. Just because we are doing minimal park time, all who are super interested in parks arrive sometime the week of the 14th, all have been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt, we are staying away from the parks from Dec. 21st on. This, though, is more a family gettogether trip with some theme parks for some as a fun back drop vs. a visit Orlando trip. We just last night firmed up plans for most of the extended family.

This group has done Christmas week many times, but are doing a more lay low approach this year.
 

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