We went for a quick one day trip on Sunday, Nov. 22. We were torn to park hop or not and decided not to with the intention of adding a hopper if crowds got insane. Crowds were very manageable! We were pleased.
My boys are 7 & 6 and got up super early because they were excited, so we got to the DL at 7:45 and took our spot in front of the entrance to Tomorrowland waiting for rope drop. We had a strategy and it worked perfect! Strategy was I was going to go ahead and pull FP for Hyperspace Mountain, DH and boys were going to stand by line for Space Mountain, I would meet them in line. Crowd control was super organized and there wasn't any chaos that I saw. Walked right up to get a FP, as soon as I was done saw my family and was able to easily meet them in the stand by line. Basically walked onto Hyperspace Mountain (less than a 5 min wait). LOVED IT! Our FP was for 8:55. Then we headed to Star Tours stand by line, waited maybe ten minutes, if that. LOVED that as well! Was able to pull a FP for Star Tours, then headed back to Hyperspace Mountain for our FP. Took a break after that and then rode Star Tours again. Was able to pull one more FP for Hyperspace Mountain for 6pm. We were really happy with being able to ride Hyperspace Mountain 3 times in a day and Star Tours twice with minimal waits.
I was totally impressed with the crowd control throughout the day, especially in the morning at rope drop and in the evening with the fireworks. It was really well organized and I never felt trapped. Lots of CM's directing people.
We also got to mark off two other large items off our to do list: Santa and Darth Vader. Santa in Critter Country was FANTASTIC! This was the first year my 6 year old would even approach Santa, and he LOVED him! First, the line was not long at all. The line had the cutest decorations too. The CM's were fantastic! And Santa spent a lot of time with my boys and really made them feel comfortable and special. He even knew what they were asking for (video game stuff) and it was very magical. We got a lot of photopass photos and also the CM giving out Candy Canes was sweet enough to take some family photos of us with my camera as well.
We also did the Visa meet n greet with Darth Vader. We just got our Visa in September, so this was new to us. The line was super short, we waited 20 min at the most. We got there a little after 4pm. Vader was AWESOME! He even talks to you (although I thought his voice was a little quiet to hear-but maybe he was scaring kids with it louder?) and my kids were in awe. We also got some family photos there along with a free voucher for a 5x7. Photo turned out great!
We also made sure to ride the DL Railroad and let the boys play on Tom Sawyer Island. Only bummer was they closed It's a Small world between the two sets of fireworks and my youngest couldn't stay up late enough to ride it. We should have probably done that earlier in the day. Lesson learned!
Great trip overall! We had a blast =)