I'm here sonnyjane! Better late than never! The information was, indeed, announced in the Superthread but if you didn't know who announced the dates it would be hard to trace when exactly they were released! (Plus, the Search feature on this site has not been working well for months and months so it's hard to find things!)
Our helpful DIS'er jernysgirl (Kim) was the one who discovered the official holiday season dates on the DLR website last year, and I think it was in July, as Bret said. Possibly even a little bit earlier than that. However, that is not always the case. In some previous years the dates were not released until much later than that.
rosie2283 -
This is what has happened - in 2008 (coincidentally, the last Leap Year), the holiday season officially began on the Friday immediately before Thanksgiving.
In 2009 and 2010, the season officially began two Fridays before Thanksgiving.
Then, in 2011, all of a sudden Disney whipped a Monday start date out of its hat - which was very unexpected and unusual. We all thought that the season would begin on Friday 11/11/11 or Friday, 11/18/11. When we heard it was going to be Monday, 11/14, that was surprising.
So my personal guess (and that is only based on watching the start date patterns) is that in 2012, Friday, 11/9/12 will be way too early to start the holidays. But Friday, 11/16 might be a little too late given how popular the season has become. I think DLR could do another Monday start date such as 11/12/12, but at the very latest I think it will begin on Friday, 11/16. I don't think it will be any later than 11/16.
I am guessing that the 2012 holiday season will end on Sunday, January 6, 2013.
So we will hopefully find out the dates from the DLR website again in the Summer, although, with all the new DCA and CarsLand stuff happening, the focus may stay on those areas and the holidays may kind of take a back seat for a while.
Keep in mind that the 3 DLR hotels don't always get their holiday decorations until the week of Thanksgiving - either right before Thanksgiving or immediately after. So if you want the full DLR holiday experience with reasonable crowds, I would go after Thanksgiving or in the first week of December. I just did a first-week-of-December trip last month and the crowds were very pleasant. A couple of days the crowds were downright light for Disneyland during the Christmas season. Of course, things could change this year and maybe crowds will be huge. It's hard to predict.
Stay tuned to the Disneyland at Christmas Time Superthread - it's a year-round thread (not specific to any year) with all the basic info and discussion (and plenty of photos) on the holiday season. Starting in late August, we will begin to count down to the season start date with "Theme Weeks" each Monday, which will focus on a different aspect/highlight of the holiday offerings!