We're here now...just got here last night. Tonight will be our first park day, I have to work until 4pm. We're doing MK tonight because it's tradition to start there and we want to see the new shows.
For the 4th itself, we will be in Typhoon Lagoon in the morning/early afternoon. Come back to the rental house, grab a shower and then head to Epcot. We've done MK on the 4th several times, but have never seen Illuminations then, so we're excited.
I'm not a crowd person in general, but for whatever reason I'm not crowd-phobic at WDW so that's not the reason we're avoiding it. I'll do MK on the 4th, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever. We just want to do something different this year. Plus, one nice thing about Illuminations is that you can show up last second and still get a good spot. While we'd like to see the globe on the lake, if we don't, not a big deal. We want to see the fireworks, and you can see them from anywhere along the walkway around the WS. So we don't have to camp out for a spot.