No one knows exactly what's happening yet, closetmickey.
In the past, the Christmas parade has been filmed for ABC's Christmas Day special, but, as disneychrista said, last year it was not. Last year they shot some Frozen-related footage and other random things.
While I fully expect that ABC will be there on that weekend in November to shoot something or another, it might not be the Christmas Fantasy Parade. Who knows? They may even film Paint the Night, but no one knows.
This year the auditions for the Christmas Fantasy Parade required that the performers must be available from 11/13/15 - 1/6/16 (which was previously mentioned in the Superthread that jammyjam25 referenced above). Normally the parade would soft open on the weekend before Veterans Day (a.k.a. parade filming weekend), but if the performers are required to be available starting 11/13, that implies to me that Disney is not planning on having the Christmas Fantasy Parade soft open this year. Instead, it seems like they are lining it up to begin right when the holiday season officially begins. There was also a rumor (which came from MiceAge) that Disney was trying to figure out how or if they could move the Christmas Fantasy Parade over to California Adventure this year. IF there is any truth to that rumor, and IF it is something that is being considered, that could be the reason for no soft open of the parade this time around.
As for what to expect in general -- if this were a normal parade filming/taping/shooting year -- I asked Nancy Johnson of DIS Unplugged to expand on it a bit (last year), and she gave me some info. In this post, scroll down to the green text in the quote block at the bottom, and that's Nancy's quote on crowds, etc., associated with the taping -
http://www.disboards.com/threads/di...n-superthread-4.3215593/page-62#post-52142080.
