Christmas Week 2015 Schedule

[EricFromMA]

Hello Everyone!
I have been reading all your great posts for the last few years but this is my first post. It's part question and part venting my frustration with Disney. Our annual Disney World vacation has always been in the first week or 2 of December. This year we decided to to go Christmas week 12/19-12/28. I have been going through making all my ADR's, figuring out what parks we are doing on what days, and now getting ready to start booking my fastpasses in a few weeks. My problem is that the schedule Disney has posted resembles nothing close to previous years Christmas week. It seems like almost a placeholder schedule until the full one is released. Last year they had multiple daily lightings of the castle, 3 Fantasmic shows per night, parks opening at 8am instead of 9, etc. Previous years once the Christmas Parties were done the special Christmas parade was moved to normal park hours and even twice per day. None of that is listed in their schedule. From the research I did it looks like they updated the schedule around Nov 17th last year to add everything. I know there are sites that list what they "think" the schedule will look like or I could go from last years schedule....but none of that is 100%. Disney wants me to plan everything 6 months ahead but doesn't give me an accurate schedule to plan around! It's so frustrating to say the least. This leads me to having 25 ADR's tied up waiting until I know for sure what times wishes, Fantasmic, etc will be. Is anyone else having this same problem?

 

[kaymil]

Yup. Still waiting for a correct calendar. Most of what I have read says a more "final" calendar should come out some time next month. Ugh.

 

[EricFromMA]

Its the busiest week of the year....planning is soooo important! They need to give us the info we need already!

 

[EricFromMA]

Once the schedule does come out I will have some great ADR's that I'll be giving up......

 

[PlutoTheDog89]

This year is tough to predict. In the years we've gone, the Friday after Christmas has always been the night for late-night EMH at Magic Kingdom. MK would usually be open until 2 or 3am.

There are still some ways to plan. Are you staying on-site? Staying on-site gives you a lot more freedom - having a park hopper gives you even more freedom. I'd say this - they should post the hours before the 60-day window for FP+ opens. If they don't, it's a huge mistake on their part.

I agree with the frustration, but look at it this way - they will only add hours, they won't subtract any. If you see that MK opens at 9am and you have a 9am ADR, they won't go and change the park hours to 10am (at least I've never seen that.) The only frustration is for the people who book a Rope Drop ADR and then Disney adds hours - which is a totally understandable frustration.

If I had to guess, I'd say MK opens at 8am and has a 7am EMH on Christmas.
- MK will have late-night EMH the Sunday after Christmas

Attached are the hours from last year. Should give you an idea of what to expect.

 

[EricFromMA]

Thanks for the list of last years hours. I'm staying onsite so I was able to get all the ADR's I wanted. The problem I am having is that at my 180 day point wishes was listed at 9:00pm. So I made several ADR's at 6:30 and 7:00. Now they are listing it at 8:00PM. So one night for example it's going to be wishes or be our guest dinner. I had hoped to do both that night. Hopefully they update the hours before my fastpass window. Fingers crossed.