Thanks SherryE for all that great information! I think we will keep our CCI accommodation and watch out for a Disney hotel deal (if that exists that close to Christmas
)
I am hoping it will be quiet enough for us to do the main rides at park opening and then relax a bit into the day. We will be there for 6 nights so we can take it easy each day with the children.
We all just cannot wait to be be back in the USA and
Disneyland.
Off to read Christmas threads while eating a leftover candycane
.
V
V -
You're very welcome!
I think that keeping the CCI reservation for a while will be good. It can't hurt.
As I mentioned previously, there most definitely have been Fall hotel discounts for the 3 Disney hotels in the past, and some of them extended as far as to the end of the weekend right before Christmas. Sometimes they came in the form of a special PIN code offer, sent to random people via e-mail. Sometimes the discounts would not be PIN code-related, and would appear on the Disneyland website or come in an e-mail from Disney. The offers used to be pretty reliable each year - but sometimes the cut-off date of the offers would be a wee bit earlier in December than in others.
And then last year, with the "re-imagining" of California Adventure and the crowds that Disney expected to descend upon the Resort as a result, there were no discounts extending to mid-December. Even the Annual Pass hotel discounts were nothing more than the standard 10% that you can get 365 days a year (as opposed to the 30-35% discounts on hotels we used to get).
So now that the new California Adventure has settled in a bit and a lot of people have already seen it, I'm not sure if we will begin to see hotel discounts appear this Fall again. I hope so. There was already a pretty decent discount offer floating around early this year. I hope that last year was just a fluke because of all the new stuff.
You'll have lots of time with a 6-night stay. Even
if you were to encounter a couple of days of big crowds, you'd still have plenty of time left to get to the things you want to do, leisurely explore the parks, Downtown Disney and hotels (which I strongly recommend, as the GCH holiday atmosphere is amazing, and the PPH Christmas tree is very striking and colorful in person).
You have a lot of reading ahead of you! And then, in either late July or early August, we will begin the Theme Week Countdown that will carry us all the way to November, when the season officially begins. We'll focus on a different aspect of the DLR Christmas season every week (in photos), and (hopefully) many people will participate by sharing their photos of those themes as the weeks progress. The Countdown is a fun way to pass the time while still helping people plan their trips, and it's a great way to learn about little details and hidden gems, or things you might otherwise not pay attention to (if you are a new or almost new DLR holiday visitor). It's also a wonderful way to encourage everyone to jump in and share their photos, and to see everyone's take on certain things. So stay tuned for that!
I would love to know soon. The CM I spoke with when we made our reservations at DLH said she thought they'd go on sale in September, but she wasn't sure at all. Priority parade seating is still expected to be part of the tour, but again, she wasn't promising anything!
larina -
I was just thinking the other day that it would not only make a lot of early planners' lives easier, but it would also give us all something to chat about, if Disney would just release their darn holiday schedule and details early (like WDW does)! DLR is starting to do doing many things like WDW does them, but if DLR truly wants to be treated as a vacation destination then it should let people know about the season dates, about the holiday tour ticket info, about the Candlelight Ceremony narrators and dates, and about any possible Christmas party months and months ahead of time so that people in other states and countries can make plans to come out and see everything!
Disneyland Resort still seems (in my opinion) a bit stuck in a mindset of being a 'locals park' only, or a one-day destination that doesn't require a lot of planning! But if DLR were to tell us, say, now, what their holiday schedule and events were going to be and when they would be available to the public to buy or book, I think a lot more people would be inclined to say, "Hey, now that I've seen what's happening I think I want to go! Let's start planning!"
The fact that DLR never seems to release very basic info for certain things (like Halloween Time or Christmas) until late in the game, or only a couple of months in advance if we're lucky, is probably preventing them from getting even more visitors. True, there are people who visit DLR and who don't plan out anything other than their hotels in advance (I have a friend who did that very thing and he is headed to DLR in 3 days), but there are also a lot of people who
do start to plan way ahead of time for many different reasons, and they want to know the details early on!
Planning is half the fun! This thread will help you and get you even more excited!
. I've more or less decided on the Holiday tour, as I've never done a tour before, and I enjoy walking so it would be a good fit for me. Will probably book it for Nov 26 or Nov 27, but am thinking Nov 26 would be a better date for me to go on it. 
